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Technology Stocks : CYRIX / NSM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve h who wrote (22286)	12/30/1997 10:10:00 PM
From: Robert G. Bianchi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 33344

Steve, What type of SDRAM are you using? One or 2 dimms? No particular brand of SDRAM. I did buy a single 64MByte SDRAM. One thing that was surprising is that the DRAM was two chips tall, but everything fit fine! I'm also considering the diamond viper 330 for my system, what features prompted you to purchase the viper versus other video cards? How is your 3d game performance? I picked it because it looked like it was the fastest around. It is one of the fastest boards for Direct3D (one of Microsoft's standards). As it turns out, many games support the OpenGL Standard, I guess Doom's latest is probably the most notable. Unfortunately, the fastest at Direct3D isn't the fastest at OpenGL. To make matters more confusing, there are 3D Benchmark tests, that as far as I know, don't correspond to either standard. Diamond's Fire GL 1000 Board is the fastest board executing the OpenGL Standard. A couple of things you should consider about the Diamond Viper V330. First, it supports refresh rates of 60Hz, 72Hz and 75Hz at 1600 x 1200. Fortunately, I bought a premium 21" Monitor which was capable of 76Hz refresh rate and therefore it is being driven at 75Hz refresh rate. The model just below it, the VeiwSonic G810 s only capable of 71Hz refresh rate, which for this board would have forced a horrible 60Hz refresh rate! Bottom line the Diamond Viper V330 is an excellent card, matched with a great monitor it is super choice. If a maximum 4M Bytes of Graphic Memory meets your needs, it is a very good card. If you are looking for the maximum DOOM refresh rate, then consider the Diamond Fire 1000 Board. It will support the OpenGL standard faster. It also can be purchased with 8M Bytes of Memory allowing for 1024 x 768 3D graphics. The Viper card, because it only comes with 4M Bytes of memory can run 3D at 800 x 600. The System I just purchased was for a friend. I am waiting until the next generation of boards are available. These motherboards should support 100MHz System Bus, Double Data Rate SDRAM, and AGP. By that time the AGP Drivers are a little more mature and hopefully, they will offer a performance boost over PCI. I may have to wait until PR300 rated parts are readily available. Currently, I am using my 6x86L PR200 CPU. The difference in performance between a 6x86MX-PR233 and the 6x86L-PR 200is not really worth the upgrade price! Finally, was the system unstable at 2.9V when overclocked? what heatsink are you using to run at 3.2V? I am using a Cyrix Boxed Processor PR200 rated. Because it is intended for retail upgrade, it comes with its own fan, that works beautifully. I was not able to run the PR200 (66MHz x 2.5) 2.9V processor at 75MHz x 2.5 at 2.9V in a stable fashion. Increasing the Voltage to 3.2 Vdc and that did the trick! Bob