You're friend isn't lying to you.  At least until the Voodo3 and TNT2 come
out soon, the TNT / two - Voodoo2 (SLI) combo your friend told you about is
almost ubiquitously considered to be the fastest thing going.   When you're
actually looking for a performance boost in your games however, keep a few
things in mind.

-  There is a big difference between 1 Monster board and 2 boards connected
in SLI mode.  In fact, a single Monster board won't give you much of a
performance increase over the TNT based V550.  (Of course without the V550
you'll need to buy a separate 2D card.)

-  Your AMD 266 processor is probably holding your video cards back from
achieving their full potential.

-  The card used by your games depends upon the game.  Some games (like
Half Life) will allow you to choose between OpenGL and Direct3D, but to get
the game to use the card you want, you will probably have to change
settings for each game individually.  This will probably require some
settings in game specific autoexec and config files (these usually go in
the game directory and aren't usually present until you create them) and
some games may not even allow you to specify.  Consult the game developers
web site for information.

-  Once the action goes above about 30 frames per second your eye can no
longer distinguish the difference.  A lot of the time you spend playing
with either the V550 or a single Monster II will be above that 30 fps mark
(at least at a 640 x 480 resolution) and so small differences will be hard
to spot.  What makes a difference is which card combination will keep frame
rates up above 30fps during heavy action or if you play at higher
resolutions (the Monster II will only go up to 800 x 600 while the TNT will
go higher (but with your processor that probably won't work).

-  The Monster II does give you an advantage in that you can play "Glide
only" games such as Tribes and will probably work better on certain games
that offer options between the API's.

I'm presuming you weren't really having any troubles with your games as
they were before buying the Monster II.  So keep this in mind.  Your
current setup should handle all of the games you listed with no trouble at
640 x 480.  However, this may not be the case with the next generation of
games. A second Voodoo2 (Monster II) purchased at a later date could give
you enough of a boost (especially with a processor upgrade) to allow you to
play games that come out in the next year or so.

Of course by that time the next generation of video cards will also be
available and by the looks of things so far, one of these new cards could
blow your friends "ultimate setup" out of the water.

Hope this is of some help,

Bill Nussbaumer


At 10:08 AM 4/5/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Hello All
>            I was told by a serious gamer that the ultimate gaming PC
>was one as far as video goes, is a Diamond Viper 550 with two Diamond
>Monster II 3D Accellerators. Will all of these work together? Or is this
>person blowing smoke up my *&%&^$%^&%$. I have a Viper 550 and just
>bought a Monster II 3D 12 MBs accellerator. My system is a AMD 266, FIC
>503+ with 64 MB PC 100 7NS and I don't really see a difference with the
>games I am playing. Which are Sin, Diablo, Rainbow Six, Unreal and
>Halflife. Everything seems to be Installed properly. Should I return the
>Monster II 3D accellerator or am I missing something?
>

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