Monster3D from Diamond MM

Please Drop news/questions to Hilbert Hagedoorn

I (Hilbert Hagedoorn) own a Monster3D & thought, hey why not write a review on it, & make a series on these reviews. Our goal is & will be to review as much different cards as we can.

The  information on this product based on impressions, benchmarks & simply testing.

The Monster3D carton-box  seems a bit 'dead' by me. What can i say, it's a box & looks & probably is very fragile ...
After opening the package (& put aside all those cd's included) i took my first impression on the card. 'So this is the little monster wich will bring me gaming pleasure eh?) Lets try this little baxxxxx out.
 

I installed it without any trouble into my Pentium 120, 48Mb & 4 Gig System.

Since i'm running a comparisation to Magic3D card the Monster3D card is overclocked at 60Mhz (so is the Magic3D). No troubles in overheating here ... The Chips are nice & cool (Check out the 3DfxCool site for those fans!) 

Once the hardware was installed the software part started .... i Put in that drivers-cd Diamond delivers with its products & tataa, installed the drivers. Hmm, not really up-to-date eh ? My CD contained 1.04 Drivers ... Oh well, i do know a bit on browsing so lets startup the Internet ... trallalaa pompom ah! www.diamondmm.com cool, they have new drivers... 1.07 ? Hmm, oki -) click download -> install, perfect .. overal performance is boosted up by several FPS. oh boy what a little update in drivers can accomplish ...

Benchmarks:

I ran 2 benchmarks with the exact same configuration on the 2 boards. Here we go:

                                        Magic3D                                Monster3D

Wizmark                              14621                                        14691

                                          80 Fps                                        80 Fps

ATB TV Demo             69-73 Fps                                  69-73 Fps

Now you can see for yourself, the difference between the Diamond3D & the Magic3D card are neglectable/nihil. Compared on hardware these two cards are almost the same, wich is logical since they both carry the same chipset. However i've been told that the Monster carries 4mb 50ns ram & the Magic carries 40ns ram.

What does the package include?

One fine 3Dfx card, a user's manual (well, cd inlay to be more specific) , ofcourse a pass-thru cable. Furthermore several cd's. A Driver CD with some extra's (utils), Mech Warrior II, EF 2000, Games Sampler 2, Fatal Racing, Actua Soccer, Descent II, well  enough Software i'd say.

The user's manual is good, however you'll have to search it on either the cd or the cd-inlay. But manuals never have been the best 'adon' from Diamond.
 

Final Conlclusion,

This is the best hardware 3Dfx card i've seen yet. It's results are very good, the softwarepackage is simply the best from all compared cards at this time. If i have to grade the card i'd give it a 9. The oem-version (no extra software) would get an 8. (yeah an extra point for the software). Also i have to mention that the web-support (wich is very important nowadayz) is very good. This is there site

If you are going to buy a 3Dfx card, the Diamond Monster is a very competative card for a strong resonable price.

Hilbert Hagedoorn, webmaster of the Guru 3D