I got a Diamond Edge 3D 3400XL (NV1) today!

[blueshogun96]

It took me years of searching, but I finally found one. Afaik, the 3400 series is the rarest form of this card, and was the most expensive too. I got it for $50 bucks. As you can see, it comes with everything that originally came with an NV1 card except Virtua Cop. I honestly can't believe that I finally own one of these. Some of the big time collectors never get to see one in their lifetimes and here I am holding the most advanced version of one! I can't wait to see what it can really do. Came with a load of other PC games by Sega too.

I don't know if this was the best place to post this, but it's the rarest thing I own right now and finding a seller was a complete nightmare!

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

Does that thing have Saturn ports?

[l_oliveira]

....

To think I dismantled one of these for parts and tossed the rest away because I could not find drivers... And worst part about it is that I knew exactly what it was, but was not aware it was such a rare thing...

It was like five to eight years ago ... At least it wasn't a nice boxed item like yours. Was just a loose and dirty junky VGA card into a box full of other old cards... :shrug:

Congrats on your awesome find. :thumbsup:

Does that thing have Saturn ports?

It's a sort of combo card ... VGA, 3D acceleration, Saturn compatible controller ports and sound hardware in a single card.

[blueshogun96]

You dismantled the card? :-( :gravedigging: :crying:

The drivers aren't terribly difficult to find. I found them with a quick google search. Now the big question is if they will work on Windows 98.

Does that thing have Saturn ports?

Why yes, they are right in the center of the picture :nod:

See the device with the two Saturn ports? You need to hook these ribbon cables up to the designated pins and install it in another slot and viola, you can plug in your Saturn controllers!

[Yakumo]

fantastic find! Congrats. make sure to let us all know how awesome it is, or not as the case may be. I'm sure it will be awesome though.

Yakumo

[Druid II]

I wish I had that card, I don't give a rats ass about Panzer Dragoon and nascar and Virtua Cop, but the PC version of Toshinden was balls on awesome. It's like the Playstation version but with 10x smoother animation, no polygon flashing, and ultra-solid responsive controls (the console Toshinden games always lacked that). In return it had crap backgrounds and less transparency on special moves. I want to know how it looked with a 3d accelerator.

[Shinebi]

Wait, so to get things clear (at least to me): this is just a 'regular' PC card, NOT endorsed by SEGA, right? (or is it for an actual SEGA PC?)

So what about the controllers ports, is that a 'custom' job from the manufacturer itself as this card seems to be sold as SEGA dedicated? The other games on the right, are they originals? (the covers don't look the part). Also, I'm willing to bet that the Xplosiv collection released on PC is identical to these...

Please don't get me wrong, this probably is worth something collection-wise and I take you've been looking for this for a long time.
Kudos to you ;) ... but tbh, it doesn't do something better than any other 'modern' card, right?

[Bad_Ad84]

It uses a different chipset.

Think Voodoo (glide) vs Direct3d we have now.

Now add this (NV1) into the mix. To play games for NV1, someone would need to emulate it on a current card

[LeGIt]

Got one of these years ago for next to nothing, I just never had the Saturn port bracket for it and now as it has been stuck in a big box of things the header pins on the card for the ports are bent.

Good luck with finding games for it and I hope you enjoy it ;)

[Bad_Ad84]

Easy to repair, just standard parts.

Could probably build the saturn port board too.

[hrahn]

The NV1-Chipset used on the Diamond Edge was the first 3D accelerator chipset from Nvidia, and it used Quads for rendering, just like the Saturn. This was the main reason why they ported some Saturn titles over to show its power, at the same time these were ported for normal Windows PCs too. Daytona USA, Panzer Dragoon and Virtua Fighter 2 ran mediocre on normal P133 of that time, but on the NV1 they looked better and ran fluid.

There were 4 versions of this card, 2 with Dram and 2 with Vram, each as a 2 and 4 MB version.
Only the most expensive 4MB Vram version ran really good, though.

It didn't get too much good press, mainly because it wasn't compatible with the soon-afterwards released Direct3D-library (which was made for triangle-based renderers) and because the soundcard was integrated on this card, back then everybody said: if one part fails, you have to toss the whole card and are left without audio AND video.

It wasn't until the Riva128 chipset that Nvidia gained a foothold in pc accelerators. But this here, this is genesis - so to speak.

[AntiPasta]

The Riva128 was the NV3, though - what happened to the NV2?

[blueshogun96]

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/

This should explain why NV2 never came into fruition. IMO, they made a good decision to stop working on NV2 and focus on NV3 instead. The Riva128 wasn't perfect but IMO, it was the best video card of it's time except for it's main compeditor, 3Dfx Voodoo.

[l_oliveira]

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/

This should explain why NV2 never came into fruition. IMO, they made a good decision to stop working on NV2 and focus on NV3 instead. The Riva128 wasn't perfect but IMO, it was the best video card of it's time except for it's main compeditor, 3Dfx Voodoo.

If only SEGA had this vision in 1999 and fixed it's "route" we would still have the real SEGA alive today... :shrug:

[Druid II]

If only SEGA had this vision in 1999 and fixed it's "route" we would still have the real SEGA alive today... :shrug:

Sega is alive today precisely because they had went and "fixed" their route.

And they couldn't do much in 1999 when the Dreamcast was already out since a year.

[Cyantist]