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.