The Stealth cards of the 2D era were usually based on GUI accelerators from S3 Graphics. This line from Diamond is one of their oldest, spanning back to the early '90s. The line started with the most rudimentary of 2D accelerators, but today displays the latest in 3D chips. Initially the Stealth line was Diamond's high-end lineup, but as time progressed the line became more of a mid-range/low-end selection. With more than adequate performance in most cases, the Stealths offered excellent value. This line was Diamond's most popular. Notable members of the Stealth family have been the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000, by far the most popular S3 Virge-based board. The Diamond Stealth32, using the popular and impressive Tseng Labs ET4000/W32p chipset, was capable of impressive price/performance, especially in DOS. The Diamond Stealth64 Graphics 2001, with the ARK 2000PV/MT chipset, was known for excellent DOS performance at the time. The Diamond Stealth II S220, using the Rendition Verite V2100 2D/3D accelerator, was popular with enthusiasts for its excellent price/performance for both 2D and 3D gaming. In fact a BIOS was released by Diamond for the Stealth II S220 which brought its clock speed up to the same level as the high-end Verite V2200 chip, resulting in equal performance at a significantly lower price. In the middle of the Stealth line-up, Diamond chose to implement a numbering scheme to differentiate their cards in a new way. For example, the Diamond Stealth Video VRAM was rechristened the Diamond Stealth Video 3xxx. The numbers had more than a random meaning. Specifically, they tell the buyer the card's memory amount and type. The Stealth Video 3240 uses VRAM (3), is equipped with 2MB initially (2), and is upgradeable to 4MB (4). If the first digit is a (2), then the card uses plain DRAM. The numbering scheme confused many people since Diamond just renamed current cards with new names. The Stealth Video 3240 was simply the old Stealth Video VRAM. New cards did also use the scheme, however, such as the S3 Trio64V+ cards. A partial selection of Stealth models - Diamond Stealth VRAM
S3-911/924 ISA
- Diamond Stealth 24 S3-801/805 ISA
- Diamond Stealth 24 VLB S3-805 VLB
- Diamond Stealth Pro S3-928 ISA/VLB
- Diamond Stealth SE S3-Trio32 VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Graphics2001 ARK 2000PV/MT PCI
- Diamond Stealth32 Tseng Labs ET4000/W32p VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 DRAM S3-864/Trio64 VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video DRAM S3-868 VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 VRAM S3-964 VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video VRAM S3-968 VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001 S3-Trio64V+ PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2121 S3-Trio64V+ PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2201 S3-Trio64V+ PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2001 TV S3-Trio64V+ PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2121 TV S3-Trio64V+ PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2201 TV S3-Trio64V+ PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2200XL VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2120 S3-Trio64 VLB
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 2200 S3-Trio64 VLB
- Diamond Steatlh64 Video 2500 ProMotionAT24 PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 3200 S3-Vision968 VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 3240 S3-Vision968 VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth64 Video 3400 S3-Vision968 VLB/PCI
- Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 S3-ViRGE PCI
- Diamond Stealth 3D 3000 S3-ViRGE VX PCI
- Diamond Stealth II S220 Rendition Verite V2100 PCI
- Diamond Stealth II G460 Intel
i740 AGP
- Diamond Stealth III S520 S3-Savage4 LT AGP
- Diamond Stealth III S540 S3-Savage4 Pro/Pro+ PCI/AGP
- Diamond Stealth III S540 Xtreme S3-Savage4 Xtreme AGP
- Diamond Stealth S60 ATI Radeon 7000 AGP
- Diamond Stealth Express ATI Radeon X300SE PCI-Express
Edge 3DThe Diamond Edge 3D was the first consumer 3D accelerator card, based on the NVIDIA
NV1 chipset. The boards were strangely all-encompassing designs. The chipset included full 2D/3D acceleration, an audio engine capable of General MIDI synthesis, and the ability to use Sega Saturn controllers. The architecture of the NV1 was not aimed at the Direct3D philosophy and, as such, game compatibility was a problem with the Diamond Edge boards. Limited and slow Direct3D-supporting drivers did eventually show up, but the boards were simply not up to the task and were unacceptably slow and buggy. It didn't help that the audio section of the card was not particularly excellent either, receiving luke warm reviews regarding MIDI quality (extremely important during the card's time). - Diamond Edge 3D 2xx0 SGS STG2000 (nVidia
NV1) PCI
- Diamond Edge 3D 3xx0 nVidia NV1 PCI
Monster3DThe Monster3D line was based on 3DFX
Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo2 chips - as such, they had no on-board 2D and thus had to be used with a separate VGA card, connected externally. Both Voodoo and Voodoo2 based offerings were in production until the STB-3dfx merger. The series was highly successful and, for a significant part, responsible for the 3D Graphics revolution of the mid-late 1990s. 3DFX's Voodoo chipsets were revolutionary and for several years (approx. 1997-1999) were simply the fastest hardware for 3D gaming acceleration in both the arcade market and home PC arena. A critically acclaimed feature of the Monster 3D II (and all other Voodoo2 boards) was the capability to connect two identical boards in a SLI (Scan-line Interleave) configuration. In SLI, a pair of Voodoo2 boards splits the effort of rendering the 3D scene, allowing performance to be nearly doubled. - Diamond Monster 3D 3DFX Voodoo1 4MB PCI
- Diamond Monster 3D II 3DFX Voodoo2 8MB PCI
- Diamond Monster 3D II 3DFX Voodoo2 12MB PCI
- Diamond Monster 3D II MEGAMonster bundle (Monster 3D II, MEGAMonster Voodoo2 companion board, MEGAMonster (SLI) cable) (a Voodoo2 SLI bundle offered by Diamond)
- Diamond Monster Fusion Z100 3DFX Banshee 16MB PCI/AGP (Referred to as the "Mon Fusion" by the sticker on many cards)
ViperThe Viper line was Diamond's high-end line. Initially it consisted of a unique accelerator board for VLB and PCI, based upon a combination Oak DOS display chip and a Weitek graphics co-processor for Windows GUI duties. Towards the end of the 1990s, the Viper line was revived and consisted solely of NVIDIA chipset offerings, the first card being Diamond Viper V330, sporting the featureful Riva 128 chipset. Despite the technological aspects (Riva128 had better 3D features than and similar performance with Voodoo1) the first offering wasn't much of a killer (though Riva128 found a home in many OEM systems), Voodoo having better support from game developers. |