2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images —mostly from two-dimensional models (such as 2D geometric models , text, and digital images) and by techniques specific to them. It may refer to the branch of computer science that comprises such techniques or to the models themselves.
74-513: The RIVA TNT , codenamed NV4 , is a 2D , video, and 3D graphics accelerator chip for PCs that was developed by Nvidia and released in March 1998. It cemented Nvidia's reputation as a worthy rival within the developing consumer 3D graphics adapter industry. It succeeded the RIVA 128 . RIVA is an acronym for R eal-time I nteractive V ideo and A nimation accelerator . The "TNT" suffix refers to
148-598: A rigid motion : other rigid motions include rotations and reflections. A translation can also be interpreted as the addition of a constant vector to every point, or as shifting the origin of the coordinate system . A translation operator is an operator T δ {\displaystyle T_{\mathbf {\delta } }} such that T δ f ( v ) = f ( v + δ ) . {\displaystyle T_{\mathbf {\delta } }f(\mathbf {v} )=f(\mathbf {v} +\mathbf {\delta } ).} If v
222-572: A rotation in Euclidean space . rotates points in the xy - Cartesian plane counterclockwise through an angle θ about the origin of the Cartesian coordinate system . To perform the rotation using a rotation matrix R , the position of each point must be represented by a column vector v , containing the coordinates of the point. A rotated vector is obtained by using the matrix multiplication R v . Since matrix multiplication has no effect on
296-413: A scale factor that is the same in all directions. The result of uniform scaling is similar (in the geometric sense) to the original. A scale factor of 1 is normally allowed, so that congruent shapes are also classed as similar. (Some school text books specifically exclude this possibility, just as some exclude squares from being rectangles or circles from being ellipses.) More general is scaling with
370-614: A vector v = ( v x , v y , v z ), each homogeneous coordinate vector p = ( p x , p y , p z , 1) would need to be multiplied with this projective transformation matrix: As shown below, the multiplication will give the expected result: Since the last component of a homogeneous coordinate can be viewed as the denominator of the other three components, a uniform scaling by a common factor s (uniform scaling) can be accomplished by using this scaling matrix: For each vector p = ( p x , p y , p z , 1) we would have which would be homogenized to A convenient way to create
444-424: A common standard for multimedia music playback at the time. Listing of Edge 3D-branded boards The Monster3D line was based on 3dfx Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo2 chips which did not possess 2D graphics capabilities, requiring a separate VGA card connected externally using a pass-through cable. When the 3D engine was called into use, the 3dfx-based card would disconnect the 2D pass-through signal and begin driving
518-430: A complex image is to start with a blank "canvas" raster map (an array of pixels , also known as a bitmap ) filled with some uniform background color and then "draw", "paint" or "paste" simple patches of color onto it, in an appropriate order. In particular the canvas may be the frame buffer for a computer display . Some programs will set the pixel colors directly, but most will rely on some 2D graphics library or
592-438: A description of a document based on 2D computer graphics techniques can be much smaller than the corresponding digital image—often by a factor of 1/1000 or more. This representation is also more flexible since it can be rendered at different resolutions to suit different output devices . For these reasons, documents and illustrations are often stored or transmitted as 2D graphic files . 2D computer graphics started in
666-586: A graphics accelerator board for VLB or PCI that was a combination of two graphics chips. For non-GUI environments such as DOS, the original Viper used an Oak Technology OTI-087 display chip with its own 256 KB DRAM. This chip was rather slow and basic. The Viper SE card moved to a Weitek 5186 chip with 1 MB DRAM for non-GUI functions. For GUI environments such as Windows, the Viper cards used a Weitek graphics co-processor which accelerated many drawing functions and performed very well for its time. The original Viper used
740-472: A lineage going back to Supra, Inc. Diamond began manufacturing PC-compatible motherboards after purchasing Micronics Computers in 1998. Diamond was an early (1997) entrant into PC DVD kits with their Maximum DVD 1000DB-VAR (Value Added Reseller) and 2000-RETKIT (RETail KIT). These kits bundled a 'feature reduced' (several pin headers and other parts not installed) full length PCI MPEG2 analog overlay decoder card made by division. This card connected to
814-402: A random meaning. Specifically, they tell the buyer the card's memory amount and type. The Stealth Video 3240 uses VRAM (3), is equipped with 2 MB initially (2), and is upgradeable to 4 MB (4). If the first digit was (2), then the card used standard DRAM . The numbering scheme confused many people since Diamond just renamed current cards with new names. The Stealth Video 3240 was simply
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#1732786600061888-406: A separate scale factor for each axis direction. Non-uniform scaling ( anisotropic scaling , inhomogeneous dilation ) is obtained when at least one of the scaling factors is different from the others; a special case is directional scaling or stretching (in one direction). Non-uniform scaling changes the shape of the object; e.g. a square may change into a rectangle, or into a parallelogram if
962-474: A sound model for certain techniques such as mitered joints and the even–odd rule . Layered models are also used to allow the user to suppress unwanted information when viewing or printing a document, e.g. roads or railways from a map , certain process layers from an integrated circuit diagram, or hand annotations from a business letter. In a layer-based model, the target image is produced by "painting" or "pasting" each layer, in order of decreasing depth, on
1036-546: A specific order. The ordering is usually defined by a single number (the layer's depth , or distance from the viewer). Layered models are sometimes called "2 1 ⁄ 2 -D computer graphics". They make it possible to mimic traditional drafting and printing techniques based on film and paper, such as cutting and pasting; and allow the user to edit any layer without affecting the others. For these reasons, they are used in most graphics editors . Layered models also allow better spatial anti-aliasing of complex drawings and provide
1110-503: A supplier of products based upon their graphics accelerator chips. The Diamond Viper II Z200 was based upon the S3 Savage 2000 , a supposed NVIDIA GeForce 256 killer. Unfortunately the chip itself was not fully functional and the drivers were very buggy. Partial listing of Viper-branded boards The name "FireGL" stands for Diamond's workstation-class 2D/3D graphics cards. This brand was originally created decades ago as just "Fire" by
1184-406: A translation matrix can be obtained by reversing the direction of the vector: Similarly, the product of translation matrices is given by adding the vectors: Because addition of vectors is commutative , multiplication of translation matrices is therefore also commutative (unlike multiplication of arbitrary matrices). In linear algebra , a rotation matrix is a matrix that is used to perform
1258-405: Is a fixed vector, then the translation T v will work as T v ( p ) = p + v . If T is a translation, then the image of a subset A under the function T is the translation of A by T . The translation of A by T v is often written A + v . In a Euclidean space , any translation is an isometry . The set of all translations forms the translation group T , which
1332-496: Is a single chip solution. The TNT shipped later than originally planned, ran quite hot, and was clocked lower than Nvidia had planned at 90 MHz instead of 110 MHz. Originally planned specifications should have placed the card ahead of Voodoo2 in theoretical performance for Direct3D applications, but at 90 MHz it did not quite match the Voodoo2. At the time, most games supported 3dfx's proprietary Glide API which gave
1406-407: Is isomorphic to the space itself, and a normal subgroup of Euclidean group E ( n ). The quotient group of E ( n ) by T is isomorphic to the orthogonal group O ( n ): Since a translation is an affine transformation but not a linear transformation , homogeneous coordinates are normally used to represent the translation operator by a matrix and thus to make it linear. Thus we write
1480-610: Is known as inverting color or color inversion , and is often used in graphical user interfaces for highlighting, rubber-band drawing, and other volatile painting—since re-painting the same shapes with the same color will restore the original pixel values. The models used in 2D computer graphics usually do not provide for three-dimensional shapes, or three-dimensional optical phenomena such as lighting, shadows , reflection , refraction , etc. However, they usually can model multiple layers (conceptually of ink, paper, or film; opaque, translucent , or transparent —stacked in
1554-415: Is not commonly used in dimensions higher than 3; there is a notion of a rotational displacement , which can be represented by a matrix, but no associated single axis or angle. Rotation matrices are square matrices , with real entries. More specifically they can be characterized as orthogonal matrices with determinant 1: The set of all such matrices of size n forms a group , known as
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#17327866000611628-406: Is used, with the x axis to the right and the y axis up, the rotation R( θ ) is counterclockwise. If a left-handed Cartesian coordinate system is used, with x directed to the right but y directed down, R( θ ) is clockwise. Such non-standard orientations are rarely used in mathematics but are common in 2D computer graphics, which often have the origin in the top left corner and the y -axis down
1702-667: The Tseng Labs ET4000/W32p chipset, was capable of impressive price/performance, especially in DOS. The Diamond Stealth64 Graphics 2001, with the ARK 2000PV/MT chipset, was known for excellent DOS performance at the time. The Diamond Stealth II S220, using the Rendition Verite V2100 2D/3D accelerator, was popular with enthusiasts for its excellent price/performance for both 2D and 3D gaming. A special BIOS patch
1776-446: The special orthogonal group SO( n ) . In two dimensions every rotation matrix has the following form: This rotates column vectors by means of the following matrix multiplication : So the coordinates (x',y') of the point (x,y) after rotation are: The direction of vector rotation is counterclockwise if θ is positive (e.g. 90°), and clockwise if θ is negative (e.g. -90°). If a standard right-handed Cartesian coordinate system
1850-693: The 1950s, based on vector graphics devices . These were largely supplanted by raster-based devices in the following decades. The PostScript language and the X Window System protocol were landmark developments in the field. 2D graphics models may combine geometric models (also called vector graphics ), digital images (also called raster graphics ), text to be typeset (defined by content, font style and size, color, position, and orientation), mathematical functions and equations , and more. These components can be modified and manipulated by two-dimensional geometric transformations such as translation , rotation , and scaling . In object-oriented graphics ,
1924-400: The 1999 3dfx purchase of STB Systems , which changed 3dfx from a graphics chipset supplier to companies including Diamond, into a vertically integrated graphics vendor and direct competitor to S3. 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
1998-478: The 2000 bankruptcy of Aureal Semiconductor and subsequent asset purchase by vertically integrated Creative Technologies . 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. The company
2072-581: The 2D era were first launched in the early 1990s and were usually based on GUI accelerators from S3 Graphics . The line later included chipsets with combined 2D and 3D capabilities. Initially the Stealth line was Diamond's high-end brand but transitioned to midrange after the Viper line was introduced. Notable members of the Stealth family have been the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000, by far the most popular S3 Virge-based board. The Diamond Stealth32, using
2146-402: The 3-dimensional vector w = ( w x , w y , w z ) using 4 homogeneous coordinates as w = ( w x , w y , w z , 1). To translate an object by a vector v , each homogeneous vector p (written in homogeneous coordinates) would need to be multiplied by this translation matrix : As shown below, the multiplication will give the expected result: The inverse of
2220-426: The 4 entries of a rotation matrix with 2 rows and 2 columns. In 3-dimensional space, every rotation can be interpreted as a rotation by a given angle about a single fixed axis of rotation (see Euler's rotation theorem ), and hence it can be simply described by an angle and a vector with 3 entries. However, it can also be represented by the 9 entries of a rotation matrix with 3 rows and 3 columns. The notion of rotation
2294-513: The DVD 1000 and 2000. They are a slightly newer product with the 'Navigator' player software having a cleaner user interface. None of these DVD kits are DirectX compatible and as the drivers are the VxD type, they will only work with Windows 95 through 98SE . Dual-layer DVDs are not supported in original Windows 95 or 95a, but are in the various versions of 95 OEM Service Release 2. Windows 98 or 98SE
RIVA TNT - Misplaced Pages Continue
2368-474: The Monster 3D II (and all other Voodoo2 boards) was the capability to connect two identical boards in a SLI ( Scan-Line Interleave ) configuration. In SLI, a pair of Voodoo2 boards splits the effort of rendering the 3D scene between alternating raster lines, allowing performance to be nearly doubled. Listing of Monster 3D-branded boards The Viper line was Diamond's high-end offering. Initially it consisted of
2442-618: The TNT a much more attractive 3D accelerator for AMD owners than previously. The Detonator drivers also fixed compatibility issues with motherboards of the time, and improved overall software compatibility. The TNT was the last Nvidia graphics accelerator to have support for Windows 3.1x. 2D computer graphics 2D computer graphics are mainly used in applications that were originally developed upon traditional printing and drawing technologies, such as typography , cartography , technical drawing , advertising , etc. In those applications,
2516-518: The TNT's specified clock speeds, a practice known as binning , and cut board costs significantly by using a narrower bus and less RAM. The board proved popular with OEM computer builders because of its capable feature-set and low price. Vanta also was implemented as integrated graphics on some motherboards. TNT itself was used on several popular cards, such as the Diamond Viper V550 and STB Velocity 4400, both of which managed OEM wins with
2590-578: The VGA card with an external passthrough cable, a 3.5mm (1/8") external patch cord to the soundcard's line-in jack, and the analog audio cable from the included Toshiba SD-M1002 DVD-ROM drive connected to the division card while a second cable passed the audio on to the soundcard's internal connector. Diamond also made kits called the Maximum DVD 1500 and 2500. (Hardware specifications unknown.) The drivers and player software for these are not compatible with
2664-466: The Voodoo2 (but like the slower Matrox G200 ) it also added support for a 32-bit ( truecolor ) pixel format, 24-bit Z-buffer in 3D mode, an 8-bit stencil buffer and support for 1024×1024 pixel textures. Improved mipmapping and texture filtering techniques, including newly added support for trilinear filtering , dramatically improved quality compared to the TNT's predecessor. TNT also added support for up to 16 MiB of SDRAM . Like RIVA 128, RIVA TNT
2738-514: The Voodoo2 a large advantage in speed and image quality, and some games only used the Glide API for 3D acceleration, leaving TNT users no better off than people who didn't have a 3D accelerator. Even in " OpenGL only" comparisons such as the case in Quake 2 , the Voodoo2 had the upper hand as a custom "MiniGL" driver was made specifically for 3dfx cards to run the game (and most other OpenGL games at
2812-436: The Voodoo2 in performance in some games, and beaten it in 32bit image quality. In what would become standard industry practice on a massive scale in later years, Nvidia released a budget version of TNT called Vanta. This board used the same TNT chip but lowered its clock speed and halved both memory data bus width (to 64-bit) and memory size (to 16 MiB). By doing this, Nvidia was able to still sell TNT chips that couldn't reach
2886-407: The Voodoo2 only supported 16-bit (although internally dithered down from 24-bit color, beating the TNT in 16bit quality). Voodoo2 cards also gained an even larger speed advantage over the TNT because of the ability to link two Voodoo2 cards together in an "SLI" setup. TNT did not match the sales of the incredibly popular Voodoo2. 3Dfx's customer mind share was at its peak during this time and Nvidia
2960-576: The Weitek P9000/P9001, while the Viper SE used a Weitek P9100, both lines equipped with 2-4 MB VRAM . The separate slow DOS chip was a problem for owners who played DOS games because these chips were quite slow and had limited and buggy VESA BIOS Extensions implementations. While the GUI accelerator was very capable, drivers from Diamond were rather buggy and were only revised a few times during
3034-577: The ability to use Sega Saturn gamepad controllers. The architecture of the NV1 predates the Microsoft Direct3D philosophy and, as such, game compatibility was a problem with the Diamond Edge boards. Limited and slow Direct3D-supporting drivers did eventually show up, but performance was inadequate and buggy. The audio engine further received poor reviews regarding MIDI quality, which was
RIVA TNT - Misplaced Pages Continue
3108-475: The case of one or more negative scale factors. The latter corresponds to a combination of scaling proper and a kind of reflection: along lines in a particular direction we take the reflection in the point of intersection with a plane that need not be perpendicular; therefore it is more general than ordinary reflection in the plane. In projective geometry , often used in computer graphics , points are represented using homogeneous coordinates . To scale an object by
3182-468: The case where v x = v y = v z = k , the scaling is also called an enlargement or dilation by a factor k, increasing the area by a factor of k and the volume by a factor of k . Scaling in the most general sense is any affine transformation with a diagonalizable matrix . It includes the case that the three directions of scaling are not perpendicular. It includes also the case that one or more scale factors are equal to zero ( projection ), and
3256-599: The chip's ability to work on two texels at once ( T wi N T exel ). The first graphics card that was based on the RIVA TNT chip was the Velocity 4400, released by STB Systems on June 15, 1998. The TNT was designed as a follow-up to the RIVA 128 and a response to 3Dfx 's introduction of the Voodoo2 . It added a second pixel pipeline , practically doubling rendering speed, and used considerably faster memory. Unlike
3330-494: The design team of the professional computer graphics pioneer SPEA Software AG from Starnberg (Germany) that was acquired by Diamond in 1995. Products whilst under the hood of Diamond were: The FireGL team was bought by ATI (later AMD ) in 2001 once the combined Diamond/S3 dropped out of the graphics market to form SONICblue . ATI continues the Fire GL lineup. As of September 2007, thus long after that business, Diamond
3404-531: The display directly. Both Voodoo and Voodoo2 based offerings were in production until the STB-3dfx merger. The series was highly successful as the Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo2 chipsets introduced consumer-grade 3D graphics into the PC and arcade markets, whereas such capabilities had previously been present primarily in very high-end CAD and graphic design workstations. A critically acclaimed feature of
3478-439: The expected result: Such a scaling changes the diameter of an object by a factor between the scale factors, the area by a factor between the smallest and the largest product of two scale factors, and the volume by the product of all three. The scaling is uniform if and only if the scaling factors are equal ( v x = v y = v z ). If all except one of the scale factors are equal to 1, we have directional scaling. In
3552-406: The fabled checker paint which used to be available only in cartoons ). Painting a pixel with a given color usually replaces its previous color. However, many systems support painting with transparent and translucent colors, which only modify the previous pixel values. The two colors may also be combined in more complex ways, e.g. by computing their bitwise exclusive or . This technique
3626-442: The image is described indirectly by an object endowed with a self- rendering method —a procedure that assigns colors to the image pixels by an arbitrary algorithm. Complex models can be built by combining simpler objects, in the paradigms of object-oriented programming . In Euclidean geometry , a translation (geometry) moves every point a constant distance in a specified direction. A translation can be described as
3700-548: The included Zilog Z80 processor. The TrackSTAR was redesigned to fit in the shorter expansion slot of the Tandy 1000 and was key to that marque's expansion into the educational computer market. Diamond's innovation created the Rio PMP300 , one of the first consumer MP3 players , but they soon sold their MP3 player line and no longer provide support for it. The SupraMax line is a popular value DSL modem line. The brand has
3774-552: The lifetime of the card. Towards the end of the 1990s, the Viper line consisted of NVIDIA-based graphics cards. The Diamond Viper V330 used the highly integrated RIVA 128 accelerator that featured very capable 2D, 3D and video acceleration. The later Diamond Viper V550 and V770 utilized the RIVA TNT and RIVA TNT2 accelerators which were evolutions of the RIVA 128. In 1999, Diamond was acquired by S3 Graphics and became primarily
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#17327866000613848-457: The likes of Dell and Gateway , among others. Nvidia's driver development with TNT was the beginning of their notably aggressive efforts to maintain the best set of drivers possible. TNT received the first branded driver within the industry, called Detonator . These drivers were a huge success. While the TNT had always performed well on Intel based systems, it previously lagged behind in terms of performance on then current AMD based systems. At
3922-510: The lineup consisted of several capable cards. Diamond XtremeSound is the first sound card line launched after the company's restructuring in 2003. Diamond's first product (under the corporate name Diamond Computer Systems) was the TrackSTAR, an 8-bit ISA plug-in card for the IBM PC that emulated an Apple II . An early advertisement from 1984 also claimed it would add CP/M compatibility via
3996-436: The machine's graphics card , which usually implement the following operations: Text, shapes and lines are rendered with a client-specified color. Many libraries and cards provide color gradients , which are handy for the generation of smoothly-varying backgrounds, shadow effects, etc. (See also Gouraud shading ). The pixel colors can also be taken from a texture, e.g. a digital image (thus emulating rub-on screentones and
4070-510: The major players in the 2D and early 3D graphics card competition throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Diamond Multimedia is a subsidiary of Tul Corporation. The company was founded by Chong Moon Lee with H. H. Huh, who acted as the technical designer. 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. The move paralleled
4144-559: The old Stealth Video VRAM. New cards did also use the scheme, however, such as the S3 Trio64V+ cards. Partial listing of Stealth-branded models The Diamond Edge 3D was the first consumer 3D accelerator card, based on the NVIDIA NV1 chipset. The boards were designed to be an all-encompassing entertainment solution, as the chipset and board included full 2D/3D acceleration, an audio engine capable of General MIDI synthesis, and
4218-504: The same pixel. See also Portable Document Format#Layers . Diamond Multimedia Diamond Multimedia is an American company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards , motherboards , modems , sound cards and MP3 players ; however, the company began with the production of the TrackStar, an add-on card for IBM PC compatibles which emulates Apple II computers. They were one of
4292-408: The screen or page. See below for other alternative conventions which may change the sense of the rotation produced by a rotation matrix . Particularly useful are the matrices for 90° and 180° rotations: In Euclidean geometry , uniform scaling ( isotropic scaling , homogeneous dilation , homothety ) is a linear transformation that enlarges (increases) or shrinks (diminishes) objects by
4366-410: The sides of the square are not parallel to the scaling axes (the angles between lines parallel to the axes are preserved, but not all angles). A scaling can be represented by a scaling matrix. To scale an object by a vector v = ( v x , v y , v z ), each point p = ( p x , p y , p z ) would need to be multiplied with this scaling matrix : As shown below, the multiplication will give
4440-524: The time). The 3dfx MiniGL driver was not a fully featured OpenGL driver, but a wrapper that mapped certain OpenGL functions to their equivalents in Glide, and was able to attain a speed advantage because of that. Later on when fully featured OpenGL drivers were made for the 3dfx line of cards, it was noticed that it was much slower when compared to its cut down MiniGL brother. The TNT had 32-bit color support while
4514-449: The time, Quake2 was the benchmark for performance and the 3dfx-made Voodoo2 enjoyed a large performance difference over the TNT because it had 3DNow! optimizations that negated the performance penalty of the weak, unpipelined FPU on then current AMD processors. The Detonator drivers included 3DNow! optimizations and the TNT's Quake2 performance jumped 30%. In fact, all OpenGL and DirectX applications benefited from such optimizations. This made
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#17327866000614588-409: The two-dimensional image is not just a representation of a real-world object, but an independent artifact with added semantic value; two-dimensional models are therefore preferred, because they give more direct control of the image than 3D computer graphics (whose approach is more akin to photography than to typography). In many domains, such as desktop publishing , engineering , and business ,
4662-743: The virtual canvas. Conceptually, each layer is first rendered on its own, yielding a digital image with the desired resolution which is then painted over the canvas, pixel by pixel. Fully transparent parts of a layer need not be rendered, of course. The rendering and painting may be done in parallel, i.e., each layer pixel may be painted on the canvas as soon as it is produced by the rendering procedure. Layers that consist of complex geometric objects (such as text or polylines ) may be broken down into simpler elements ( characters or line segments , respectively), which are then painted as separate layers, in some order. However, this solution may create undesirable aliasing artifacts wherever two elements overlap
4736-452: The zero vector (i.e., on the coordinates of the origin), rotation matrices can only be used to describe rotations about the origin of the coordinate system. Rotation matrices provide a simple algebraic description of such rotations, and are used extensively for computations in geometry , physics , and computer graphics . In 2-dimensional space, a rotation can be simply described by an angle θ of rotation , but it can be also represented by
4810-530: Was advertised as being one of the first sound cards with hardware MP3 decoding acceleration. This was a redundant feature because the central CPUs in PCs at the time were more than capable of handling MP3 playback. It was also somewhat complicated to make use of the MP3 acceleration because special software was needed to use it. The Vortex2-equipped MX300 was a superior card for 3D audio. Aureal had gone into bankruptcy and
4884-490: Was also preparing a new video card, based on the latest-generation R600 graphics core. This was the same core as used for ATI driven FireGL V8650 and V8600 cards. Diamond altered the PCB reference design and labeled their device VFX 2000 series professional workstation graphics card. It came with at least 2 GB GDDR4 memory on board. Partial listing of Radeon HD branded models The Diamond Monster Sound gaming sound card series
4958-610: Was dissolved, so their last generation of chips were never released. Diamond instead used ESS's less powerful chips to continue the line. The MX400 was the last of the Monster Sound cards. The Sonic Impact was the value-oriented sound card line from Diamond. Whereas the MonsterSound lineup was targeted at no-holds-barred gamers, the Sonic Impact cards were more generally aimed, and were cheaper and less powerful. Still
5032-474: Was equipped with on its 4MB Dream daughtercard . Otherwise it was technically identical to the original Monster Sound. The Diamond Monster Sound MX300 was based on the Vortex2 audio ASIC from Aureal Semiconductor . It was a substantial step forward in gaming audio, with impressive 3D audio positioning and other effects. It utilized the then state-of-the-art Aureal A3D 2.0 3D audio API. Monster Sound MX400
5106-530: 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. Partial listing of Speedstar-branded models The Stealth cards of
5180-651: 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. In the middle of the Stealth line-up, Diamond chose to implement a numbering scheme to differentiate their cards. For example, the Diamond Stealth Video VRAM was rechristened the Diamond Stealth Video 3xxx. The numbers had more than
5254-473: Was still a somewhat new player. Again, like with the RIVA 128, the lack of Glide API support hindered Nvidia's opportunities for market share growth. Glide was considered the best 3D gaming API available by both gamers and developers. However, TNT gained Nvidia much attention and paved the way for the refreshed version called the RIVA TNT2 . After all, unlike the rest of the competition, Nvidia had come close to
5328-439: Was still critical at the time. DOS game audio was only functional within a Windows 95 DOS box. It came equipped with a 2 MB AdMOS MIDI daughterboard. The Monster Sound M80 was similar to the original Monster Sound, but lacked 4 speaker support. It also had a reduced quality AdMOS MIDI daughterboard (1MB). Monster Sound MX200 had excellent General MIDI quality because of the high quality patch set (licensed from Roland) it
5402-702: Was the defendant in a significant copyright case for its Rio digital music player , which the Recording Industry Association of America claimed infringed copyrights; the Ninth Circuit deemed it to be a fair use , however, in RIAA v. Diamond . Diamond's earliest line, now defunct, was the SpeedStar series, initially based on the Tseng Labs ET4000AX chipset, and expanded further in additional releases. The SpeedStar line
5476-447: Was the first sound card to have its own on-board processor to handle audio operations. The Monster Sound cards were the first to support hardware mixing acceleration with Microsoft 's new DirectSound and DirectSound3D audio APIs . Most, if not all, also supported Aureal's burgeoning A3D API. The original Monster Sound card was distinct in this regard, but also controversial because it possessed poor DOS game compatibility which
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