Diamond's Viper V770s

You'll find no monsters here!

Diamond is one big name in the video card industry! It wasn't always this way (hey, who has the luxury of starting out big?), but as things stand, they now have great sway over the industry. Possibly one of Diamond's biggest graphics card lines, the Monster 3D and Monster 3D II, were built upon 3dfx Voodoo technology. Now that 3dfx has decided to get their own toes wet, many wondered what Diamond would end up doing.

The answer was to simply keep plugging away. The power of the TNT2 has allowed Diamond to upgrade their Viper line of video cards to the first performance tier, and with the V770 they offer the two basic configurations you're likely to see (and purchase) in a TNT2. You can check out FiringSquad's exclusive Diamond TNT2 Interview for more information on their games bundles.

Plain vanilla

The vanilla V770 is spec'd at 32MB and 125/150MHz, closely mirroring Nvidia's recommendations for such a part. It uses 6.5ns RAM, and sadly, will not ship with an overclocking utility. You will of course be able to overclock the board through a 3rd party program such as PowerStrip, but from our experience, it's usually not worth the effort, and the lack of a cooling fan may have something to do with it.

Ultra Viper

The V770 Ultra will also be a 32MB part, and again matches Nvidia's recommended spec, for 150/183MHz. It correspondingly uses faster RAM, EliteMT was the brand found on our shipping sample. With the Ultra, Diamond includes a simple overclocking tool called the TurboGauge that allows you to select your clock rate.

The TurboGauge isn't a slider, though. It gives you 5 presets to select for overclocking, and ranges from 150/183 to 175/200. This isn't the most robust method of overclocking, but the card is a mass-production unit and hasn't been as finely tweaked for overclocking as you'll see with the offerings from smaller vendors.

Diamond Viper V770
Model: V770
Core Speed: 125MHz
Memory Speed: 150MHz
RAM: 32MB SDRAM
RAM Speed: -6.5ns EtronTech
Fan/Heatsink: Heatsink
Special Features: NO overclocking utility included
Software Bundle: Zoran SoftDVD, 1 of 6 full games
List Price: $199.95
Lowest Price: $143.95

Diamond Viper V770 Ultra
Model: V770 Ultra
Core Speed: 150MHz
Memory Speed: 183MHz
RAM:32MB SDRAM
RAM Speed: -5.5ns Etrontech, EliteMT
Fan/Heatsink: Fan and Heatsink
Special Features: Overclocking utility included (Ultra only)
Software Bundle: Superbike World Championship from Electronic Arts and Wild Metal Country from Gremlin, 1 of 6 full games
List Price: $249.95
Lowest Price: $196.95