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LOSTCIRCUITS
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Top page
the specs
setting up
performance issues
benchmarks
Conclusions
 Diamond Monster Fusion Z100 AGP
Mind Over Matter
(Review by MS)

With the PCI version of the Monster Fusion Z100, Diamond has an excellent product already on the market. Even without knowing the absolute sales numbers of this card and just guessing from the increasing difficulty of finding it at the local Electronics Boutique stores, it seems to do quite well in the pre-Christmas season. Moreover, the apparent positive influence of this card on the overall stability of my entire system seems not to have gone unnoticed by others either since AMD's K7 test system at Comdex was equipped with the same card, if one allows for the exception that they were using the advanced graphics port (AGP) version.


To get to the AGP version of the Monster Fusion Z100, Diamond did not stop at changing the pin adapters from the PCI version to the AGP format including the necessary modifications of the PCB layout. The major change actually includes the upgrade from 16 MB SDRAM to the same amount of faster SGRAM (Synchronous Graphics Random Access Memory; 125 MHz vs. 125 MHz SDRAM) which also enables the use of enhanced graphics features. The important features here are the so called "Block Write" and "Mask Write" functions which allow clearing of the frame buffer at a faster rate and thus a much faster modification of individual pixels which ultimately results in a smoother image. Furthermore, because of the faster clearing of the frame buffer, skipping of frames or details within the images displayed is avoided.

Combine the advantage of SGRAM over SDRAM with the increased transfer capacity of the AGP bus over the PCI slots and it seems like there is no question regarding which card may actually deliver the higher performance. However, one also needs to keep in mind that the advanced graphics port is not as advanced as many would like it to be. That is, in real life, even by doubling the transfer rates through a 2x AGP setting, the actually achieved performance does not exceed the theoretical limitations of the PCI bus. Interestingly, the Banshee chipset used in the Monster Fusion Z100 graphics adapter is limited (or compliant) only to 1x AGP and thus the overall increase of performance of this card may in fact be limited to the enhancements caused by the Block Write and Block Mask abilities of the SGRAM used. In this context one also has to keep in mind that the 1x AGP limitation may constitute a more grave limitation for the end performance than the gain achieved by the faster memory.

After reviewing the PCI version of the Monster Fusion Z100, I received last week the AGP version and, thus, I had the pleasure of being able to compare the two versions of the card. Some of the results were actually predictable but nonetheless surprising as you can see on the following pages

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