Diamond Viper HD 3870

Benchmark Reviews recently reviewed the ZOTAC 8800GT ZT-88TES2P-FSP, NVIDIA's very impressive answer to the ATI HD 3800 series. Though the NVIDIA beat ATI/AMD to market, the 8800 GT release is a direct result of ATI/AMD's HD 3800 series. Today we'll be looking at one card responsible for the exceptional mid-range offering we are enjoying, the Diamond VIPER 3870PE4512 - ATI Radeon HD 3870 PCI-E 2.0 512MB GDDR4 Video Card; ATI/AMD's mid-range card that curiously happens to be their top performing single GPU card.

Diamond Multimedia recently returned to the discrete graphics card market after several years' absence. However, this time around Diamond has decided to go red, becoming an exclusive add-in board (AIB) partner to ATI/AMD. Along with their re-entrance they have also revived their highly regarded VIPER line of enthusiast video cards. Keeping in the Diamond tradition, they have continued to provide their own optimized middle-ware drivers, marking them the only AIB partner to support multi-video card set-ups on competitor chipsets. Diamond has chose a great time to re-establish their brand, jumping on-board with the very popular HD 3800 series GPU from ATI/AMD, bestowing the VIPER name to their flagship the HD 3870 X2.

Featuring AMD's anxiously awaited GPU, codenamed R670, the Diamond HD 3870 boasts leading-edge 55nm technology that coupled with a now fully functional UVD feature to deliver an outstanding visual experience. In addition, ATI's PowerPlay technology also brings greater processing performance per watt with new (to the desktop) energy-saving features. Read on as we take a closer look at each new feature, and show just what makes the Diamond HD 3870 such an attractive mid-range solutions that it sold out practically everywhere for months after its debut.

About the Company: Diamond Multimedia

From Wikipedia:

History - Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players. They were one of the major players in the 2D and early 3D graphics card competition throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Diamond Multimedia was merged (after a long-time companionship) with S3, Incorporated in 1999. The merger was mostly due to S3's willingness to expand their trade from simply producing graphics chipsets to retail graphics cards. The act is somewhat similar with the 1999 3dfx purchase of STB Technologies. The merger was hoped to boost the company's overall capabilities by combining the resources of S3 and Diamond, who were quite close partners over the preceding years. Unfortunately things did not go so well. The greatly anticipated S3 Savage 2000 was a failure, and the excitedly growing 3D sound card market nearly fell apart with the loss of Aureal Semiconductor.

With these market failures, the new combined Diamond/S3 company decided to change direction and leave the PC addon-board market. SONICblue was formed. Diamond Multimedia resurfaced in 2003 after the brand and assets had been purchased by Best Data. Diamond again built expansion boards.

From Diamondmm.com

Philosophy - Diamond provides the absolute best quality in advanced graphics, digital television, communications and sound hardware solutions for home and business users, enabling users to create, access and experience compelling new media content from their desktops. Diamond products stand for performance, quality and value.

For the past two decades, Diamond Multimedia has been widely recognized as a pioneer in the graphics, sound and communications industries and as a key player in launching the multimedia revolution. Diamond is a new type of multimedia company that brings all of the differing technologies together under one brand. Diamond Multimedia is partnered with some of the top technology companies, including AMD, as an ATI graphics provider. Diamond products are available to the public throughout North America through retailers, resellers and systems integrators, as well as, top technology product distributors. Corporate headquarters are located in Chatsworth, California.

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