Introduction

The Diamond Viper V550 is another graphic card based on the world acclaimed Riva TNT graphic chipset. Very similar to the STB Velocity 4400, the Viper V550 only difference is the lack of a TV out (at least on the unit tested) . So you can't use it on something else other than a computer monitor. This may not represent a problem for you and me but some peoples might be a bit deceived by the lack of this feature. The Viper V550, like all TNT based graphic card comes equipped with 16Mb of SDRAM memory and its drivers are offering support for both the OpenGL and Direct 3D renderings. The Nvidia Riva TNT is a very well designed graphic chipset helping us to forget about the many flaws affecting the infamous Riva 128 graphic chipset. The only thing we could complain about this graphic card is the fact that the performance of the Riva TNT graphic chipset is much lower than the performance first announced by Nvidia. As a fact, from the promised fill rate of 250 million Pixels per second clocked at 125Mhz, Nvidia dropped the fill rate to 180 milion Pixels per second and clocked the whole thing at 90Mhz. This performance drop is mostly due to the fact that the processor was supposed to be manufactured by using a the .25 micron manufacturing process while the actual chipset is manufactured using a .35 micron process. However, Riva TNT chipsets are supposed to get back to these figures by mid 99 by using the .25 micron manufacturing process...

Installation

After we reverted our display settings back to the Windows default PCI VGA graphic adapter, we used to install Nvidia latest beta drivers issued Build 0.48 for Win95/98 AGP. So, the installation of this graphic card is storyless provided that you start from Windows default VGA display drivers.

The performances

All tests were performed with the following system setup:

Motherboard: Iwill BD100
CPU: Intel Pentium II 350mhz
Memory: 128mb PC100 SDram (LGS)
IDE first channel Primary port: Quantum Fireball EIDE UDMA ST 3.2A
IDE second channel Primary port: AOpen CD-936E UDMA
AGP slot: Diamond Viper V550 Riva TNT 16Mb AGP 2X
ISA slot number 2: Ensoniq Soundscape soundcard
ISA slot number 1: US Robotic 56k X2 modem
OS: Win98 4.10
DirectX 6.0

The graphic cards drivers used were Build 0.48 for Win95/98.

All tests were performed with the VSYNC disabled unless otherwise specified.

The 2D results

Wintune97 Results

A clear advantage goes to the Viper V550 on this test where the score obtainned is 30 points better than the Velocity 4400 based on the same graphic chipset.

Winbench98 Business Graphic Winmark

A very interesting comparison between the Diamond Viper and the STB Velocity is showing a clear advantage to the Velocity 4400 this time. We are really wondering what could cause the performance gap between these cards as they both are using the same drivers and the same Chipset, anyone has an idea?

The 3D results

The Forsaken FPS tests were performed 3 times each and the mean value obtained is the one indicated in the above results. The results obtained with the Viper V550 are almost identical to those of the Velocity 4400 on this game.

All the tests have been performed 3 times each and the mean value obtained is the value indicated in the above table. The rendering used was the Quake2 default OpenGL. Here again, no significative performance difference between the Viper and the Velocity...

Timedemo testing procedure used:

The computer has been rebooted for the next test.

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Unreal D3D + Intel PII-350mhz
Graphic card	640 X 480 - 75hz 16-bit	800 X 600 - 75hz 16-bit
Diamond Viper V550 16Mb AGP	36.10 fps	30.02 fps

The Unreal Timedemo tests have been conducted after the latest Unreal patch available (2.20) has been installed. The rendering method used to test this card was Direct 3D and the D3D quality level chosen on the Riva TNT setting were: Vsync disabled, Antialisaing disabled, Mip-map detail level= High-performance. Once again, we have identical performance with the Viper than those obtained with a Velocity 4400.

Final Reality

The above values are the mean values obtained from 5 tests ran in a row by selecting the Advanced Benchmark option of Final Reality. The values obtained with the Viper were compared to those of the Velocity 4400 stored in the Final Reality benchmark data base. The Green lines are showing the performance of the STB Velocity 4400 graphic card. As you can see, the Velocity 4400 is a very tiny bit better, but, the differences between both cards are of no real meaning once again...

3D Winbench98

The Ziff Davis 3D Winbench98 test gives another clear advantage to the Velocity 4400 compared to the Diamond Viper V550. While the Velocity 4400 reached 1310 on this test, the Diamond Viper V550 only reached 1090 using the same drivers and the same chipset. Once again, we really are wondering what could be the cause of such differences...

Conclusions

As we can see here, trying to compare Nvidia's Riva TNT based graphic cards leads to the same frustration experienced when trying to compare Voodoo 2 based graphic cards. The design considerations to be followed by each manufacturers are so restrictive that there are no real possibilities to step away from the original design. For this reason, chances that one TNT based board would be much better than another one are very weak or nonexistent. All in all, the Diamond Viper V550 is a very good graphic card. The 3D applications used to bench this graphic card clearly showed that this graphic card is really meeting all expectancies of a TNT based graphic card. No doubt in our mind, the Viper V550 is a very good performer and the visual quality of the images generated by this graphic card are of the highest quality available esêcially when compared to Voodoo 2 based graphic cards.

Click here for more information about the Riva TNT 2D/3D graphic chipset

Click here for more information about the Diamond Viper 550 16Mb AGP 2X graphic card

Visually stunning interactive 3D

Optimized Direct3D acceleration

Complete DX5 and DX6 support

Twin texel (TNT) 32-bit graphics pipeline

Per pixel perspective correct texture mapping

24-bit or 16-bit HW Z buffer (floating point or integer)

8-bit stencil buffer

Anti-aliasing: full scene, order independent

100% HW Triangle setup

Mainstream feature support

High performance 128-bit 2D Acceleration

Fast 32-bit VGA/SVGA support

16MB, 8MB and 4MB frame buffer configurations

Video Support

Video Acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-1/2 and Indeo®

NTSC and PAL TV output

CCIR-656 video capture port

Interfaces

Comprehensive AGP2X support (532MB/sec with side band addressing and pipelining)

Bus mastering DMA PCI interface

Designed to WHQL compatibility standards

Windows NT 3.5, 4.0 and 5.0 display drivers

Windows 95 and 98 Display Driver, DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectVideo, ActiveX

Windows 3.x display drivers

OpenGL ICD for Windows 95 and NT (passes compliance tests)

Performance and Statistics 128-bit wide graphics engine and frame buffer and TwiN-Texel architecture (2 pixels/clock) Massive 1.8GB/sec frame buffer bandwidth, 32-bit color, 24-bit z buffer architecture supporting up to 200MHz memory 180Mpixel/sec fill rate 6M million triangles/sec peak AGP2x 16MB SDRAM/SGRAM frame buffer 7M transistors Integrated 250MHz Palette-DAC supporting up to 1600x1200x24@85Hz 452 PBGA Complete DirectX 6.0 and OpenGL support