Diamond Multimedia Series Of High

Limited and slow Direct3D-supporting drivers did eventually show up, but performance was inadequate and buggy.

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They were one of the major players in the 2D and early 3D graphics card competition throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Diamond Multimedia later merged with S3, Incorporated in 1999 after a long-time cooperative business arrangement, when S3 decided to expand their business from producing graphics chipsets to manufacturing retail graphics cards.

However, the first major product after the merger, branded as the S3 Savage 2000, was a commercial failure.

Growth in the add-on sound card market, also an ongoing Diamond business, was tempered by the 2000 bankruptcy of Aureal Semiconductor and subsequent asset purchase by vertically-integrated Creative Technologies.

Diamond Multimedia resurfaced in 2003 after the brand and assets had been purchased by Best Data.

Diamond Multimedia Series Of High

The SpeedStar line was launched as a series of high-performance ISA graphics cards that excelled in MS-DOS applications up through the early 1990s.

However, as Microsoft Windows gained market share and newer graphics products entered the market, it was later relegated to the cheaper, value-oriented products and the SpeedStar branding was expanded to other products.

The line later included chipsets with combined 2D and 3D capabilities.

Initially the Stealth line was Diamonds high-end brand but transitioned to midrange after the Viper line was introduced.

The Diamond Stealth32, using the Tseng Labs ET4000W32p chipset, was capable of impressive priceperformance, especially in DOS.

The Diamond Stealth64 Graphics 2001, with the ARK 2000PVMT chipset, was known for excellent DOS performance at the time.

The Diamond Stealth II S220, using the Rendition Verite V2100 2D3D accelerator, was popular with enthusiasts for its excellent priceperformance for both 2D and 3D gaming.

A special BIOS patch was released by Diamond for the Stealth II S220 which brought its clock speed up to the same level as the high-end Verite V2200 chip, resulting in equal performance at a significantly lower price.

For example, the Diamond Stealth Video VRAM was rechristened the Diamond Stealth Video 3xxx.

Specifically, they tell the buyer the cards memory amount and type.

The Stealth Video 3240 uses VRAM (3), is equipped with 2MB initially (2), and is upgradeable to 4MB (4).

If the first digit was (2), then the card used standard DRAM.

The Stealth Video 3240 was simply the old Stealth Video VRAM.

New cards did also use the scheme, however, such as the S3 Trio64V cards.

The boards were designed to be an all-encompassing entertainment solution, as the chipset and board included full 2D3D acceleration, an audio engine capable of General MIDI synthesis, and the ability to use Sega Saturn gamepad controllers.

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