I am Rodney Reynolds with 3dGameMan and this is the video or review number two for February 2000. Today, I will be looking at the VIPERII and I have posted more information on the VIPER at our website. The review will be comprised of three parts, the good, the bad and our rating.
I will begin with the good. The good thing is the video card is, it’s amazing in S3 games. S3 comparts the games look visually stunning. Quake 3 looks great, performs great. Soldier of Fortune and the biggest reason to buy this card will be of course with a Hardcore Unreal Tournament gamers. This card is pretty cool and Unreal Tournament; so the good thing there. The also good thing is that it has a video output on the back, so you could put it up to a television set or you can even record games if you want to to for your friends to look at. So there is a TV-out on those cards.
The bad things are many unfortunately with this card. Again, a company has released a product without much driver support. This card does not support every game on the market and it’s expensive. It’s a $250.00, $260.00 card that is Canadian cost. So it’s not cheap. You can pick up a TMT2 Ultra for the same price, if not cheaper and it will perform overall better than this card in a sense that it will be good and Quake, it will be good in Soldier of Fortune, it will be good in a lot of the other Quake—Quake 2, Half-Life and so on and so forth. There is game is really as a presence, the drivers are really, ‘oh my God’ and starting games, the games I have mentioned before.
Something else bad of this card is it little got 60 hertz at 600 by 1200. So people who have 19 and 21 inch closed monitors will not be happy with SA2 2:17 card. I don’t know if this is a driver problem or it’s a hardware issue but for 32meg card, they can’t go at least 85 or at least by 1200. I think, really lacking.
Again, I can’t stress enough driver support. Diamond come on, get with it. Make some drives—some good drivers with these products. This is a good product. This can be a very good card if you only get the driver support out there. Make is simple. Make it such a that anyone can solve these drivers and get the system going without any troubles which is not the case as of now.
I have some troubles installing it on my BX system. This is not a drive issue, this is more of a card versions in the sense of limitation on core speeds, you could only push a core off to a notch of them of a 110 megahertz. This is what I found. My motherboard will only go to core of a 115 megahertz. Anything above that, the system would not even boot.
In my IA-20 motherboards, there was no problem with this card. I have a 500e over 5-7, 110 megahertz using this card in the IA-20. The new motherboards was not a problem but most people do not have these motherboards. They have LX chipsets, BX chipsets and those people who want to overclock are going to be very, very, very disappointed in this card or when you have to lower your core systems speed.
Spend most gamers are overclockers. So, I will give this card a 6 ½ out of ten. That is the absolutely notch where I can go and give this card at this time due to the drivers support. I think that Diamond the S3 technology will be around for a few months and certainly has more game developers support this technology, it the good and gamers will love it but until then, this card is kind of a bit a world of its own and of you are like the adventure type and would like to have a card and wait for the drivers to be applied maybe add a little tournament, these would be a card to get. Otherwise, I would not recommend it. It’s too expensive that has no driver support. It counter blocks your system that well and if you have a 21-inch monitor or a 19-inch monitor; it’s bad news.
So hey this has been another video review and we look forward to hearing from you and what you and say about the products, our website, our reviews. So drop us some look at www.3dgameman.com and let us know what you think. Until the next time, 3dGameMan keeps you with the gear so you can play harder.
Until the next time, 3dGameMan keeps you with the gear so you can play harder.
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