[toxic]

i hope someone can shed some light on this topic for me.

i have a diamond viper v770 ultra. i bought it something like two years ago when the tnt2 chipset first hit stores. i remember paying approx $400 for this card.

( if you want to read about this card, check out http://www.diamondmm.com/default.asp?menu=support&submenu=Legacy_Graphics&product=Viper_V770_Ultra )

anyway, off the box it reads exactly this: memory 32mb, bus agp 4x/2x, controller riva tnt2 ultra.

pretty straight forward, right? i remember when i bought this card, there were two chipsets for the tnt2 series (tnt2, tnt2 ultra). now, all this time i really haven't payed attention to details... i installed refrence drivers for the tnt2 ultra chipset, everything was fine.

now, about 6 months ago i upgraded my motherboard to the asus cusl2. among other things, i bought this to finally take advantage of my video cards agp 4x capability. (when i bought the card, agp 4x mobo's weren't out yet, but were due out in 6 months, so i did the research and bought a card that had the 4x capability). so, i install the new motherboard and start checking stuff. using some programs (mainly wcpuid) i noticed that my agp bus data rate was only showing 2x.

http://www.mts.net/~toxic/temp/agp.jpg

i started fidling... i updated my mobo's bios, and got the option "agp 4x (enabled/disabled)". easy enough... enabled that. still no go, my agp bus is still chugging at 2x.

i figured... ah well, maybe i'm doing something wrong, or don't know what i'm doing...

now, on to better things. i went and downloaded the famous 3dmark2001 program and started doing some benchmarks and noticed something even more interesting. (to note, 3dmark2000 did not show this bit of info). anyway, when i viewed my results online, it showed that my 3d accelerator was a tnt2 ultra... but my graphics chipset was a tnt2/pro.

http://www.mts.net/~toxic/temp/chipset.jpg

hmm... later i figured out that where it said tnt2 ultra, it was actually getting that from my video card drivers... and where it said tnt2/pro, that was comming right from the card. as you can see in the picture, on the right is when i was running tnt2 ultra refrence drivers, and on the left is when i realized i should be running tnt2/pro refrence drivers.

so, wtf? right on the back of the box (and on the website) it says and i quote "get optimum performance from the newest motherboards with support for new agp 4x systems; compatible with current agp 1x and 2x motherboards" and "nvidia riva tnt2 ultra - for the ultimate in raw graphics horsepower".

again, wtf? i can't run agp 4x, and it sure doesn't seem to be a tnt2 ultra chip. so i decide to email diamond tech support, and get one of those nice preprogrammed email responses. they basically told me that this card was a diamond viper v770 ULTRA and even though the name of the card is ULTRA, it doesn't mean the chipset is the tnt2 ultra but rather, just a higer performance card from the viper v770 (regular) and in fact did have the tnt2/pro chipset.

one last time... wtf? the box doesn't say anthing about having a tnt2/pro chip running it. the website doesn't even say anything about a tnt2/pro either. BUT it DOES say (quote) "nvidia riva tnt2 ultra" all over the box, as well as on the website.

so, now that my card is getting a little bit outdated... this tnt2/pro situation isn't making me that happy. i shelled out the cash to get the tnt2 ultra card the day it came out. now suddenly, i have a tnt2/pro.

what do you guys think? is the box misleading? is the website misleading as well? did i get scammed two years ago by some crap company called diamond?

or am i just stupid?

fill me in, let me know what you think...

-ToXiC

 

[Ryos]

I think Diamond scammed us all, but that's just my personal experience with them...

 

[Adair]

Wow, that's crap! I have the exact same card. Diamond Viper V770 Ultra. But I never worried about the agp bus speed anyway. My mobo only supports 2x and so I'm happy enough with it. Sounds like a scam to me though.

BTW, if you didn't already overclocked your V770 then I would say it's pretty safe to go up to 212mhz memory clock and 162mhz engine clock. I've had mine running at that speed for about a year with no problems. Always be careful though. It's best to overclock 1mhz at a time and then play graphic intensive games to check for stability.

 

[toxic]

yea, i've always run mine at 165/192 with no probs...

heh, guess what i figured out today, to get agp4x working, you have to move 4 jumpers on the video card... stupid me didn't keep the manual =P

so, that problem solved... but the chipset thing is still an issue

-ToXiC

 

[Musashi]

The speed has changed???

 

[toxic]

overclocking modifies the core speed and memory speed of you video card. a good little program for nvidia cards is nvmax. read all about it at: www.nvmax.com

-ToXiC

 

[Adair]

Originally posted by toxic
yea, i've always run mine at 165/192 with no probs...
-ToXiC

Huh? I'm guessing you mean 165mhz engine and 192mhz memory. For a minute there I thought you meant the other way around.
Anyway, it should be fine for you to go up to 212mhz memory, but don't take my word for it.

 

[toxic]

yea, i think i've tried it higher... can't remember how high, but it eventually caused these white dots to appear when i was running opengl or d3d games... the settings i use now are the maximum "stable" settings that nvmax has... (higher goes "possibly stable", "unstable"...). everything runs ok, and i'm just too lazy to push out another 15 or so mhz =]

-ToXiC