The name DIAMOND brings back fond memories of the first 3D card I ever owned, a DIAMOND Monster3D (3DFX Voodoo graphics chipset). Over the next few years I purchased a Diamond Viper 550 (TNT), a Diamond Viper 770 (TNT2). Unfortunately, Diamond was bought by S3 which meant that the continued supply of NVIDIA cards ended shortly after the TNT2 days. S3 went under, eventually coming back under the guidance of Via Technologies. Diamond eventually came back with Hartford Group.
AMD launched their first Shader Model 3.0 video card in 2005 with the late launch of the X1800 series. Due to a design issue, the early X1800XTs were not clocked as high as ATI wanted and they were forced to fix the issue before releasing the card. Early 2006 saw the release of the X1900XTX, which brought the 3:1 Pixel Shader Processor to ROP ratio seen in virtually every card subsequent from AMD. But the high end is only a small portion of the market. Last month, AMD released the X1950 Pro for the $199 market, and today I'm reviewing the Diamond EAX1950 Pro based upon that chip.
