Any one own a Viper II? got some questions.

[Plester]

how do you get this thing to run 3d? its on an Abit BF6, using latest diamond or s3 drivers = no Q3A and windowed UT, any advice? bios settings, best driver set... i know these things are tricky, and all the old S3 fan sites are pretty dead and without much info.

 

[Remedy]

ooo man here a bump for good luck...

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

You mean that Q3A won't work and UT runs in a window?

Did you use a different video card prior to using the Viper 2? If so, that could be the problem. May need to do the format/reinstall thing.

 

[Copperpipe]

Did you go through the software installation on the CD that came with the card? I only have a K6-III+ system with my Viper II, and 3D works OK - w/OPENGL being faster than D3D.

 

[Plester]

no drivers from old cards involved, clean install all the way around. will try a few bios tweaks and agp1x. man they weren't kidding when they said these things were a bear.

 

[vss1980]

Hmmm, the card should work fine, S3 went to a lot of trouble to make sure that games like Q3 and UT worked very well with no issues.

As far as best driver set, the last 9.51.12 for Win9x/ME and 9.21.01 for Win2K are pretty much the best available. As far as tweak programs go, S3Tweak is pretty hard to beat.

There are tweaked drivers available (and sometimes they run better with more speed and less artifacts than the official drivers) but they dont offer any extra stability. You may want to consider them when you get more familiar with the card.

 

[sandorski]

Don't forget to use the UT Metal driver and the textures from cd 2.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Viper II was a pretty nice card for me at least. I was able to run Q3A and UT with ease. Haven't found a card out there that did as good a job with UT as the Viper did (texture compression is pretty )

 

[Sept1967]

Yeah, use any S3 tweak program, try disabling fog,auto mip mapping,sidebanding. To see if it works.

Also use MeTaL in UT, you wont believe your eyes.

 

[Plester]

needed to install directX 7.1a. Q3 works like a charm now - very speedy little card and it overclocks like a mutha. looking forward to UT.

definitely no likey the overclocked AGP bus tho.

 

[vss1980]

Strange, I must have got a decent card, handles all the way up to 83MHz AGP