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  • [jazztastic jazz music]

  • Greetings and welcome to an LGR Thing!

  • And today I felt like playing around with some early 90s graphics cards,

  • with this Diamond Viper VLB being my primary inspiration for doing so.

  • Lately I’ve been benchmarking the LGR Woodgrain 486 PC,

  • which really just means screwing around with random parts and playing Duke Nukem 3D.

  • Most recently, I spent some time upgrading the 66 megahertz 486 CPU with an 83 megahertz

  • Pentium Overdrive, the results of which can be seen in a previous LGR episode.

  • But I’ve also been meaning try some different VESA Local Bus video adapters, something besides

  • the 1 megabyte Diamond SpeedStar Pro VLB I have in there right now.

  • So while I was sorting through some random parts the other week, I scrounged up a Diamond

  • Viper VLB revision E3 I’d never used before and didn’t know anything about.

  • Turns out this two megabyte card cost a whopping $549/$985 when it hit store shelves in 1993,

  • nearly a thousand bucks adjusted for inflation decades later.

  • With the main selling point being that it uses a Weitek Power 9000.

  • Or maybe it’s why-tech?

  • Either way-tech, the Power 9000 was a beastly graphics chip back then, hailed as the world’s

  • fastest user interface controller when it released in the latter half of 1992.

  • Sounds amazing, right?

  • And I mean, depending on your needs, it was!

  • Two whole megabytes of VRAM, a 32-bit 33 megahertz core,

  • and 24-bit true color graphics in Windows 3.1?

  • Not to mention resolutions up to 1280x1024 at a 74 hertz vertical refresh rate

  • truly bonkers stuff for 1993.

  • But wait, what’s this other chip?

  • An Oak Technology OTI087X.

  • Oh.

  • Well then, ah.

  • Here’s the thing about thesegraphics acceleratorsfrom the early 90s:

  • exactly what theyre designed to accelerate varies wildly from card to card.

  • And in the case of the Viper VLB, the Power 9000 chip is designed to accelerate 2D graphical

  • user interfaces, specifically Windows 3.1.

  • If you want smoother DOS games, the on-board VGA chip matters a whole lot more.

  • And the Oak Technology 087X sucks when it comes to SVGA performance in DOS games,

  • running only an 8-bit data path and using its own separate memory.

  • Taking a look at the box for the card confirms this, with all the marketing centered around

  • Windows 3.1 and programs like AutoCAD.

  • While it does have drivers and BIOS extensions for Super VGA in DOS, the main focus was all

  • about providing a workstation-like experience on a Windows PC.

  • And I mean hey, not what I expected but that’s still pretty awesome,

  • so I’m curious enough to give it a shot.

  • Even though I don’t think well be seeing much improvement in DOS compared to my SpeedStar

  • Pro card with its Cirrus Logic GD5428 chipset.

  • Gotta know for sure though, so let’s get the software and drivers installed

  • and see what we can do with the Diamond Viper VLB!

  • [computer whirs to life]

  • [memory check buzzing]

  • [floppy drives make floppy noises]

  • [beep!]

  • I’ve gone ahead and taken care of the driver installation,

  • and at this point nothing looks any different.

  • However, typing in VPRMODE will bring up the Viper VLB setup program,

  • letting you change around all sorts of nifty things.

  • For starters, you can increase the default DOS text mode from the typical 80 columns

  • on up to 132.

  • Something I’ve seen supported on programs like WordPerfect before, but guess I never

  • really thought to see if this was possible on DOS 6.22 before, but I’ve always liked

  • the look of 132 column terminals in UNIX-based operating systems, so this is pretty awesome.

  • VPRMODE also comes with monitor refresh rate options, providing presets for higher-res

  • displays of the time and the ability to customize as needed.

  • You also get a set of monochrome and color graphics tests, handy for seeing what the

  • card can do and adjusting your monitor’s display settings for each mode.

  • The VPRMODE program is also used to enable the Diamond Viper’s BIOS extensions, otherwise

  • VESA-compatible programs won’t know how to address it.

  • If youve ever seen or used the UniVBE program in certain DOS games, yeah.

  • That’s a universal driver that works with all sorts of VESA cards, but the Viper VLB

  • has its own extensions accomplishing the same thing.

  • Which means we can jump into some benchmarks and games!

  • And were gonna start with one of the former, the Superscape VGA Benchmark.

  • We ran this before when I upgraded this machine from a 486 to a Pentium Overdrive, and the

  • result was 55.7 with the SpeedStar Pro VLB card I had in here before.

  • And whadduya know, the Viper VLB is worse here, coming in at only 32.5.

  • [chuckles] Ahh, yeah.

  • That Oak VGA chip though, whatre ya gonna do.

  • Let’s try something running in VESA mode though: Duke 3D, running at 640x480 resolution.

  • This doesn’t have a benchmarking mode unfortunately, but we can run the two side by side at least.

  • The tiny number at the top left of each capture is the current framerate and well, there’s

  • not a big difference whatsoever.

  • Both of the cards perform pretty badly!

  • It seems that the Viper draws a frame or two more at any given time than the SpeedStar

  • Pro, but it’s still a negligible difference and without a proper benchmark I can’t declare

  • precisely anything precise with precision.

  • I’d run the Quake timedemo but for some reason, the newer versions of the game all

  • crash on this system, and older versions that do run

  • don’t show the resulting benchmark stats.

  • Oh well, at least SimCity 2000 Special Edition works fantastically!

  • And I mean, it did already with the other card so that’s not saying much, but still.

  • It’s at least not any worse and works without a hitch using the card’s own BIOS extensions,

  • something I haven’t always had success with using other VLB video adapters.

  • And hey, look!

  • The monster’s dropping down wind power plants

  • instead of tossing out trees or just zapping the ground.

  • Ya don’t see that every day.

  • [explosions, AdLib Music]

  • [zzt!]

  • But yeah, as anticipated, when it comes to DOS gaming

  • everything running in VESA mode runs about the same or slightly better.

  • And just about everything else that runs using regular old VGA performs notably worse,

  • again due to that Oak VGA chipset being used with only 256K of video RAM.

  • So let’s put that P9000 to use instead and get this going with Windows 3.1 as nature intended.

  • Or at least as Diamond intended.

  • It supports anything from 640x480 with 24-bit color on up to 1280x1024 with 256 colors.

  • And man, seeing 3.1 at resolutions usually reserved for workstations of the time intrigues

  • the crap outta me, so let’s begin with that!

  • [Windows 3.1 startup chime]

  • [chuckles] Well that’s amazing, and everything’s tiny!

  • Compare that to how it looked maxed out on the SpeedStar Pro card before this, and yeah

  • that’s a pretty massive leap in terms of usable window space and interface shrinkage.

  • I mean, yeah I selected small fonts mode, but icons, scrollbars, menus,

  • it’s all itty bitty now, especially on this 17” monitor.

  • 1280x1024 was really ideal on larger format displays, in my experience 21 inches minimum.

  • I unfortunately don’t have any computer monitors that big, at least none that are

  • still working, so thisll do for now just to see what it’s like.

  • And no surprise, what it’s like is awesome, with the ability to tile at least four of

  • the classic Chess bitmap wallpapers and over 16 of the excellent Party bitmap.

  • *Clearly* worth 550 bucks in 1993...

  • But yeah, all the typical Windows stuff is provided more room for activities, like browsing

  • full directory structures in the File Manager with hundreds of files being displayed on-screen

  • eliminating the need for scrolling.

  • There’s all kinds of wide open space to multitask applications, regardless of whether

  • or not it makes practical sense.

  • Doesn’t matter, this wouldve just been nuts to see on Windows 3.1 back in the day,

  • and it’s still pretty surreal right now.

  • Even using Paintbrush is a treat using the Viper VLB.

  • Arguably it’s a treat regardless, but here youve got so many more pixels to push around,

  • and I’m happy to see that the toolbars and color swatches all scale nicely to the larger resolution.

  • Now, keep in mind were stuck with 256 colors here, so opening a 24-bit image in something

  • like Photoshop 3.0 isn’t as impressive as it could be in terms of color reproduction.

  • But still, this lets you manipulate larger resolution images with less of a need to scroll

  • around, much easier than you could at 800x600, for example.

  • Actually yeah, let’s switch over real quick to see how that looks.

  • This is the same card running the same software, just at SVGA resolution and 16.7 million colors,

  • also known as 24-bit True Color.

  • Youve got a smaller workspace, but the upside is that you have just millions more

  • colors to work with as well thanks to the two megs of on-board VRAM.

  • Here’s a direct comparison between the two modes just to make it more clear, and yeah,

  • the trade-offs are apparent.

  • Fewer colors allows for far greater resolution and detail, and true color means a lot lower

  • resolution but tons of vibrancy in any media taking advantage of it.

  • Again, downright impressive for a PC in 1993.

  • And also something that absolutely doesn’t make a difference if your software and graphics

  • assets don’t support it, like designing a sign in Print Shop Deluxe here.

  • Sure, having 24-bit color is impressive, but the standard Print Shop images are all saved

  • in a 256 color file format so all those millions of colors go completely unused.

  • And running at 1280x1024 is nice and all, but here all it does is make those clipart

  • images look a tad sharper on-screen, with the actual work area remaining unaffected.

  • Mm, doesn’t make Hi-Res Cool Crab look any less cool though.

  • Another thing that isn’t ideal in this mode are, well,

  • all the other things that weren’t designed for it.

  • Microsoft Solitaire, for instance, spreads everything out all over the place when maximized.

  • The deck never changes size no matter what resolution Windows is set to, with each card

  • practicing a form of klondike social distancing.

  • Same kinda thing in SkiFree, where the assets stay exactly the same size

  • but the density is all outta wack.

  • So there are roughly the same number of trees, rocks, signposts, and urinating canines,

  • just spread out across the play area.

  • Kinda loosens up the difficulty level as a result,

  • although yeti death remains inevitable, so all is well.

  • Another set of games that suffers is Microsoft Arcade, a collection of five classic Atari

  • arcade titles from 1993, the same year the Diamond Viper VLB came out.

  • And yeah, you can either play it in a window, or play it full-screen

  • with a window in the middle at the same size.

  • No scaling whatsoever.

  • On the flip side, a game like Hyperoid scales perfectly fine.

  • Ironically so, being that it was a freely-distributed shareware version of Atari’s Asteroids.

  • And I gotta say, I love the way line art looks when properly scaled at this resolution.

  • Like the classic Mystify screensaver for instance, check out those crispy shapes floating around

  • looking sharp enough to slice your eyeballs open just by lookinatem.

  • Anyway yeah, resolution scaling, you never really know what game or program is gonna

  • play ball and what’s gonna get sidelined when running Windows 3.1 like this.

  • Lode Runner The Legend Returns from 1994 is another example of things going most unfortunately

  • wrong, with a window encased in boring patterns anytime you play beyond 640X480.

  • But then youve got games like SimCity Classic from 1993, which maximizes to reveal a massive,

  • glorious gameplay area filled with a pleasing pixel art population.

  • I kinda like that the art assets don’t scale up in this case, because youre left with

  • more of a bird’s eye view of your metropolis, instead of hovering directly over a handful

  • of city blocks like you do at lower resolutions.

  • Unfortunately, this is also one of those games that has problems at anything beyond 256 colors,

  • so certain animations don’t play correctly

  • or they have this weird red boundary box around them.

  • Like the ships, jetliners, and monsters, none of them look quite right in True Color mode.

  • Going back to 800x600 with 256 colors though, and everything is just fine.

  • So yeah, this is just one of the many games from back then that have no problem with ridiculous

  • resolutions, but simply don’t appreciate too many colors on-screen at once.

  • Finally, the last thing I wanna try are a couple of benchmarks

  • used by PC Magazine back in the day.

  • That being WinBench version four and PC Bench version eight.

  • Well do WinBench first since I’ve got this chart of results from back in 1993, comparing

  • most of the VESA Local Bus cards available at the time.

  • And as you can see, the Diamond Viper VLB was one of the best of the bunch, at 15 million

  • pixels per second using WinBench 4.

  • So let’s try it out ourselves here and see if it’s similar, something I was curious

  • about since I’m currently using a Pentium Overdrive CPU that wasn’t available back then.

  • This runs the card through all sorts of graphical stress tests that I am absolutely unqualified

  • to explain, but suffice it to say youll be seeing a whole raft of visual gobbledygook,

  • including city limits signs from Raleigh, North Carolina for some reason.

  • How odd.

  • Anyway, after a good ten minutes of frantic graphical weirdness, the results are in!

  • And weve got a combined graphical score of 21.2 million pixels per second.

  • A pretty solid increase over what the magazine got back then.

  • I’d compare it to the SpeedStar but

  • it is unfortunately incapable of running this same benchmark at all.

  • So let’s try PC Bench’s MS-DOS video test, and compare the Viper’s Oak VGA capabilities

  • to that of the one megabyte SpeedStar Pro VLB card I replaced.

  • These tests are similarly chaotic and potentially even more seizure-inducing so I’ll spare

  • you the demonstration and get straight to the numbers.

  • Our Viper VLB ended up with a score of 1275.91 overall.

  • And the SpeedStar Pro VLB? That got a score of...

  • 4059.52.

  • Uh, ha! Yeah.

  • I ran this a few times to be sure,

  • reinstalled the drivers too, and the results were the same.

  • This SpeedStar is multiple times faster when it comes to non-VESA mode DOS stuff.

  • I expected it to be quicker, but not THAT much quicker!

  • Here’s a closer look at the numbers detailing the individual screen write mode test results

  • and I mean, yeah, that pretty much cements the fact that the Viper VLB really was designed

  • for Windows 3.1 acceleration and DOS mode stuff was not on its radar whatsoever.

  • And that’s the Diamond Viper VLB!

  • An expensive two megabyte card back in the day, and one that was mighty impressive under

  • Windows 3.1, but absolutely would not have been the ideal choice

  • for DOS folks looking to up their game.

  • Makes total sense, yet still worth knowing if youre looking to say, build or upgrade

  • an early 90s DOS gaming rig and are looking for an awesome two megabyte VLB video card.

  • And if that's you, this is not your card!

  • When it comes to VESA-capable cards there are far better options from back then, some

  • of which I’m sure will appear on LGR in the future,

  • so stay tuned for that if youre so inclined.

  • Otherwise, perhaps check out some of my other videos already posted featuring this PC, or

  • stick around for new videos each week right here on LGR.

  • As always, thank you very much for watching, and stay safe out there!

[jazztastic jazz music]

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