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Many seasoned PC
enthusiasts fondly recall being the first on the block to
have a high-powered Diamond Viper card in their rig, and
boasting about it to their friends. Back then,
Diamond and performance were nearly synonymous in the
computer world. It was a big loss when they pulled
back in 2001, only offering their Supra line of Modems and
Rio MP3 players. After a three-year absence,
however, Diamond has returned, starting off a bit slowly
with their new value-minded Stealth line of cards which
will soon be followed up by a high-powered Viper line.
Upon hearing of Diamond's
resurrection, we had high-hopes for a unique product line.
The only way to stand out from the crowd is to offer
something distinctive, whether it be the software bundle,
the cooling method, or some other feature
such as Tyan's TGM technology. What will Diamond,
or better yet, Best Data bring to the market that will
make them a front-runner once again? See, this is
Diamond in name only. Best Data purchased the
rights to Diamond's brand names and trademarks, and is
using the Diamond name to make a bigger push into the
graphics market. The big question is then, can
Diamond / Best Data re-capture the hearts and wallets of
an already jaded buyer's market? That remains to
be seen. Our reintroduction to Diamond begins with the
Stealth S80 - a feisty little card powered by ATi's
Radeon 9200SE VPU.
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Specifications & Features of the Diamond
Stealth S80 |
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A
"diamond" in the rough |
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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW
GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGY
- Radeon 9200SE
Visual Processing Unit (VPU)
- Core Clock Speed
200MHz
MEMORY
CONFIGURATION
- 128MB of DDR RAM
- 180MHz DDR /
360MHz Effective Speed
- 64-bit Memory
Interface
CHARISMA ENGINE
II
- Four parallel
rendering pipelines process up to 1.1 billion
pixels per second
- High performance
2nd generation hardware transform & lighting
engine
- Advanced vertex
shader support for the latest programmable effects
SMARTSHADER
- Full support for
Microsoft® DirectX® 8.1 programmable pixel and
vertex shaders in hardware
- 1.4 Pixel
Shaders support up to 6 textures per rendering
pass
- 1.1 Vertex
Shaders support vertex programs up to 128
instructions with flow control
- Complete feature
set also supported in OpenGL via extensions
SMOOTHVISION
- Image quality
enhancement features for Direct3D and OpenGL
applications
- Programmable
full-scene anti-aliasing supports 2 to 16 samples
- Advanced
anisotropic filtering supports 2 to 16 samples
- High quality
texture rendering with minimal performance impact
HYPER Z II
- Lossless
Z-Buffer Compression and Fast Z-Buffer Clear
reduce memory bandwidth consumption by up to 25%
DISPLAY SUPPORT
- 15-pin VGA
connector for analog CRT / DVI-I connector for
digital CRT or flat panel
- S-video or
composite connector for TV/VCR
- Independent
resolutions and refresh rates for any two
connected displays
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VIDEO IMMERSION II
- Delivers industry
leading DVD playback
- Integrated MPEG-2
decode including iDCT and motion compensation
- Unique Adaptive
per-pixel de-interlacing feature combines the best
elements of the "bob" and "add-field" (weave)
techniques
- YUV to RGB color
space conversion
- Back-end scaler
delivers top quality playback
- 4-tap horizontal
and vertical filtering
- Upscaling and
downscaling
- Filtered display
of images up to 1920 pixels wide
- Hardware
mirroring for flipping video images in video
conferencing systems
- Supports 8-bit
alpha blending and video keying
FULLSTREAM
- Noise removal
filtering for captured video
- MPEG-2 decoding
with motion compensation, iDCT and color space
conversion
- All-format
DTV/HDTV decoding
- YPrPb component
output
- Adaptive
de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
- Dual integrated
display controllers
- Dual integrated
10-bit per channel 400MHz DACs
- Integrated 165
MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI and HDCP compliant)
- Integrated TV
Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
- Optimized for
Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon? 3Dnow!
- PC 2002 compliant
DISPLAY FEATURES
- Dual integrated
display controllers to drive two displays
simultaneously with independent resolutions and
refresh rates
- HYDRAVISION?
software provides complete control over
multi-display configurations with a user-friendly
interface
- Dual integrated
10-bit per channel palette DACs operating at up to
400MHz
- Integrated 165MHz
TMDS transmitter supports resolutions up to QXGA
(2048x1536) and complies with DVI and HDCP
specifications
- Integrated TV-Out
support up to 1024x768 resolution
- YPrPb output for
direct drive of HDTV monitors
GENERAL FEATURES
- Comprehensive 4x
and 8x AGP support
- Windows Logo
Program compliant
- Optimized for
Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon? 3Dnow! processor
instructions
- Highly optimized
128-bit 2D engine with support for new Windows® XP
GDI extensions
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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW
The
bundle is just what one would expect, considering the
main-selling point of the Stealth S80 is its price. There's two CDs in the package,
one that contained an interesting mix of drivers,
software, and benchmarks. The
other CD is a full version of Spy Hunter, a remake of the
classic arcade game which should perform well on the
Stealth S80. In what is surely a cost cutting
move, what you won't find in the box is a
user's manual. The
only paperwork was a quick installation guide, the
warranty and registration information, and a voucher for
two free issues of PC Gamer. Diamond also threw in
an S-Video cable for connecting your PC to a TV.
The Stealth S80 up
close and personal
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