Reviews / previews
It's hard to find a 2D/3D video card that performs so well for
as little money as those powered by the Intel740 3D
chipset. We've already had great results with Real3D's
StarFighter card, which delivers beautiful Direct3D (D3D)
textures and fast SVGA graphics that are sharper and
easier to read than most of the competition's. Diamond's
Stealth II G460 I740 card plays by the same rules.
Don't get me wrong; by the time you read this, nVIDIA's
powerful RIVA TNT chipset will be available in cards such
as STB's Velocity 4400, and we expect the TNT will lead
the I740 in a one-on-one drag race. However, that
horsepower will cost you decent bucks at a time when you
can get the still very new G460 for $99 or less. Both are
AGP cards-pumping data back and forth from the video
card and the CPU at 66MHz and higher when PCI boards
are trapped at 33MHz max. And nVIDIA has made big
strides in enhancing SVGA and D3D graphics quality. But
when you can get the G460 for as low as $70 after
Diamond's $30 rebate, we stand up and salute.
As the primary video board in a game PC, the G460 is a
stalwart trooper. It comes with 8MB of fast 100MHz
SDRAM, a 203MHz RAMDAC for extended resolutions up
to 1280-by-1024, and refresh rates and 32-bit color at
screen resolutions up to 800-by-600. You won't get video-in
or video-out connectors or any other frills, but who gives a
flying wampa? Likewise, the G460's D3D is good, but not
great. Diamond is working on an OpenGL mini-driver but
has yet to release it for Win 95/98. Therefore, we couldn't
run Quake II. But if you're that much of a Quake II fiend,
you probably won't be satisfied with anything less than a
Voodoo II accelerator anyway, so all that money you save
on a G460 you can put toward a 3Dfx board. The worst
thing we can say about the G460 is that Diamond has put
the Stealth moniker on too many video products in the last
three years-making it too easy to get confused as to which
Stealth you're buying.-- Danny W. Lam / GamePro
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