Diamond Speedstar A200

Diamond Speedstar A200 ... However, getting decent graphics acceleration into a computer without jacking up its cost is a difficult feat to accomplish. Fast graphics cards with superior image quality just don't come cheap - that is, except for Diamond's SpeedStar series. One of the newer cards in the SpeedStar line, the SpeedStar A200 is based on S3's Savage 4 Pro graphics chipset, an advanced design that offers all the most popular features and effects used in today's 3D software titles.

The SpeedStar A200 uses a version of the Savage 4 with a reduced, 64-bit memory bandwidth and only 8MB of SDRAM as video memory, which limits its speed at higher 3D settings such as 32-bit color and high screen resolutions. However, for the casual gamer who plays at a lower resolution and color depth, the raw strength of the Savage 4 Pro chip is more than sufficient to produce a fast, enjoyable game experience. The Savage 4 Pro runs at a fast 125MHz core clock speed, resulting in a high peak fill rate of up to 250 megapixels per second. The SpeedStar A200 supports Direct3D and OpenGL, along with the 3D features that those API's enable, such as MIP mapping, reflective surfaces, trilinear filtering, light mapping, bump mapping, fogging, and more. The A200 also features S3TC texture compression technology, which can compress game textures to as little as one-sixth their original size, allowing more textures and larger textures to fit in a small amount of system memory. 2D displays are important, too, and the SpeedStar A200 supports 2D screen resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 with flicker-free refresh rates. What's more, the card provides hardware-assisted DVD acceleration for a more multimedia-rich system. The SpeedStar A200 is compatible with systems that support AGP 2X or AGP 1X graphics cards. It is driver-optimized for Windows 95/98, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 2000, and is Microsoft WHQL certified. All in all, you'll be hard-pressed to find a card that offers this level of performance at such a low cost, which will please your customers and keep them coming back. Diamond's SpeedStar A200 is a must for systems integrators everywhere.