DOS Days

Diamond Viper SE / Viper Pro

The Diamond Viper SE and Diamond Viper Pro were released in late 1994, available for both the VESA Local Bus and PCI bus.

	Released	November 1994
	Bus	VESA Local Bus or PCI
	Chipset	Viper SE: Weitek P9100 Viper Pro: Weitek P9100 + Weitek Video Power (P9130)
	Standards	Hercules, CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA
	Memory	2 MB or 4 MB VRAM
	Ports	15-pin DSUB (video out) 26-pin VGA Feature connector
	RAMDAC	Viper Pro: IBM RGB525 (175 MHz) Viper SE: Brooktree Bt485 (135 MHz)
	Part #	?
	FCC ID	FTUVL91K525 (Viper Pro VLB) FTUPCI91K525 (Viper Pro PCI / Viper SE long board) FTUPCI91KBT (Viper SE PCI short board)
	Price	At launch: $799 (Viper Pro 4 MB), $379 (Viper SE MSRP) Jun 1995: $649 (Viper Pro 4 MB street price)
	See Also	Diamond Viper

The Viper Pro was also commonly called the Viper Pro Video - they are the same.

The Weitek P9100 graphics accelerator, found on both the Viper Pro and Viper SE, was an enhanced version of their earlier P9000 found on the original Viper. It got an integrated VGA core as well as PCI bus support. Its core clock was also increased to 50 MHz. It was able to display screen resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 in 65,536 colours and also handle very high vertical refresh rates up to 120 Hz (at lower resolutions).

The Viper Pro was a premium option with onboard hardware video decoding - the rear of the card hosted a Weitek P9130 Video Power coprocessor. This was able to scale full-motion video at 30 frames per second in resolutions up to 1280 x 1024.

The Viper SE was a cost-reduced version, released at the same time (November 1994). It lacked the P9130 video coprocessor. In PCI form, there were two distinct board revisions: the long board retained the IBM RAMDAC of the Pro Video, the short board came with the Brooktree RAMDAC (the same as the original Viper), but its clock speed was increased to 135 MHz. The short board could either have been a further cost reduction measure, or was designed for the cheaper OEM market, I'm not sure. All VESA Local Bus versions of the Viper SE came with the IBM RAMDAC.

The maximum refresh rates for the Viper Pro Video are:

Resolution	Vertical Refresh Rate
1024 x 768	100 Hz
1280 x 1024	75 Hz
1600 x 1200	66 Hz

The card came bundled with an OEM version of CorelDraw! 3

Board Revisions

The known board revisions for the Viper Pro include A3 and B3.

Some PCI Viper SEs used the same PCB as the Viper Pro (they share the same FCC ID and board revision as the Pro), with space/solder pads for the Weitek coprocessor on the back. The 'short board' version of the PCI Viper SE omitted this.

Known SE long boards include: B2, B3
Known SE short boards include: A5

Competition

In early 1995, the Viper Pro [Video] went up against many other high-end graphics cards including Diamond's own Stealth 64 Video VRAM, ELSA Winner 2000 Pro/X, Genoa VideoBlitz III AV, Hercules Graphite Terminator Professional, Matrox MGA Impression Plus PCI and Millennium, Number Nine 9FX Motion 771, GXE64 Pro and Imagine 128/1600 and Imagine 128 Pro, and STB Velocity 64V. These all had minimum 4 MB VRAM options (with some coming with 6 or 8 MB), and were all capable of screen resolutions of 1600 x 1200 in 64K colours, and 16.7 million colours at lower resolutions.

The Imagine 128/1600 was probably the most capable at the time, with up to 1920 x 1600 resolution and much higher refresh rates than the Viper Pro [Video].

In the Media

An advert for the Diamond Viper Pro Video (December 1994)

"Diamond's Viper Pro Video: First Graphics Card with DCI

With the release of its $799 Video Pro Video accelerator card, Diamond Multimedia Systems is the first vendor to provide a video and graphics controller that takes full advantage of the new Display Control Interface (DCI) developed by Intel and Microsoft. This interface makes possible a high-performance graphics card that can play back realistic video in any size window.

The 4MB version of the Viper Pro Video board we tested (using WinBench 4.0 in a 486DX2/66 PC) achieved a Graphics WinMark score of 10.9 million pixels per second at 1,024-by-768 resolution in 32-bit color mode (16.7 million colors), and a score of 13.1 million pixels per second at 1,024-by-768 resolution in 8-bit color mode (256 colors). These scores place the Viper Pro Video firmly in the upper echelon of graphics card performance for this system.

But the Viper Pro Video, which relies on the Weitek P9130 video accelerator chip, goes beyond graphics to play video. The combination of video-acceleration hardware and DCI-compliant drivers allows the board to perform color space conversion, image scaling, and pixel interpolation. What you'll notice is the card's ability to display full-screen video. Nonaccelerated playback of a 320x240 resolution, 24-bit video clip on a 486DX2/66 system can slow to 2 frames per second (fps) when the images are displayed at even twice their normal size. In contrast, the Viper Pro Video can stretch the same clip up to four times its normal size, while maintaining its full-frame rate of 30 fps.

Speed is not sacrificed at the expense of playback quality, which was exceptional especially when using files compressed with Intel's new Indeo 3.2. The card also works well with a variety of video formats, including M-JPEG, Cinepak, Video-1, and older Indeo 3.1 files. According to Diamond, full-screen MPEG playback will be supported eventually, although the drivers that we reviewed were unable to support MPEG. Although the Viper Pro Video card doesn't offer special connectivity to standard video devices, it does include a runtime version of Video for Windows 1.1d, a suite of updated video CODECs, and the DCI drivers.

The Viper Pro Video board provides accelerated playback, but not video capture, for roughly $50 over the cost of the non-video-enhanced Viper SE card. As an integrated graphics and video product, the Viper Pro Video provides a glimpse of the future of video on the PC."
PC Magazine, November 1994

"When you compare the $649 Viper Pro Video with Diamond's $559 Stealth64 Video VRAM, you wonder how the Viper Pro is supposed to compete. It seems to lack the horsepower and extras to stay even - much less command a higher price. But Diamon is not positioning this card as a rival Windows graphics accelerator for high-end users. The Viper Pro Video is setting its sights on the multimedia market, and it does a good job of hitting that target.

Powered by a Weitek P9100 accelerator chip, the Viper Pro Video uses a comparatively slow 170-MHz IBM RG525 RAMDAC that tops out at a placid 66-Hz vertical refresh rate at 1,600-by-1,200 resolution running in 16-bit color mode. At a basic 1,024-by-768 resolution, the refresh jumps to an ergonomic 100 Hz.

The 4MB PCI version we tested was generally lackluster on our benchmark tests, drawing last place on our Raster Rotate, AutoCAD 3-D Pan, and Graphics WinMark 95 tests. Its only decent showings were an above-average Vector File Open result and a midrange AutoCAD Redraw All score. With today's graphics cards, slow is a relative concept - but no one should pick this product based on its speed.

The Viper Pro Video's strength lies in its Weitek P9130 video coprocessor, one of the best architectures available today. On a fast Pentium system, the P9130 is able to accelerate and scale 180-by-240 video up to 1,280-by-1,024 resolution with little or not degradation. The Viper Pro Video supports Cinepak, Indeo 3.2, and Video 1 codecs, and we ran all during testing without a hitch.

You can set up the Viper Pro Video from either DOS or Windows. From that point on, you control all adapter and monitor adjustments from Diamond's impressive InControl set of Windows utilities.

The Viper Pro Video is not an everyday, bread-and-butter card for the serious graphics professional; to be fair, it does not claim to be. If you need a single card that can handle basic Windows tasks, and really shine when it comes to video playback, the Viper Pro Video is hard to beat. The bundled applications make it very attractive for the newcomer to multimedia who has not yet accumulated a software library.

But those less interested in video who want to boost graphics-intensive applications will discover that there are better buys to be had. "
PC Magazine, June 1995