The Cheap TNT2
Written: Oct 08 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Value, Ease of Installation
Cons: Linux Drivers Lack Documentation
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| REwT6's Full Review: Creative Labs Creative 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 |
A couple weeks ago I bought a Creative Labs TNT2 Card with 16MB RAM, with
the TNT2 M64 Chipset. The M64 version of the TNT2 is limited by it's cut-in-half memory pipes. Although this does cut the speed noticeably, but for
$90 (LIST PRICE) for the OEM version, it was worth every penny. The installation was a jiffy. I popped the card into my AGP slot, and it immediately worked. I put in the included CD with the drivers on it. Windows immediately recognized the CD and autoplay'd it. So I installed the drivers and rebooted, it all went very smoothly. The performance difference between the Voodoo2 and this card was phenomenal. You really learn to appreciate the 32-bit texture feature when playing Q3Test. I downloaded the new reference drivers (nVidia Detonator 2.08) for the card, and it performed even better. The speed wasn't up to par with the Voodoo3 3000 cards, but it was far superior to the Voodoo2 and Voodoo3 2000 cards. My only complaint is that Creative Labs doesn't let you download the Unified drivers with this card. The unified drivers let you run GLIDE titles on the Creative Labs TNT-based cards. When I entered the serial from the back of my card, it rejected it. I then noticed it was only for TNT and TNT2 Ultra owners (doh!). Another complaint is that the Linux drivers were difficult to use, and I never successfully installed them. nVidia needs to work harder on the Linux Drivers' documentation. If you want a cheap, well-performing card, the Creative Labs TNT2 M64 16MB cards are definately a good deal. Tested on a Celeron 366 (overclocked to 458MHz), 96MB PC100 8NS SDRAM DIMM, 14.4GB IBM Deskstar 7200RPM 9ms HD, all ontop of an Asus P2B-F.
3DMark '99 MAX Score (640x480x16): 3666
Wintune Results:
74.82386 Video(2D) MPixels/s
117.6084 Direct3D MPixels/s
92.54953 OpenGL MPixels/s
Quake2 Demo1 Timedemo: 57.7FPS (best out of 20 tests)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 90
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Epinions.com ID:
REwT6
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 1 member
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