New Graphics Board - Standard Applications

Run-of-the-mill Windows applications gave an 8% performance gain with a faster graphics board. Incidentally, this gain happens to be about the same as you can expect when upgrading from 64 to 128 MB system memory. Under Windows 98, the Viper II doesn't profit from a memory upgrade to 128 MB.

Under Windows NT 4.0 we experienced a real surprise: the new, faster (?) graphics board actually causes office and graphics tasks to run about 5% slower! Only after we upgraded to 128 MB did the performance increase - and then by almost 15%. In other words, if you use a Viper II graphics board, the system will be about 21% faster if you also upgrade by 64 MB system memory.

Overall, the Office productivity benchmark dropped noticeably while the applications in Internet Creation Content were practically as fast as before. This means that the lower results can be tolerated because a graphics board that is three years old would still be adequate for Word or Internet surfing.

The reason for this result is probably the NT driver that comes with the Viper II board. The graphics routines seem to assume a certain memory size in order to attain optimum speed.