Product name : Diamond Monster 3D
Manufacturer : Diamond Multimedia Systems (http://www.diamondmm.com)
Card review by : Marco Remondino

Overview

This is the board I bought for my own computer almost seven months ago, and for that time it was the best 3D board on the market, devoted for gamers without compromises. Seven months have passed, but the Diamond Monster 3D remains one of the best cards on the market. Well, of course, there are many more good competitors, but especially after the price cuts, this board is still one of the best choices for everyone who wants a very fast and reliable 3D board, plus a very good drivers support granted by Diamond.

The board comes in a colored box, with a strong family feeling with other Diamond products. Inside the box, there is, of course (and luckily) the board, the pass-through cable and many CD-ROMs with games and drivers. When I bought the board, the bundled games were:

• Descent II –destination Quartzon
• Fatal Racing
• Actua Soccer
• Hyperblade
• Mech Warrior II
• EF2000

On the back of the box there is an explanation of the technical features, such as Bilinear Filtering, Gouraud shading and so on, together with the list of the supported API (Direct3D, WinGlide, RealityLab 2.0, and Criterion Renderware).

There isn’t a paper manual, but there is a very good on-line user’s guide on CD-ROM. The installation is quite easy. You must plug the board into a free PCI slot (better if 2.1), connect the pass-trough cable to the existing 2D or 2D/3D board, close Your PC and reboot it. If You use the new Windows95 OSR2 release, the device will be recognised and the drivers installed. If You use the older Windows95, the board will be seen as multimedia device, and You’ll need to install the latest drivers from Diamond.

After the installation, the board is ready to work, and will be used each time a game will require it via a supported API.

 Technical informations

 The board is based on 3Dfx Interactive Voodoo Graphics chipset.

There are 4Mb of EDO DRAM 50 or 45ns (non-upgradeable, 2MB Frame Buffer for additional resolutions and Z-buffer, 2MB for Texture Memory) and a standard DB-15 with DDC support and VGA DB-15 pass through connector.

The board, in order to work, needs one free 2.1 PCI slot.

 Display modes

 
 

Resolution	Colors	Refresh rates
800x600	65K	60-85Hz
640x480	65k	60-120
640x400	65K	60-120
512x384	65K	60-120

Of course, being this a 3D add on board, there aren’t 2D resolutions. Please note that, due to the amount of memory, the 800x600 resolution is possible only by disabling the Z-buffer. The most common resolution for games is now 640x480, and at this res the board is wonderful.

 2D/3D Benchmarks

No benchmarks yet. I will compare the 3D, if I receive it, with a PCX2 PowerVR based board anda Riva128 one.

Stay tuned.