The Viper II Z200 goes head to head with its predecessor, the Viper V770 Ultra

Viper V770 Ultra

Suggested Price: None (No Longer Produced)
Lowest Price: None (See above)
Maker: Diamond Multimedia
Website: www.diamondmm.com

I knocked on the door. In response nothing happened. This is never a response I enjoy. I knocked again, and then nothing continued to happen. I gave the door a good third pounding to which I heard movement in the oversized house. Soon a small round woman answered the door.

"Hello. I'm here to replace the OEM Diamond Viper V770 Ultra graphics card in your computer." I said. Actually I didn't because when I do say things like that I get strange looks, so I usually just say, "Hello, I'm here to fix your computer."

From the looks the woman gave me I might as well have said the first one. I repeated myself a little less sure of the message. To which she finally responded with an "Ok."

I moved towards the door, and she positioned herself in the doorway to let me know I wasn't getting in. I repeated myself again, even less sure of the message, to which she repeated herself, then continued to block the doorway. I looked at the name on my work order and asker her if that person was home. To which she said he wasn't. I asked her when he would be home, to which she said she didn't speak English. I told her that I didn't either, but I was wondering when the owner of the computer would be home. She again told me she didn't speak English. I told her bye, and she did the same. Walking back to the truck I began to wonder about the card. Sure it was about a year old, but it was one of the coolest cards I'd gotten to work with so far.

Then I wondered how it compared to my Viper II. After work that day I carefully opened the anti-static bag with a hair dryer so that the item wouldn't look tampered with and slapped it into my system.

The Diamond Viper V770 Ultra is still considered the last great card from Diamond Multimedia. The TNT 2 Ultra was top dog until the GeForce rained upon its parade, and the Viper V770 Ultra was considered by quite a few to be the top card. Then all things went to shit when S3 bought Diamond. Why is that?

Economy cards: No matter how hard S3 tried that is all they can seem to make. It would help if they set their sights higher than making economy cards, but then they couldn't use it as an excuse when the card couldn't match the performance they once bragged about. The Savage3D was pitted against the low cost 3dfx Banshee. The Savage4 even when it had 32mb of RAM had trouble topping the old 16-megabyte TNT cards. It seems the Savage2000 is doomed to the fate of being a cheap alternative card that isn't up to what the competition has to offer. So now that the Savage has found its place how is it doing?

Since that review a lot of things have changed, the Savage2000 board has had one BIOS revision, and a total of 8 driver versions. Some of the drivers improved things, others made things worse. Makes me wonder if anyone knew what they are doing or if they are just trying things at random. Finally though, one day before ATI announced their new brand of soap (the Radeon 256) the Viper II got official beta T&L drivers. This caused me to win my bet with Fuse that S3 could make the drivers before the next generation of video cards arrived on the shelf. I would have bet that they couldn't but no one would take me up on that end of the bet. Nonetheless, I think Fuse owes me some beer.

Other things have changed since the review. My old Celeron 300a was put out to pasture; actually it was shoved in an ISA slot to prove that it could be done. In its place now reside a generic slotket, a Celeron 366 and a monster Global Win FEP32 cooling fan that helps the chip run stable at 550mhz, and sometimes at 616mhz, and can't keep the machine from crashing at 682mhz, but you've got to find your boundaries. Another hardware change was that I have gotten is a cable modem, so the old PCI 56k noisemaker was yanked out with glee, and shoved into an ISA slot. I'm now running an UltraATA 66 hard drive and lastly I've upgraded to Windows98 SE, Windows98 was then shoved in an ISA slot, because it can be done.

After the previous review of the Viper, I realized I had forgotten a few things that most reviews have. One was a link to the manufacturers website, which any self-respecting hardware junkie knows where Diamond can be found. Another thing I forgot was the statistics this card was supposed to have, something I forget to do because being the hardware freak that I am, I have them memorized. Since I'm too lazy to cut AND paste you can find the stats here. The last thing I forgot, or at least the last thing I remembered I forgot was a box shot and a card shot. Now, that I've made up for what I missed in the previous review lets take a look at where the Viper II is now.

As I mentioned before the drivers have matured, though they have yet to reach legal drinking age, they are sort of in the experimental teenage years attempting to find themselves. Quake 3 performance has jumped all over the place, with the drivers but it isn't doing too badly with the latest release. Expendable hasn't improved much at all. Actually it improved the most when I upgraded my processor proving that it is true: Expendable makes a better CPU benchmark. While Expendable has had none of the visual glitches fixed, Quake 3 is at a new low if T&L is set to auto or off.

The Viper V770 Ultra should be pretty well known as far as video cards go. Being a year old it has mature drivers, which include performance and stability into one package, that being said lets take a look at the evil benchmarks. Here is a quick refresher on the system on hand for abuse.

As before the sound was on during all testing, for the same reason as before. I like to know how my system runs when I'm playing the games, and I'm not one of those Quake junkies who turn off everything for a high as hell frame rate. I like my eye candy on. Though just to see if it was possible I did shut off everything including sound to have the Viper II score an even 100 fps, ugly as hell to look at though.

What about S3T&L? It is a bit confusing. T&L was supposed to help the processor, right? Interesting concept. I ran nVidia's Tree Mark and fond that with the T&L turned on the card scored better than with it off, and with the CPU clocked higher the T&L was faster. Looks like the processor is helping the T&L, not the other way around. In Quake the T&L helped at lower resolutions, and hurt at higher resolutions. Plus it didn't look very pretty at any resolution. So the T&L is there, not very useful, but it is there.

The moral of this story is that even though the Savage2000 has the ability to be a better card, it still is held back by its drivers, and even though the TNT 2 Ultra is over a year old, mature drivers walk all over the Savage2000. The Savage2000 does have its good qualities though. It is a good performer in 32-bit color modes, not taking a large hit when the switch is made. Take a look around the web and you'll see the Viper II bests the SDR GeForce when it comes to 32-bit color time, but I'm sure the GeForce looks better doing it. It is a great Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament card, but the D3D is slow, but bearable. Owning a Diamond Viper II Z200 is similar to the 5 stages of Grief associated with death. 1. Denial - It isn't that bad. 2. Anger - This PoS sucks! 3. Bargaining - Maybe I can sell it on Ebay. 4. Depression - This PoS sucks. 5. Acceptance - It sucks, but my Celeron couldn't push a GeForce 2 GTS anyways.

After all this time I can't change my opinion about the Viper II, I still give it a 3 out of 5. It has improved, but in the areas where it was doing well in the first place and most of the cards problems still exist. Now, I just have to put the OEM Viper V770 Ultra back in its anti-static bag and take it back to work.

Most Probably,

Noxious?