Diamond Viper VLB: $550 Windows 3.1 Accelerator Card 

Always letting us hear the sound of the computer booting is why I love LGR so much : He knows what we like.

This really makes me want to see an LGR video all about DOS graphics acceleration!

“Screwing around with random parts and playing Duke 3D”. That sounds like the life to me.

[Floppy drive makes floppy noises] [Beep!] 10/10 subtitle job

6:07 "Maybe I don't want to be the bad guy anymore."

$549 for a higher-res cool crab? _Worth it._

You'd think that he'd be excited to have an *oak* chip in his *woodgrain* 486. ;)

I recently saved a poster from an old office we were clearing out "3.1 Is Here. Your Computer Just Got Easier To Use."

THAT'S MY CARD! I remember being like 14 and my dad taking me to Microcenter to buy this. Didn't know what it was for back then but it was a viper made out of diamond :-)

Clint, after using your back catalog to distract me from basically the world for the last couple of weeks, the "social distancing Klondike" joke caused an actual snort. Thanks for keeping on, I'm likely not the only viewer appreciating your work for this reason.

5:27 "and without a proper benchmark, I can't declare precisely anything precise with precision" LOOOL

That Workstation vibe with Windows 3.1 is phreaking awesome, and now I'm sentimental about my old UltraSPARC with 21" Sun/Sony Trinitron monitor that did crispy flat 1600x1200 at 75Hz.

Love the quality of this video (like your others). Little things like the sweeping depth of field effect, highlighting the little chips you're talking about. Very nice, haha. And the captures of the video out is also top-notch, as is the narration. Keep up the great work!!

I love every single time I receive a notification that another video is up from Clint (LGR)! Keep up the amazing work.

I just love the cute little Y2K bug sitting on the speaker =w=

3:08 those sounds bring back my childhood. I love it.

"Cards practicing Klondike social-distancing" - That earned a like. 👍

Man, I just dig your flashbacks! What amazes me is that these 27 year old devices just keep on ticking, that, and the fact that you can breeze around these old programs like they were made yesterday... Great stuff man, you bring back a lot of memories! 👍👍

I remember selling a few of these to customers running AutoCAD. It was a game changer for drafters as they were able to work with much larger drawings than possible at an ok price point.

This channel is oddly addicting. Haven't seen or messed with a lot of this stuff in two decades, brings it all back. Find some time to do a C64 Maniac Mansion retrospective! That was one of my favorite games and it took forever to figure out. The command driven UI and dozens of different possible solutions was awesome. Green Tentacle!

I love how this show so effectively reminds me how old I am. Think maybe you could find a card with the old Mitsubishi 3D Pro 2Mp chipset?

"Some of the cards will appear in the future on LGR" That would be awesome!

My appreciation goes out to you for continuing to provide entertaining videos during these hardships.

It's wild how few pins those old processors have

Please don't ever stop filming the post... That little sequence of noises makes my heart flutter.

Had this card on one of our Autocad workstations back then, it was pretty damn good. Don't think i ever tried to play a game on it.

Video from LGR to Friday - a real gift !!! Yes, 1280x1024 for Windows 3.1 - really something incredible! After all, such a screen resolution has become common only around Windows XP ... We will look forward to a powerful 2D card to 486 WoodGrain !!! =) Thank you for the video!!!

Just wanted to say love all your video's, seen them all, big fan. Into all genre's of modern gaming but still a big retro gamer and all things PC old and new so your vids really hit the spot. Can't wait for this years thrifting, please tell me that you are doing a new series, anyway keep up the great work, always watching for the next one.

Why does the ZD WinBench include a picture of the Raleigh traffic sign? Fun fact: As it happens I worked for ZD Publishing in NYC back in the 90s and ZD Benchmark Operation, or ZD BOp as it was called internally in those days, was based not far from you in Research Triangle. I made many trips down there for various testing projects back in the day. Good times.

it's your voice that keeps me coming back, that and the fact i learn something new every time i watch your videos, don't retire anytime soon buddy

This was Amazing! Now i just need a video where you Do find a card that helps with all that Dos Gaming Goodness!

Clint. As always thanks for the content, but especially these days. Your videos are so cozy and they take my mind off of the world and bring me back to a simpler time when my love for computers was just blossoming. I hope you and yours are well. Stay healthy and thank you.

Wow. Just happened across this video. I was 13 and just starting to play with computers when this card came out. It was fun seeing you play games I used to play all the time when I was a kid. From day to day, it doesn't really seem like much has changed, but looking back at this- it really has.

It’s 2020 and we still have scaling problems in windows

That benchmark program looks like a straight-up virus from the late 90s, early 2000s.

For entertainment during self-isolation I think I’m going to rewatch a bunch of LGR videos and take a shot after every Duke Nukem reference

No other channel takes me back to my childhood like LGR. Thank you Clint!

Great video Clint, was really cool to watch and listen to. Keep making more !

Ahhh. Those post sounds and beeps. The sound of the floppy drive checking for a disk. Good memories...

My first nVidia card was a Diamond Viper 550, it used the Riva TnT chip, and had actual Hardware Transform & Lighting! Ohh man was I excited to install that thing. Thanks for the amazing video!

Great review Clint! I do recall seeing an Accelerator Card from this brand way back - definitely bringing nostalgic vibes on this one! Anyway, looking forward to the next one bro'! Stay safe (due to COVID-19), more power, and God bless!

I thoroughly enjoy your channel, very informative and nostalgic at the same time. You always do an awesome job of giving us an overview of how older technology worked and evolved into today's technology, we take things like graphics cards, RAM, CPU, etc. for granted. Back then they were not readily accessible or affordable. You were stuck with what you had. It's always cool to see these things in action, keep it up.

Windows 3.x is surprisingly prepared for hi-color or even 24-bit color modes. It internally works with 24-bit color and on drivers with less color uses pattern dithering in real time. 256-color support on the other hand is done really badly. System still uses 16-color palette with 4-additional colors, leaving 236 palette entries unused. This was intentional since programs can change palette on their own, which will look weird when two such programs are opened. One that lost focus will get broken colors when the other one changes palette. Unfortunately you are stuck with just 20 colors for color themes and Paintbrush. Paintbrush can read 256 color BMPs and will set palette accordingly, but still no way to define colors in palette beyond those 20 colors, and since it don't have color picker, you can't use 256 color bitmaps as a palette. In 16 or 24-bit modes those limits are gone. Color themes are now full colors without dithering and you can use any color in Paintbrush. It's just amazing how ahead of it's time Windows 3.x was in terms of colors. 24-bit color graphics cards become popular when Windows 95 was taking over. Also Windows 3.x looks way more modern with it's simple design than Windows 9x.

I am so glad LGR exists. I think I was 13 last time I opened\saw the parrots opened in PS3 on Win3.1. Thx for the nostalgia overdose almos no one else can provide!

I crapped myself when I saw Windows 3.11 in such a high res on it's original hardware.

Thanks for keeping all of sane!!!! Love your vids and looking forward to more of your videos to alleviate cabin fever! Thanks!

I'm a simple man. I see a new LGR video, I watch it. And suddenly it's some absurd time of night.

Diamond. Man, good stuff. My friend had a Stealth. Geezus that thing was sick!

Oooh, now I remember! So this is the thing I used to read about in the "Windows 3.1 for Dummies" book! It was described sparsely, and I kept wondering what the heck is a "graphical accelerator card" and "vesa local bus card", It made me think those are different things outside the video card. I kept asking around in shops but no one knew what I was talking about (this was in the early 2000s and I was given a Windows 95 PC and didn't know anything :D )

Watching videos like this during the New Zealand COVID-19 lockdown just pleases me. 😎

Hey smokers, Clint here. Bringing you an awesome video about old cards.

I remember looking at numerous video cards back in the day when I built my first 486-66 beast. I considered this card, but ended going with an Orchid Fahrenheit VLB card.. awesome card. This video brings me back, man..

I came here so I can sleep and it's not that your videos are boring, it's because your voice is so soothing and the background music is so good 😴😴😴

1993: Diamond Viper 1998: Voodoo 3DFX 2020: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080Ti

Wow, amazing video. I love your videos, so detailed and so much fun to watch! Thank you so much :)

Thanks for the videos. I work in intensive care and these clips help me take a quick mental break

This is my favourite content. I have no idea why I enjoyed this so much as I was 7 in 1993 and can’t claim nostalgia.

6:08 "YOU WILL HAVE RENEWABLE ENERGY WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT"

Man, you startled me at 6:46 - my body was reacting to a blue screen at first, then to notice it is just a configuration screen 😄

Your videos calm me. Thank you

Last time i was this early i had to ran Doom in low detail

90s graphics cards, ahhh memories!

I had this card. I still remember the palpable disappointment when I realized how bad the DOS gaming performance was. I didn't realize until I watched your video that the DOS games were using the Oak chip with 256k RAM instead of the Weitek. Sadly that wasn't even my worst tech flame out of the 90s. That honour went to the two differential SCSI drives I bought without realizing that differential SCSI wasn't compatible with regular SCSI. Thank god the internet came along so I could throw my money away in a more informed manner.

Those old PC loading sounds are so cute. Now they don't even hum, let alone beep.

Microsoft: "what's UI scaling?" since 1990

That screen @3:20, I remember seeing that a lot. That was suddenly so nostalgic.

brohv , that start up sound..... is awesome

I'm spanish and I had either a CirrusLogic CL-GD5446 and a TsengLabs ET-4000, and both gave me the best results in gaming. S3 cards and STB failed most of times due to some issues with my Gravis sound card, which later I changed it to Sounblaster 32 AWE.

That's what I need to watch after a long workday on the icu. LGR always lifts me up 🙂

Thank you for this wonderful video.

Winbench - Graphical weirdness kind of stress testing PC Bench - MS-DOS gives you a chaotic seizure kind of stress testing. Other than that, great to see an LGR video while staying at home.

Stay safe out there too Clint and everyone else. This is truly the time to enjoy PCs and stay indoors as much as possible

Dang that screensaver opened a floodgate of nostalgia. That and the 3D maze

I remember paying a huge load of money for an ISA windows acceleration card that was advertised "faster then vesa local bus". And indeed it was fast in windows 3.1, but not for anything else. I hate it that I can't remember what card that was.

Fun fact: The Windows 1.x and 2.x GUI was actually designed to work more with vector graphics than pixels and could thus fully take advantage of those high resolutions. It wasn’t until Windows 3.x when Microsoft realized, vector-based UIs wouldn’t have a future compared to the pixel world. About Sim City 2000: I always enjoyed the Windows port because the resolution was not hard-coded as in the DOS version so I could run it on 800×600 or 1024×768 which was way better to work with for me.

Cool video. Thank you, I needed a interesting diversion. Hope all is well - stay safe, stay healthy !

i would give my life to protect cool crab. i love him

all this retro hardware stuff is tons of fun. keep it up! esp the 486 related goodies. maybe try ripping out that dx4 100 and put it in something bigger, cool it down and see if you can get it to run @ 133 or something.

I have absolutely no idea what any of the technical information LGR talks about means, but I still can't get enough of these videos.

Diamond also had a VLB 3d card (I believe it was Trident based); I hope we get to see that one!

I swear, hearing that floppy check and BEEP, the best part of starting up a pre 2000s computer build.

Thank you for your ADA compliant closed captions. :)

My goodness, that card is gorgeous and in well good shape! And that Am486 3 volt!

As soon as 11:36 hit my inner child came out. God Lode Runner & Z were my top two favorite games during that time.

It's amazing how much more simplified computer tech is nowadays.

This took me back so far! The family's first computer (A Compaq Pentium 90) had SimCity 2000 AND Lode Runner! Memory lane.....

1:32 the f? thats vram? I thought those were heat fins, so amazing

1:27 "Cardinal Warpspeed" man I love those old card model names

I had this card on my 486DX2-66 / 80OC You can set Duke Nukem 3D to use 320x240, 320x200 in VESA mode rather than VGA (I think 512x384 was also possible) if you edit the config file directly (after selecting 640x480 VESA for convenience) and it really flew. It bypasses the OAK and uses the 9000 instead.

Great episode thank you.

30 years later... Windows still suck at scaling most of the things in hi-res.

It's time for a Time Machine!!! I guess was 1994, and I bought one video card for the VLB slot of my 386 DX40. The big deal was, that card has a possible memory upgrade. So... Without any real Knowleadge, just pure observation, I remove the memory chips from the older one, and install in that VLB card. I guess was a Trident model. It blow my mind the possibility of the new resolutions. 1600x1200, in 14" monitor. Nothing was pixelated. Everything was so crispy. :)

Diamond Viper: Y'all Cowards Don't Even Accelerate Windows

So many happy memories ..... thank you.

These were like you noticed not at all ment for DOS mode at all. I had one of these cards when they came out. The primary reason to get one of these cards were for running Windows in 1600x1200 with a 85Hz capable CRT monitor, and it should be said its not a gaming card either. Its a Windows accellerator. Meaning the Vietek P9000 was able to to speed up standard windows 2d draw functions. And there is a hell of a difference if you came from a lesser graphics card like eg a standard Tseng ET4000, wich would all only run 60Hz max and iirc could barely show 1280x1024 mode with 1mb of video ram. The onboard RAMDAC is also a high Quality one to be able to scan at 85Hz wich means it gives a much more crisp, stable and eye friendly view when working many hours in front of the PC. Should be mentioned that the all HQ Ramdac is wasted if you ran a Wodoo card wich like most people that tried these had kinda poor quality video output, but in gaming mode you don't really notice it. They were kinda expensive, but I think I payed the hillarious price of double this ammont for my first 17" CRT wich was a BIG screen back then. I also remember for my first PC that came with a standard 80Mb disk. After getting loads of games and software delivered on tape backups I had to buy a larger disk, and I remember paying like 7-800$ for a 200Mb disk .... just think of how many original games and software you could buy for that ammount .. lol

Damn, the startup noises made me have a nostalgiagasm.

I love these vintage hardware LGR videos!

I love these reviews of high priced exotic items from so long ago, it puts into perspective using Windows 3.1 PCs before I had my own and my first PC running Windows 95 in 1997. I think I bought a matrox 3d card for that one and a better pentium 2 processor before it got CIH virused and I needed to buy a new BIOS chip. Fun times 🙂

Man LGR is really precise with that paint brush

You know, there is nothing as sexy as the boot up sound of one of these old computers. (except perhaps the modem dial up tone) that dududum, dududum. Beeep sound gets me everytime.