I got the drivers for my TNT2 Pro from the HP/Compaq website. It's a unified driver package that covers TNT2 family and GeForce2MX family of cards. Works well enough, but I think the picture is slightly blurry at 1280x1024, but not so much that it's a problem. The performance of the card isn't very good, and for the generation of games I wanna use this system for, Glide is really the only way to go, so the Voodoo 2 SLi solution will be a big improvement.

I was satisfied with my regular TNT2 as a kid. Not sure if Voodoo 2 SLI will be much more powerful. Mine had 32 MB memory through. For Glide games I can understand Voodoo 2 SLI. It is weird through that a "Pro" TNT2 would have just 16 MB, that is more typical for the heavily cutdown M64 and Vanta parts. I remember playing Theme Park World on a 16 MB TNT2 (I think it was a Vanta) and a 233 Mhz Pentium MMX and it run like shit compared to my home 633 Mhz Celeron/TNT2 32 MB machine.

I think the "Pro" name is something Compaq has made up. From the performance in 3DMark2001, I'd say it is some type of Vanta or M64 chip. It's much slower than a proper TNT2 would've been.

SquallStrife wrote:

LunarG wrote:

Thanks to the magic of ebay, this system is going to receive Voodoo 2 SLi for 3D gaming. Only 8MB cards unfortunately, but I'm sure it'll be good enough. Don't know if I will replace the 2D card as well at some point, but for now I guess the TNT2 "Pro" (Compaq specific card from the look of it) will do for desktop graphics.

I have a bunch of Dell-specific ATi Rage 128 Pro Ultra cards, and the ATi-supplied Rage drivers won't work with them, you have to use Dell's drivers.

Hopefully this "TNT2 Pro" is different, but there were a lot of OEM shenanigans going on in those days, so I wouldn't be surprised if it needed Compaq specific drivers. 😒

with Nivdia cards you go to a site called laptop video 2 go and it tweaks some of the inf files and adds the extra device IDs to the drivers so they work with those odd ball OEM cards. maybe hte same can be true for older ATI cards.

LunarG wrote:

I think the "Pro" name is something Compaq has made up. From the performance in 3DMark2001, I'd say it is some type of Vanta or M64 chip. It's much slower than a proper TNT2 would've been.

It could well be a watered down version of the TNT2. The real deal competed head-to-head with Voodoo3 (and was often faster). However it is my experience that nVidia screws its users over with the unified driver package. At least I recall that upgrading to newer drivers in the era the Geforce was introduced led to a decline in TNT-series performance. The best performance I ever got was with nVidia reference drivers (called Detonator back then) series 3.68 and 5.22 or 5.32. That was with Windows 98 and DirectX 7. Anything newer and my 3DMark scores started to fall. Besides benchmarks I clearly remember lowered performance in Unreal/UT in 32-bit color.

Oh and nice piece of kit btw. 😀

leonardo wrote:

LunarG wrote:

I think the "Pro" name is something Compaq has made up. From the performance in 3DMark2001, I'd say it is some type of Vanta or M64 chip. It's much slower than a proper TNT2 would've been.

It could well be a watered down version of the TNT2. The real deal competed head-to-head with Voodoo3 (and was often faster). However it is my experience that nVidia screws its users over with the unified driver package. At least I recall that upgrading to newer drivers in the era the Geforce was introduced led to a decline in TNT-series performance. The best performance I ever got was with nVidia reference drivers (called Detonator back then) series 3.68 and 5.22 or 5.32. That was with Windows 98 and DirectX 7. Anything newer and my 3DMark scores started to fall. Besides benchmarks I clearly remember lowered performance in Unreal/UT in 32-bit color.

Oh and nice piece of kit btw. 😀

A mate of mine had a TNT2 Ultra back in the days, and it was a really nice, and FAST card. In comparison, mine is a piece of shit. Oh well, it'll do as a companion for Voodoo 2 for now. The drivers I'm using are the ones provided by Compaq, simple cause I wasn't sure exactly which card it was when I set the system up. I'd never heard about TNT2 Pro, only "Normal TNT2", "TNT2 Ultra" and the various Vantas and M64s, so I figured to be sure it would work, I'd grab what Compaq had to offer. I might have a look for the old Detonator drivers, just to see if they'll work. When my work accident insurance finally comes through, I'll look for a different graphics card for this system. Also, if I can find an AT case for my 486, it'll free up that ATX tower for this system. (Did that make sense? 😁). I might also sort a new desk with a bit more space, so that my current setup with 3 computers look a bit less cramped. It's a bit mental now, not very fiancée friendly.

Tnt 2 pro is not a watered down version of tnt 2,actually it sits between the regular tnt 2 and the tnt 2 ultra which was the top videocard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nv … its#Pre-GeForce ,so unless compaq named a vanta or a m64 card as pro,the regular pro version of the tnt 2 is better then all other tnt2 variants,except the ultra.

Nahkri wrote:

Tnt 2 pro is not a watered down version of tnt 2,actually it sits between the regular tnt 2 and the tnt 2 ultra which was the top videocard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nv … its#Pre-GeForce ,so unless compaq named a vanta or a m64 card as pro,the regular pro version of the tnt 2 is better then all other tnt2 variants,except the ultra.

This is a Compaq labeled card though, and its performance is nothing special, so I'm pretty sure Compaq is just calling a Vanta or M64 "Pro". It's not the first time a big name hardware vendor has done that.

It appears that my Socket 478 motherboard may have died while sitting in an anti-static bag in my box of old parts, so I found myself without a system to host my newly acquired Matrox Parhelia. Well, while I figure out what to do with it I thought I could use it in my compaq P3 instead, only to discover that there are no Win9x drivers to be had for the Parhelia (obviously). Alright, This left me with no other choice than to "upgrade" this system to Windows XP, which actually isn't really a problem, as I'm planning another lower end build. This system will take over the role of Win9x system, and the P3 can happily chuff along with XP for now.
I was hoping to fit another 256MB ram into this system though, but unfortunately the 815E chipset that sits on this Compaq motherboard only supports a maximum of 512MB. I did give me a new home for my old beloved Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96 soundcard with front mounted breakout box though. A desktop case looks bizarre with a bunch of audio and midi connectors on the front.
I've also removed the Voodoo 2 board I had in this. It's going in the new build.

So, upcoming Super Socket 7 build will be as follows:

AOpen AX59Pro
AMD K6-2 3DNow! 350MHz
128MB RAM (or more if the board will take it)
Matrox Millennium G400 MAX
3dfx Voodoo 2 12MB
20GB Maxtor UDMA-33 HDD
Either Sound Blaster Live! or Yamaha Waveforce 192XG (The Live! is probably a better gaming choice, but the Yamaha sounds better and has that awesome XG midi).
NEC DVD-RW drive.

This system will temporarily be housed in a Silverstone HTPC case, seeing as I already have it sitting idle at the moment, but I'll be moved into something more suitable when my economy will allow for it.