Viper 2 T&L enabled!

[RobRich]

Using the latest drivers, and this registry key should enbable the T&L capabilities of the OpenGL driver for Viper 2 owners. I can't substainiate this since I don't own the card, but several people have sent this message. It appears s3 kept T&L disabled in this driver release because it is still in beta form. D3D T&L is the next big leap for s3 to jump.


[HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\Display\Settings]
"ICDHWTL"="OFF"

TreeMark "Simple" benchmark: 5.64908 fps

[HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\Display\Settings]
"ICDHWTL"="ON"

TreeMark "Simple" benchmark: 16.7954 fps

Good Luck!

[UKLee]

The Savage 2000 still isn't going to be the world beater it was being touted as a few months ago though, is it?

[RobRich]

It will probably never be the over hyped card it was supposed to be, but it is a good performer, placing somewhere between a TNT-2 Ultra and a GF256 SDR. In a few benchmarks it even outperforms the GF256 SDR. The big problem holding s3 back is driver devlopment, but they are putting some serious dollars and man hours into trying to fix this problem.

The next gen 2000+ should be a better offering, since it will actually reach the clock numbers that the s2000 was supposed to have, like 150+mhz core and 200+mhz memory.

[jokostel]

speaking of the newest beta drivers i downloaded them and enabled t&l via regedit.its not bad at all... im doing 70fps in 1024x768x16bit...With Q2.i dont think thats bad at all, the Viper II is really coming out to be a nice vid card...
in 3dmark2000 it doing around 495mt/sec.....



[This message has been edited by jokostel (edited 02-03-2000).]

[RobRich]

The Viper 2 is a great card for the price, plus its probably the best card available for plating UT (metal, st3c, etc..). The drivers are seriuously improving, but expect even more performance from this card. These new T&L enabled opengl drivers are extremely beta, and many suspect that another 25-50$ performance increase before they reach final version. If s3 can does this, as well as get some d3d T&L working, they should finally be able to break back into the gamaing market.

[FastHotRod]

Hi guys. I bought the Viper II and was put off with the shipped drivers. Whaaaaa! I installed Unreal Tournament and the graphics were not so good. So I got the ones from the web and installed the UT patch. WOAH!! Much better.

My problem now is that it will hang or crash at will. I noticed that while trying to run Motorcross Madness, the graphics SUCKED. Same for Rogue Spear (and S-L-O-W) unless you shrink the screen down to a stamp sized block.

I'm going to try this reg-edit to see if I can get some improvement. If not, is there something that I am doing/ not doing? Thanks for any info....

Fast Hot Rod

(AMD K6-2 400, Micronics C200, 128 PC-100, 20.7 G drive, Viper II, etc....)

UPDATE: I downloaded the BETA drivers and enabled the "ICDHWTL" and MAN-O-MAN did my frame rates jump up! About 3X faster! My Rogue Spear problems (S-L-O-W) looks a LOT better! Thanks a LOT!!

FastHotRod

Before:
frames per second: 3.26041
Screen Resolution 1024x768
Frame count is 1000
leaves: 1273
branches: 1272

After:
frames per second: 9.22339
Screen Resolution 1024x768
Frame count is 1000
leaves: 1273
branches: 1272
polygons per frame: 35820


[This message has been edited by FastHotRod (edited 02-08-2000).]

[UKLee]

Yeah I would really like to see the 2000+ kick some **** - it would give nVidia and 3dfx some serious competition from S3 and widen the choice of card for the next generation. I hope they [S3] sort out their problems with drivers for the next product, as I was seriously considering the S2000 before I saw its numbers in reviews - it was disappointing to see a retail product ship with drivers that didn't allow for use of all of the facilities on the card (ie no T&L with the boxed drivers) - okay, T&L may not be widely used, but you don't expect a company to advertise something when the product won't actually what it's supposed to

[AuraEdge]

T&L enabled makes many visual artifacts in some games (notably Q3A)
A few months ago, Savage was said to have a higher default speed. Diamond will release a newer Savage 2k card with the full specs. (I think it was 175/200 or something like that).
The core itself can push out more Texels than any other card right now...clocked at 125 with a quad pixel pipeline. (Geforce = 120 quad).
Hey, maybe some DDR could serve the Viper II right, just the way it did the GeForce.

[Mattyb]

I just bought the Viper II, and the drivers that came with were somewhat jumpy when playing DVD. I tried to play Ultima9 and it pretty much just crashed. When I downloaded the beta driver it kept getting some error messages every frame. I am somewhat of a rookie in this area, could somebody give me some step by step to change reg mentioned in first post! Thanks for any help.

Mattyb

[SteveH]

I've got a Viper II and I've I'm doing something wrong but UT is TOO dark to play even the video at the start is VERY black with only the lights showing up ??
I've tried turning on T&L and I've got all the patches & textures installed ?
Running the game under D3D it rocks at 1024 in 32 Bit, but I'd like to see these 'Metal' texture's...Can anyone help!

[johnman]

I am using Windows98 SE.
Where are these registry keys you are discussing? In my registry:

[HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\Display\Settings],
I don't have any entries like:
ICDHWTL

mine only lists:
(Default) (value not set)
AttachToDesktop "1"
BitsPerPixel "32"
DesktopPos "9280,7952"
DPILogicalX "120"
DPILogicalY "120"
DPIPhysicalX "120"
DPIPhysicalY "120"
fixedfon.fon "8514fix.fon"
fonts.fon "8514sys.fon"
oemfonts.fon "8514oem.fon"
Resolution "1280,1024"
UpgradeToDefault.. ""
VPESupport "ON"

and that is all....

Do I not have the drivers completely installed? Is there something wrong with my installation?

The video card seems to run OK, but I am still wondering...

Is this a registry key that is manually inserted into the registry? How did you hear about it?

I have installed the latest drivers from the Diamond website (at least I think I have).

I was wondering if anyone knows if this
Viper II Z200 card will work with my old Diamond Monster 3D II 3DFx card so I can still have 3DFx support. When I had tried installing the card before, my system slowed to a crawl and the Diamond InControl 99 tools would not work.

[alpha]

It it'll probably clock well - the Savage2K is .18 micron.

[RobRich]

First, get the latest drivers for the Viper2 from the download section at:

www.reactorcritical.com (http://www.reactorcritical.com)

Then using regedit, change the vaules for keys as I indicatedf above. If the values do not exist, then create them.