Vid vid vid viiddeo card debate.

I have been reading quite a lot about the various video cards for GP2 here. I wanted to put my 2 cents worth in to say that I upgraded my whole system about 3 months ago to a p133 triton. The video card I bought was a Diamond Stealth 64 (S3trio+) with 2 megs edo ram. I purchased this card for $110 U.S., just a notch below market then, and I have to say it moves very very well. In fact my friend who purchased the Matrox Mellinium (2mb) only has a very small marginal increase over mine, and some tests actually say we are EQUAL... and he paid $275 for this card. Now I know it is a 3D card, but I haven't seen any real support for it. Since i am a "bang-for-the-buck" kind of guy, I say that this has been one of the BEST hardware purchase I have made in a long time. My GP2 runs just as fast as any ~fast~ machine I have seen on here, without spending hundreds on these glorified new video cards... again my 2 cents... http://www.netcom.com/~motosprt/index.html

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>I have been reading quite a lot about the various video cards for GP2 >here. I wanted to put my 2 cents worth in to say that I upgraded my >whole system about 3 months ago to a p133 triton. The video card I >bought was a Diamond Stealth 64 (S3trio+) with 2 megs edo ram. >I purchased this card for $110 U.S., just a notch below market then, >and I have to say it moves very very well. In fact my friend who >purchased the Matrox Mellinium (2mb) only has a very small marginal >increase over mine, and some tests actually say we are EQUAL... and he >paid $275 for this card. Now I know it is a 3D card, but I haven't >seen any real support for it. Since i am a "bang-for-the-buck" kind of >guy, I say that this has been one of the BEST hardware purchase I have >made in a long time. My GP2 runs just as fast as any ~fast~ machine I >have seen on here, without spending hundreds on these glorified new >video cards... again my 2 cents... >http://www.netcom.com/~motosprt/index.html

Thats the chip that I upgraded to Lightspeed 128 from and you are mostly right. The trio is a fine chip for most DOS games. Quake and Longbow both get a nice improvement with the Lightspeed (as I think all VESA 2.0 games will) but GP2 only gets a little. Some people have knocked the Windows performance of this card but I think that is where it really smokes the S3 in video scaling, multiple video windows open and color depth/refresh rates there is no comparison. For bang for the buck right now I think it would be hard to beat the ET6000 based cards.

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>>Thats the chip that I upgraded to Lightspeed 128 from and you are mostly right. >>The trio is a fine chip for most DOS games. Quake and Longbow both get a nice >>improvement with the Lightspeed (as I think all VESA 2.0 games will) but GP2 >>only gets a little. Some people have knocked the Windows performance of this >>card but I think that is where it really smokes the S3 in video scaling, >>multiple video windows open and color depth/refresh rates there is no >>comparison. For bang for the buck right now I think it would be hard to beat >>the ET6000 based cards. >Did you use UNIVBE when you played Quake with the S3 card? But it >would be nice if ET6000 speeds up Quake because it looks like every >other cards have about the same performance on that game. >--KCI

Yeah I was using 5.1. Dont read to much into the fps increase in quake though, it isnt enough to warrant buying the card. I bought it for the Windows accellertation as much as the DOS.