Product

Product	Diamond Viper II Model Z200
MSRP	$199.99 Street
ESRP	$146.00 Online
Bus	1X/2X/4X AGP
Chip	Savage2000

Drivers are something S3 is definately not known for. This is unfortunate for the reputation of the Viper2, as on the whole I found them not too bad. I tested using 4.12.01.9002-9.01.21, the latest beta from Diamond. This drivers have full DX7-functionality, an OpenGL ICD, and some nice utilities. They come with InControl Tools 99 also, but those were not tested as most people don't use them.

This is the Gamma Control screen, in the Advanced menu of Windows 98. It's pretty easy to use, with many pictures to use to test. You can adjust gamma, contrast and brightness individually. Nothing exceptional, but very functional.

Here's the TV-Out page. You can select between RCA and S-Video out-puts, the signal for many countries / tv-types, and more. You can also adjust the flicker and size under the advanced settings.

This is the best part of the drivers. You can adjust many settings under this, including the above shown, and also VSync and W-Buffering. I was rather dissapointed that more options aren't included, such as FlipBlitting, Bus Throttling, and more. Also, the lack of the overclocking utility in this driver build was somewhat dissapointing, though S3Tweak an be used.

These drivers are also definate improvements over the Savage4 drivers. The Savage4 drivers had some major problems with initial release, and these drivers include most of the features offered. Currently though, some features cannot be used, despite being listed on the box:

Anisotropic Filtering
Anti-Aliasing
Paletted Textures
Hardware Transformation and Lighting (Direct3D and OpenGL)

The most important features missing are the paletted textures and of course T+L. However, T+L should be out anytime now, and paletted textures aren't needed too badly with S3TC. S3TC is, off course, S3's proprietory texture compression scheme. It has a 6:1 ratio, and allows for excellent image quality. Despite what naysayers claim, S3TC is the way to go for impressive texturing and quality. Nothing comes even close yet, and with NVIDIA and ATI adopting S3TC, it has much more support than any other standard to date.