NVIDIA TNT2 Roundup (July 99)

Prior to the recent 3D accelerator battle in the industry the market was fairly one size fits all oriented, meaning that manufacturers didn't bother offering parts segregated according to clock speed. The release of the Voodoo3 marked a change in the way manufacturers dealt with a diversified audience as virtually all current generation 2D/3D solutions come in more than one clock variety. The TNT2 has two basic clock varieties, the regular TNT2 clocked at 125MHz core and 150MHz memory as mentioned before, and the Ultra, clocked at 150MHz core and 183MHz memory.

The importance of clock speed to you is determined by two factors, the speed of your processor, and the resolution you play your games at. The rule of thumb here is that the faster your processor, and the higher your resolution, the more of a difference a higher clocked TNT2 will make. On the flip side of the coin, if you happen to have a slower processor or prefer running at lower resolutions, a higher clocked TNT2 will give you little more than a frame or two difference over a regular TNT2. So how do you decide?

All tests were run on a Pentium III 450

Considering that one of the most popular resolutions for TNT2 owners happens to be 1024 x 768 (for games), provided that your CPU is fast enough, a TNT2 Ultra can result in an increase of 25% or more in frame rate over a regular TNT2. At the same time, a TNT2 Ultra can cost noticeably more than a regular TNT2, bringing cost in as another factor you need to take into consideration.

A TNT2 Ultra will scale with your processor speed better than a regular TNT2 will, however if you're not planning a processor upgrade in the near future then processor scalability isn't an important consideration. Ideally you want the fastest solution for your system, unfortunately sometimes the solution you want isn't the most cost effective.

In order to tailor to the needs of the unique market that wants performance greater than a TNT2 but without the pricetag of a TNT2 Ultra, a number of manufacturers such as Hercules, Leadtek and Gigabyte have produced regular TNT2s that are available in a much higher clock frequency than the NVIDIA specification. The performance of these cards isn't as great as a higher clocked TNT2 Ultra, but neither is their pricetag.