I like the p2 cpu's but they are fairly slow at 66fsb and 300mhz so any of those cards will work fine. I think the tnt2 pro fits nicely and I would choose that.

Another vote for the TNT2. Good compatibility as well.

Thanks for the responses. The TNT2 Pro it is. I'll post a separate thread in the system specs forum once my project is complete showing the final result.

On a side-note, this site is an invaluable resource for just about everything I've researched on old retro builds. I'm a long-time computer enthusiast but only recently have gotten into the world of retro gaming. This place is practically like an encyclopedia for retro computers - nearly every google search I do on just about any topic, from sound cards to video cards to various troubleshooting issues always has results from these forums at or near the top. Between this place and Phil's Computer Lab I'm all set, and just wanted to thank anybody reading this who contributes here.

TNT2 PRO MASTER RACE

TNT cards don't support 8bit textures. 😀. Problem for a few games. GeForce 256 added that.

I'd probably look for a Voodoo3 myself. Glide is nice for that era of hardware. Games played on there are more tailored to it and it has less CPU overhead. But yeah I guess they are expensive now.

GeForce2 MX200 lacks absolutely nothing that the TNT2Pro offers, but has better performance and better compatibility with a lot of stuff. The only downside is that it's a slightly newer card so not exactly period correct for a 66MHz FSB P2 build, so if you are an OCD like me it will make you wake up at the dead of night with an irresistable urge to rip it out of the system.. Pick your poison.

Being "period correct" is not a concern of mine. I see reading here that a lot of people like their builds to be 100 percent period-correct; I'm just not one of them. Personally I like to add a little bit of modern flavor to an old build so long as it doesn't destroy the aesthetic of the build or impact compatibility in any way with the era of games intended to be played on it. Here, I am installing a solid state hard drive, a USB 2.0 PCI card, and an SD-reader into one of the 2.5-inch bays and connected to the pin header on the PCI card (the motherboard itself only has 2 USB v1 ports and no header for extra ports). Having the extra connectivity and the faster hard drive I think are worth more than intentionally limiting the build to the hardware of the era. But that's just me - I fully understand the other side of this.

After doing further reading on the TNT2 pro vs the GeForce2 MX, I'm now leaning towards the GeForce2 as I can get it for the same price AND it adds DirectX7 support (vs dx6 for the TNT2). I'm curious to test some early dx7 games on this build under Win2k with the dual CPU.

Also does anybody know much about the Quadro2 cards? On paper they look like a step up from the MX200 cards but also I see they're optimized for CAD applications. Are there any compatibility issues with these particular cards for later DOS games or early Windows games? And also I presume that the CPU and CPU bus will be a bottleneck for this era of card anyways, so I'm not sure that going later than an MX200 will result in any better performance anyways.

Quadro cards should run games more or less the same as GeForce with the same GPU. In this case Quadro2 Pro is equivalent of GeForce2 Pro and Quadro EX is very similar to GeForce2 MX / MX400.
When using Pentium 2, performance of all these cards wil be limited by CPU in most (if not all) games... unless you aim for high resolutions like 1280x1024 or more. 32 or 64 MB makes no difference here and I think even the 64-bit MX200 should be fast enough. However MX200 might not offer very good image quality - it was designed to be very cheap and therefore the VGA output can be blurry. It depends on luck. Quadros should be better in this regard. And they (sometimes?) have DVI which can be useful when using LCD. On the other hand DVI on this GPU generation might be problematic sometimes... I can't really say how it works in DOS.

DOS support (no Quadro's)
https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/
but would expect the same as their GF counterpart as the optimizations would be more in the drivers, something dos bypasses all together.

Not that it matters but one of my 1st upgrades for my P2 400 was a 32MB MX400, so it is somewhat period correct.

I wouldn't be so sure, Quadro cards can have strange VESA shenanigans - you never know.

Once thing I notice looking at the Quadro MMR and EX cards is that none of them have heatsinks on them.

Would that be an issue? Or do these somehow use less electricity than their GeForce counter-parts?

If it doesn't come with a heatsink... it won't need one.

A lot of Geforce 2 MX's didnt have a heatsink. I have a Jetway branded one with the GPU clocked at 166mhz that doesnt

My Quadro MXR (200mhz gpu) has a heatsink.

I ended up going with a Quadro2 MXR card. Initial testing looks promising - the slowdown I was experiencing on Duke Nuke'em 3d and Commander Keen 4 on the GeForce FX5200 is gone completely. Now I can play Duke 3d in full 800x600 resolution mode without any slowdown and Keen plays great as well.

bmwsvsu wrote:

I ended up going with a Quadro2 MXR card. Initial testing looks promising - the slowdown I was experiencing on Duke Nuke'em 3d and Commander Keen 4 on the GeForce FX5200 is gone completely. Now I can play Duke 3d in full 800x600 resolution mode without any slowdown and Keen plays great as well.

Seeing as it's a dual CPU config, I totally support the choice of a Quadro 2. Back in those days, only professional workstations would have dual CPUs, and since the Quadro series are workstation cards, it just seems appropriate.
The Quadro 2 MXR is based on an updated NV10 (GeForce 256), called NV11. Faster clock speeds, but only 2 pixel shaders.