Test System Setup

Test System Setup

Intel Pentium III 600(Engineering sample 6x100MHz)
Intel Celeron 300
Abit BE6-II Motherboard
  BIOS filename BEHNZ.EXE

Apacer PC133 SDRAM - 1x128MB
Diamond Viper 2
  Driver version: 1.09
  Driver version: 1.21 Beta
  Driver version: 1.21 Beta w/T&L
ASUS AGP-V6600 Pure GeForce SDR
  Driver version: Detonator 3.68
Western Digital Caviar 102AA 10.2GB 5400RPM EIDE HD
Windows 98 SE

Quake 3 Retail - 640x480 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 800x600 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 1024x768 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 1280x960 Fastest, Normal, High Quality
Quake 3 Retail - 1600x1200 Fastest, Normal, High Quality

Unreal Tournament 405b - Intro Flyby 512x384
Unreal Tournament 405b - Intro Flyby 640x480
Unreal Tournament 405b - Intro Flyby 800x600
Unreal Tournament 405b - Intro Flyby 1024x768
Unreal Tournament 405b - Intro Flyby 1280x960
Unreal Tournament 405b - Intro Flyby 1600x1200

Treemark - Simple
Treemark - Complex

Notes

When we first reviewed the Viper II, we found that the drivers weren't mature yet. We encountered performance issues in 3DMark2000, and the hardware T&L hadn't even been enabled yet. Two driver revisions later, we find that the 3DMark2000 performance have improved, and while T&L isn't officially ready, you can enable it yourself in the registry to get a sneak peek. Savage Daily News first posted the registry settings:

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\Display\Settings "ICDHWTL"="ON"

We ran our tests with and without T&L enabled. The scores are in no way indicative of how the finished drivers will be. We just wanted to satisfy our curiosity. We also tried the MeTaL driver in Unreal Tournament. The MeTaL driver enables S3TC, but we didn't find a performance increase in UT.