Impressions

Let’s talk image quality. We know the TnT can pump out the fps, but so did the Riva, infamous for ugly image quality. Well, Nvidia did a 180. The Image quality of the TnT is excellent. The OpenGL ICD produced superior image quality in both Quake2 and the Sin demo. The colors were better, textures sharper. Image qaulity is hard to quantify, but it did look better to me. Couple this with the fact that 1024x768 was smooth on every game, outdoing a single Voodoo2’s top res of 800x600, the visuals of the STB Velocity are top notch. Unreal’s OpenGL patch, although beta and young, showed stunning visuals (see screen shots). I also tried a few other D3D games, all worked flawlessly. Gameday 99, Motocross Madness and Monster Truck Madness all looked as good or better while outperforming the Voodoo2.

If I could own only one 3d card, a TnT based card like the STB Velocity 4400 is definitely the card I’d pick. Fast D3d, OpenGL and great image quality makes it the card to beat. The large 16MB unified memory and 2X AGP will allow it to handle the upcoming large texture games. We have seen S3 touting it’s texture compression, yet the TnT beat S3 at it’s own 22MB Quake2 level (see http://www.tomshardware.com/releases/98q3/980818/index14.html).

The Voodoo2 is still the current 3D king due to SLI, but its days are limited by 3dfx’s short sightedness. It’s PCI split memory design along with it’s 256x256 pixel texture limitation will lead to it’s sudden downfall with the next generation of 3D games. I am by no means calling the Voodoo2 a failing, I’ve owned one since day one, but for 3D games to evolve to the next visual level developers must start using high resolution textures. This evolution will be soon upon us and the Voodoo2 will die away and make way for new technologies like the TnT.

System and methodology

    Test system:
    Abit BH6
    Intel Pentium II 300mhz and 450mhz
    128 PC-100 Micron 8ns w/ ECC
    STB Velocity 4400 16MB SDRAM AGP
    Creative Labs 8MB Voodoo2
    Diamond Monster Sound
    Diamond Fireport 40
    IBM 9.1 GB UWSCSI 7200RPM
    Conner 2.1 GB UWSCSI 5400RPM
    Toshiba 32x SCSI CD-ROM
   
The tests were made on a typical P2 class machine. At 300Mhz it represents lower and mid-end P2’s and 450Mhz for the top-end. I ran a variety of games with both cards. I choose standard games for benchmarks: Quake2, Forsaken, Sin Demo, Unreal and Incoming.

These test Direct3D, OpenGL and in the case of Unreal, Glide performance with the Voodoo2 which I thought was the most fair way to test since Voodoo2 based cards have the advantage of the speed boost when using Glide. I ran with V-sync off and no tweaks for either cards. Default clock speed for both cards was also chosen. I despise Incoming, so I only ran it at 640x480 to get an additional D3D test to go along with Forsaken. Quake2 is always used, but Sin is a more texture and polygon intensive OpenGL game, so it will represent the performance of next generation games.

Unreal has a beta OpenGL patch, but unfortunately the Voodoo2 must still use Glide. It’s not a very fair test, but people are interested anyway. This is not a Voodoo2 vs. TnT review. I just included the Voodoo2 number for those of us who already own Voodoo2s and want to compare. I used an 8MB Voodoo2 because that’s what I own. Both cards in the $150-$200 range and a 8MB Voodoo2 will perform neck and neck with a 12MB in most current games, Quake2 crusher demo excluded.

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