X-bit labs

Diamond Multimedia Ships Stealth Graphics Cards.

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov

[ 11/17/2003 | 03:21 PM ]

The legendary maker of graphics cards and other multimedia components returns into the USA market today. On Monday the company rolls-out its new Stealth family of products at $49 - $99 price-points for AGP and PCI slots.

Diamond’s Stealth brand accelerators have long been one of the most popular and recognizable mainstream PC graphics products on the market. Now the Stealth lineup features a variety of graphics processor from two leading graphics chips manufacturers, namely ATI and NVIDIA, and is marketed for customers in $100 budget.

Historically Diamond Multimedia was among the first companies to employ a GPU neutral strategy and will continue this going forward, according to Diamond's recently proposed strategy. The company selects graphic processors for each product based on performance, features, quality, and price.

The list of parts shipping includes Diamond Stealth S90, Diamond Stealth S80, Diamond Stealth S70 and Diamond Stealth S60 graphics cards. The family includes products for entry-level market priced from $49.99 to $99.99.

The S90 features NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 GPU, D-Sub, DVI, TV-Out connectors and is available in AGP version for $99.99. The S80 is based on the RADEON 9200 SE chip with 64-bit memory controller, boasts with D-Sub, DVI, TV-Out connectors and is available for both PCI and AGP slots at $89.99 price-points. The S70 is powered by the GeForce 2 MX400 processor, has only one D-Sub output and is available for $59.99. The Stealth S60 from Diamond Multimedia is among the lowest-priced offerings in the market – at $49.99 the solution packs ATI RADEON 7000 chip and is available in both AGP and PCI versions with D-Sub and TV-Out connectors.

The S90 and S80 feature 128MB of memory and include SpyHunter game as a free bundle; the S70 and S60 have 64MB and 32MB memory onboard respectively and do not include any free games.

The Stealth S70 and S60 products are positioned mostly for business and entertainment needs, as neither the GeForce2 MX nor the RADEON 7000 are graphics chips of choice for the latest 3D gaming. The Stealth S90 and S80 are capable of supporting the DirectX 9.0 and DirectX 8.1 features respectively, even though, they hardly pack enough power for hardcore gaming.

Later Diamond Multimedia is expected to introduce a yet another lineup of products called Viper for less value-minded customers.

The company said that four graphics cards out of six in the Stealth family are shipping now to US retailers, e-tailers, distributors and systems integrators.