Diamond's Viper Meets The Vista Challenge

Microsoft Windows Vista has advanced graphical elements that place new and heavier workloads on the graphics subsystem. Many older graphics cards won't stand up to Vista's increased graphical processing demands, and most do not feature a high-definition output. System builders must choose a graphics accelerator card that's up to the task of processing Vista graphics and offers the features that users will expect.

>> PRODUCT NAME: Diamond Viper x1650 >>  PRICE: $159.99 >>  DISTRIBUTORS/INTEGRATORS: ASI, D&H, Ingram Micro, Tech Data >>  COMPANY: Diamond multimedia Chatsworth, Calif. (818) 534-1414 www.diamondmm.com

Diamond Multimedia's Viper x1650 graphics card is a hearty solution. The card is available with either 256 Mbytes or 512 Mbytes of memory and PCI Express or AGP interfaces. The card supports DirectX 9.0, Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0.

The Diamond Viper x1650 is powered by an ATI Radeon X1650 PRO graphics accelerator chip, which offers state-of-the-art 3-D graphics processing that can handle all the latest games and high-definition digital video while also meeting the graphical demands of Vista. The card features two digital DVI outputs so it naturally supports dual displays. Two DVI-to-VGA adapters are included for connecting older displays that don't have DVI inputs. A third output jack provides S-Video and component outputs with the use of an included dongle. The component output is necessary for displaying true high-definition video.

To meet the card's heavy demands, the system must have an ATX 2.0 power supply of at least 420 watts and must support a graphics card with a peak dissipation of at least 75 watts. Other requirements include an Intel Pentium IV or AMD Athlon processor, a minimum of 512 Mbytes of memory and 480 Mbytes of free hard disk space. The card supports Windows XP SP2, XP 64, 2000 SP4, MCE, 2003 32/64 or Vista.

Though the demands of the Diamond Viper x1650 are high, so, too, are those of Vista. For users to get the proper Vista experience, these demands must be met.