Price: $210 - $230

Bundle: Superbike World Championship, Need For Speed III, Wild Metal Country

Ship Date: Last week of May

When we first previewed the then-never-before-seen Diamond ViperV770 Ultra AGP video accelerator in March of this year, we found the card greatly raised the bar for performance and visual quality levels in 3D cards.

The prototype ViperV770 Ultra we tested at that time was operating at a core speed of 170MHz, an impressive figure that was reflected in some of the record breaking benchmark results we recorded with it.

Unfortunately, for reasons Diamond has yet to fully publicly disclose, the ViperV770 Ultra's wings were slightly clipped in April, resulting in the now shipping ViperV770 Ultras being set at a lower default core speed of 150MHz. Citing heat related issues that resulted from their own internal testing, Diamond has told Sharky Extreme that the decision to reduce the new Viper's speed to 150MHz was made only after much deliberation and verification of their own test data.

Luckily for consumers and video card performance freaks alike however, we're happy to report that Diamond has wisely decided to incorporate a driver-based core clock speed selector that allows a Viper owner to set the card manually in 5MHz increments back up to the more desired 175MHz core speed.

This leaves the Viper down in potential power anywhere from 10 to 30MHz versus the hypercharged TNT2 Ultra-based Hercules Dynamite card Sharky Extreme reviewed last week assuming normal chip quality yield rates and overclockability.

Today's review of the ViperV770 seeks to find out how the slight speed loss affects the raw performance of the card, as well as determine how stable it is when clocked at its maximum 175MHz core speed. We'll also be rendering our final verdict and rating on the Viper as we usually do when new cards hit the retail channel, as Diamond's newest baby is expected to arrive in stores next week.

Enjoy.