I'd like to see what the actual texture image looks like. That would require software rendering, with linear texture filtering no less. VSA100 or modern GPU are pretty much as close as you can get to the reference. To my eyes these look nicer than the screenshots posted? Not really, blocky pattern …

GeForce cards prior to GeForce 4 have 16-bit DXT1 processing and they didn't dither it very well. Both screenshots were taken without texture compression. You can double check it on any GeForce 1-7. On DX10 and newer cards like GeForce 8800 you'll get Voodoo 4-5 quality. What about the PowerVR Kyro …

It's not S3TC bug and this problem is not exclusive to Quake 3 sky.

Derailed from this topic . Both GeForce and Radeon have some picture quality issues btw. For example here's how Quake 3 sky looks on a VSA100 (Voodoo 4) card in True color (picture for reference): voodoo 4 quake 3 sky.jpg And here's how Quake 3 sky is rendered on any GeForce before G80 family ( …

If ebay is an option, you can get FireGL 8800 quite cheap. That's 128mb Radeon 8500 with higher default clocks.

much more common TNT2 M64's M64s were already history at that time and replaced by MX200 a year before.

Short answer: yes. Long answer: depends on core clocks, TNT2 model and heatsink size.

Scali wrote: perhaps also partly because then they could just buy the faster memory in bulk, rather than buying smaller batches of different speed grades of memory. Most likely this. Same memory was used on GeForce 3 Ti 200/500 models.

I suppose they tried to reduce the cost of the total card by installing slower memory on it Quite a lot of brandname GeForce 2 Ti had 4ns memory. So they usually clock higher They don't actually. Most of Ultra cards can hit +/- 300mhz GPU (with decent cooling) and Ti usually can hit only 270-280. …

Yep. Video card will work just fine.

I suppose it's worth getting if you want to play games on TV. Obsidian card can even display signal from a primary video (post, bios, dos) via TV-OUT.

All GeForce 2 Ultra cards are quite rare these days and most of them use reference board design with usual green PCB color. Annihilator 2 Ultra is one of the most "boring" there - reference cooler, vga output only.