[jazztastic jazz music] Greetings and welcome to an LGR Thing! And today I felt like playing around with
some early 90s graphics cards, with this Diamond Viper VLB being my primary inspiration for doing so. Lately I’ve been benchmarking the LGR Woodgrain 486 PC, which really just means screwing around with random parts and playing Duke Nukem 3D. Most recently, I spent some time upgrading
the 66 megahertz 486 CPU with an 83 megahertz Pentium Overdrive, the results of which can
be seen in a previous LGR episode. But I’ve also been meaning try some different
VESA Local Bus video adapters, something besides the 1 megabyte Diamond SpeedStar Pro VLB I
have in there right now. So while I was sorting through some random
parts the other week, I scrounged up a Diamond Viper VLB revision E3 I’d never used before
and didn’t know anything about. Turns out this two megabyte card cost a whopping
$549/$985 when it hit store shelves in 1993, nearly a thousand bucks adjusted for inflation
decades later. With the main selling point being that it
uses a Weitek Power 9000. Or maybe it’s why-tech? Either way-tech, the Power 9000 was a beastly
graphics chip back then, hailed as the world’s fastest user interface controller when it
released in the latter half of 1992. Sounds amazing, right? And I mean, depending on your needs, it was! Two whole megabytes of VRAM, a 32-bit 33 megahertz
core, and 24-bit true color graphics in Windows 3.1? Not to mention resolutions up to 1280x1024 at a 74 hertz vertical refresh rate truly bonkers stuff for 1993. But wait, what’s this other chip? An Oak Technology OTI087X. Oh. Well then, ah. Here’s the thing about these “graphics accelerators” from the early 90s: exactly what they’re designed to accelerate varies wildly from card to card. And in the case of the Viper VLB, the Power
9000 chip is designed to accelerate 2D graphical user interfaces, specifically Windows 3.1. If you want smoother DOS games, the on-board
VGA chip matters a whole lot more. And the Oak Technology 087X sucks when it comes to SVGA performance in DOS games, running only an 8-bit data path and using its own separate memory. Taking a look at the box for the card confirms
this, with all the marketing centered around Windows 3.1 and programs like AutoCAD. While it does have drivers and BIOS extensions
for Super VGA in DOS, the main focus was all about providing a workstation-like experience
on a Windows PC. And I mean hey, not what I expected but that’s still pretty awesome, so I’m curious enough to give it a shot. Even though I don’t think we’ll be seeing
much improvement in DOS compared to my SpeedStar Pro card with its Cirrus Logic GD5428 chipset. Gotta know for sure though, so let’s get
the software and drivers installed and see what we can do with the Diamond Viper VLB! [computer whirs to life] [memory check buzzing] [floppy drives make floppy noises] [beep!] I’ve gone ahead and taken care of the driver installation, and at this point nothing looks any different. However, typing in VPRMODE will bring up the Viper VLB setup program, letting you change around all sorts of nifty things. For starters, you can increase the default
DOS text mode from the typical 80 columns on up to 132. Something I’ve seen supported on programs
like WordPerfect before, but guess I never really thought to see if this was possible
on DOS 6.22 before, but I’ve always liked the look of 132 column terminals in UNIX-based
operating systems, so this is pretty awesome. VPRMODE also comes with monitor refresh rate
options, providing presets for higher-res displays of the time and the ability to customize
as needed. You also get a set of monochrome and color
graphics tests, handy for seeing what the card can do and adjusting your monitor’s
display settings for each mode. The VPRMODE program is also used to enable
the Diamond Viper’s BIOS extensions, otherwise VESA-compatible programs won’t know how
to address it. If you’ve ever seen or used the UniVBE program
in certain DOS games, yeah. That’s a universal driver that works with
all sorts of VESA cards, but the Viper VLB has its own extensions accomplishing the same thing. Which means we can jump into some benchmarks
and games! And we’re gonna start with one of the former,
the Superscape VGA Benchmark. We ran this before when I upgraded this machine
from a 486 to a Pentium Overdrive, and the result was 55.7 with the SpeedStar Pro VLB
card I had in here before. And whadduya know, the Viper VLB is worse here, coming in at only 32.5. [chuckles] Ahh, yeah. That Oak VGA chip though,
what’re ya gonna do. Let’s try something running in VESA mode
though: Duke 3D, running at 640x480 resolution. This doesn’t have a benchmarking mode unfortunately,
but we can run the two side by side at least. The tiny number at the top left of each capture
is the current framerate and well, there’s not a big difference whatsoever. Both of the cards perform pretty badly! It seems that the Viper draws a frame or two
more at any given time than the SpeedStar Pro, but it’s still a negligible difference
and without a proper benchmark I can’t declare precisely anything precise with precision. I’d run the Quake timedemo but for some
reason, the newer versions of the game all crash on this system, and older versions that do run don’t show the resulting benchmark stats. Oh well, at least SimCity 2000 Special Edition works fantastically! And I mean, it did already with the other
card so that’s not saying much, but still. It’s at least not any worse and works without
a hitch using the card’s own BIOS extensions, something I haven’t always had success with using other VLB video adapters. And hey, look! The monster’s dropping down wind power plants instead of tossing out trees or just zapping the ground. Ya don’t see that every day. [explosions, AdLib Music] [zzt!] But yeah, as anticipated, when it comes to
DOS gaming everything running in VESA mode runs about the same or slightly better. And just about everything else that runs using regular old VGA performs notably worse, again due to that Oak VGA chipset being used with only 256K of video RAM. So let’s put that P9000 to use instead and
get this going with Windows 3.1 as nature intended. Or at least as Diamond intended. It supports anything from 640x480 with 24-bit
color on up to 1280x1024 with 256 colors. And man, seeing 3.1 at resolutions usually
reserved for workstations of the time intrigues the crap outta me, so let’s begin with that! [Windows 3.1 startup chime] [chuckles] Well that’s amazing, and everything’s tiny! Compare that to how it looked maxed out on the SpeedStar Pro card before this, and yeah that’s a pretty massive leap in terms of
usable window space and interface shrinkage. I mean, yeah I selected small fonts mode,
but icons, scrollbars, menus, it’s all itty bitty now, especially on this 17” monitor. 1280x1024 was really ideal on larger format
displays, in my experience 21 inches minimum. I unfortunately don’t have any computer
monitors that big, at least none that are still working, so this’ll do for now just
to see what it’s like. And no surprise, what it’s like is awesome,
with the ability to tile at least four of the classic Chess bitmap wallpapers and over 16 of the excellent Party bitmap. *Clearly* worth 550 bucks in 1993... But yeah, all the typical Windows stuff is
provided more room for activities, like browsing full directory structures in the File Manager
with hundreds of files being displayed on-screen eliminating the need for scrolling. There’s all kinds of wide open space to
multitask applications, regardless of whether or not it makes practical sense. Doesn’t matter, this would’ve just been
nuts to see on Windows 3.1 back in the day, and it’s still pretty surreal right now. Even using Paintbrush is a treat using the
Viper VLB. Arguably it’s a treat regardless, but here
you’ve got so many more pixels to push around, and I’m happy to see that the toolbars and
color swatches all scale nicely to the larger resolution. Now, keep in mind we’re stuck with 256 colors
here, so opening a 24-bit image in something like Photoshop 3.0 isn’t as impressive as
it could be in terms of color reproduction. But still, this lets you manipulate larger
resolution images with less of a need to scroll around, much easier than you could at 800x600,
for example. Actually yeah, let’s switch over real quick
to see how that looks. This is the same card running the same software,
just at SVGA resolution and 16.7 million colors, also known as 24-bit True Color. You’ve got a smaller workspace, but the
upside is that you have just millions more colors to work with as well thanks to the
two megs of on-board VRAM. Here’s a direct comparison between the two
modes just to make it more clear, and yeah, the trade-offs are apparent. Fewer colors allows for far greater resolution
and detail, and true color means a lot lower resolution but tons of vibrancy in any media taking advantage of it. Again, downright impressive for a PC in 1993. And also something that absolutely doesn’t
make a difference if your software and graphics assets don’t support it, like designing
a sign in Print Shop Deluxe here. Sure, having 24-bit color is impressive, but
the standard Print Shop images are all saved in a 256 color file format so all those millions
of colors go completely unused. And running at 1280x1024 is nice and all,
but here all it does is make those clipart images look a tad sharper on-screen, with
the actual work area remaining unaffected. Mm, doesn’t make Hi-Res Cool Crab look any less cool though. Another thing that isn’t ideal in this mode
are, well, all the other things that weren’t designed for it. Microsoft Solitaire, for instance, spreads
everything out all over the place when maximized. The deck never changes size no matter what
resolution Windows is set to, with each card practicing a form of klondike social distancing. Same kinda thing in SkiFree, where the assets stay exactly the same size but the density is all outta wack. So there are roughly the same number of trees, rocks, signposts, and urinating canines, just spread out across the play area. Kinda loosens up the difficulty level as a
result, although yeti death remains inevitable, so all is well. Another set of games that suffers is Microsoft
Arcade, a collection of five classic Atari arcade titles from 1993, the same year the
Diamond Viper VLB came out. And yeah, you can either play it in a window, or play it full-screen with a window in the middle at the same size. No scaling whatsoever. On the flip side, a game like Hyperoid scales
perfectly fine. Ironically so, being that it was a freely-distributed
shareware version of Atari’s Asteroids. And I gotta say, I love the way line art looks
when properly scaled at this resolution. Like the classic Mystify screensaver for instance,
check out those crispy shapes floating around looking sharp enough to slice your eyeballs
open just by lookin’ at ‘em. Anyway yeah, resolution scaling, you never
really know what game or program is gonna play ball and what’s gonna get sidelined
when running Windows 3.1 like this. Lode Runner The Legend Returns from 1994 is
another example of things going most unfortunately wrong, with a window encased in boring patterns
anytime you play beyond 640X480. But then you’ve got games like SimCity Classic
from 1993, which maximizes to reveal a massive, glorious gameplay area filled with a pleasing
pixel art population. I kinda like that the art assets don’t scale
up in this case, because you’re left with more of a bird’s eye view of your metropolis,
instead of hovering directly over a handful of city blocks like you do at lower resolutions. Unfortunately, this is also one of those games
that has problems at anything beyond 256 colors, so certain animations don’t play correctly or they have this weird red boundary box around them. Like the ships, jetliners, and monsters, none
of them look quite right in True Color mode. Going back to 800x600 with 256 colors though,
and everything is just fine. So yeah, this is just one of the many games
from back then that have no problem with ridiculous resolutions, but simply don’t appreciate
too many colors on-screen at once. Finally, the last thing I wanna try are a
couple of benchmarks used by PC Magazine back in the day. That being WinBench version four and PC Bench version eight. We’ll do WinBench first since I’ve got
this chart of results from back in 1993, comparing most of the VESA Local Bus cards available
at the time. And as you can see, the Diamond Viper VLB
was one of the best of the bunch, at 15 million pixels per second using WinBench 4. So let’s try it out ourselves here and see
if it’s similar, something I was curious about since I’m currently using a Pentium
Overdrive CPU that wasn’t available back then. This runs the card through all sorts of graphical
stress tests that I am absolutely unqualified to explain, but suffice it to say you’ll
be seeing a whole raft of visual gobbledygook, including city limits signs from Raleigh,
North Carolina for some reason. How odd. Anyway, after a good ten minutes of frantic
graphical weirdness, the results are in! And we’ve got a combined graphical score
of 21.2 million pixels per second. A pretty solid increase over what the magazine
got back then. I’d compare it to the SpeedStar but it is unfortunately incapable of running this same benchmark at all. So let’s try PC Bench’s MS-DOS video test,
and compare the Viper’s Oak VGA capabilities to that of the one megabyte SpeedStar Pro
VLB card I replaced. These tests are similarly chaotic and potentially
even more seizure-inducing so I’ll spare you the demonstration and get straight to
the numbers. Our Viper VLB ended up
with a score of 1275.91 overall. And the SpeedStar Pro VLB? That got a score of... 4059.52. Uh, ha!
Yeah. I ran this a few times to be sure, reinstalled the drivers too, and the results were the same. This SpeedStar is multiple times faster when
it comes to non-VESA mode DOS stuff. I expected it to be quicker, but not THAT
much quicker! Here’s a closer look at the numbers detailing
the individual screen write mode test results and I mean, yeah, that pretty much cements
the fact that the Viper VLB really was designed for Windows 3.1 acceleration and DOS mode stuff was not on its radar whatsoever. And that’s the Diamond Viper VLB! An expensive two megabyte card back in the
day, and one that was mighty impressive under Windows 3.1, but absolutely would not have been the ideal choice for DOS folks looking to up their game. Makes total sense, yet still worth knowing
if you’re looking to say, build or upgrade an early 90s DOS gaming rig and are looking
for an awesome two megabyte VLB video card. And if that's you, this is not your card! When it comes to VESA-capable cards there
are far better options from back then, some of which I’m sure will appear on LGR in
the future, so stay tuned for that if you’re so inclined. Otherwise, perhaps check out some of my other
videos already posted featuring this PC, or stick around for new videos each week right here on LGR. As always, thank you very much for watching, and stay safe out there!
