#Diamond Viper PCI
5 messages in this thread
I'm new to this service, so please bear with me. I am about to
purchase a new Gateway 486 PCI computer. Are there ACAD and 3D
Studio drivers available for the Diamond Viper PCI video card?
Apparently Gateway will not be shipping these drivers with the
system. Since I spend about half of my computer time in these two
programs, these drivers are a must. Gateway also will ship the
system with a Matrox Atlas card, this has an ACAD driver but no 3DS
driver. This is a more expensive card, is it worth it? I would
appreciate any information on the subject. Thank you.
Do NOT get the Viper card. The Viper is a good, fast card, and it is
supported directly by 3DS's vibrant setup, but the Vibrant drivers
will NOT recognize the PCI version of the card, and if you try to
fool vibrant into thinking that it's just a regular ol' VLB card,
you'll get caught and Vibrant spits you back out into DOS again. I
don't know about the Matrox, but I doubt it has Vibrant drivers
either. We have 10 Gateway PCI Pentiums, and the only card we've
found to work reliably is the ATI Ultra Pro XLR w/2mb VRAM. It'll
cost the same or less than the Viper, and it will give you much
better DOS performance and is infinitely more reliable in 3D Studio.
That's my thought for the day.
Matthew, the new Vibrant drivers (vibrant.zip in DL9) support the Viper PCI
card beautifully. EXTREMELY fast.
– G
Well, there you have it. Was my original assumption correct? Was it
the word "PCI" that the drivers didn't like?
Are you using the 1.0.1 Inline update? It should have fixed all of the
problems with the Diamond Viper PCI. In general, PCI boards require special
setup, so 'faking' it won't work anyway. There were several problems with the
Diamond Viper, all of which have been resolved to my knowledge (PCI support,
Oak chip support) in the 1.0.1 Inline update, which is on this forum.
The Matrox Atlas is an MGA card and the next update of the inline driver
(1.0.2) will support it fully.
The ATI Ultra XLR Pro is directly supported by the inline as well, and the
1.0.2 inline drivers will support the new line of ATI cards.
Chuck Walbourn – Vibrant Graphics