What does "very lackluster performance" mean? It is a TNT2. One tip is to avoid 32-bit color with cards of that age.

Haha, yeah, I should be more specific... very lackluster performance relative to old benchmarks that used far slower CPUs. For instance, it's only getting around 42 fps on Quake II demo1 at 1024x768x16. That seems a bit low - I was expecting something in the 70s. I've already noticed that trilinear filtering causes a big hit. 32 bit color does as well, but not to the degree I was expecting.

Looking at Anandtech's old TNT 2 Ultra reviews, it does look like 70 fps is manageable at 1024x768. 32-bit color drops it to 40fps which is >40% performance loss (ouch).

Quake 2 might match its color depth to the desktop color depth. Check that. It might be running 32-bit when you think it isn't.

You could dig up some drivers from 1999-2000 and see what happens. Anandtech lists what driver they used in their reviews.

Well, all I know is that the latest 71.84 drivers are to be avoided like the plague. I don't remember the details anymore but I have the same Asus TNT2 Ultra and had severe issues when testing Quake 3 with them. Long driver support is all nice but they should have cut it off before releasing such broken drivers.

swaaye wrote:

Looking at Anandtech's old TNT 2 Ultra reviews, it does look like 70 fps is manageable at 1024x768. 32-bit color drops it to 40fps which is >40% performance loss (ouch).

Quake 2 might match its color depth to the desktop color depth. Check that. It might be running 32-bit when you think it isn't.

You could dig up some drivers from 1999-2000 and see what happens. Anandtech lists what driver they used in their reviews.

I remember that rivatuner had an option to always force GL_SGIS_MULTITEXTURE on games like Quake 2. Back then Nvidia supposedly disabled Multitexturing on purpose for TNT cards when using 16bpp just to promote 32bpp color rendering. Install it and have a look at that

I don't know if that is something to be expected with such a new driver, knowing that it's very well from a later period but I guess trying won't hurt

slow cpu: 8.05 or 5.32
fast cpu: 30.82
newer drivers are of no good.

Please define "fast" and "slow".

RacoonRider wrote:

Please define "fast" and "slow".

cyrix6x86+mvp3 is slow
core2duo+pt880 is fast

Can the drivers make such a difference?

IMO if the card is too slow, get the next model up, easy as that.

In terms of driver I would go by the release date of the game. Add half a year to a year and you should be set. You can also study the release notes if you like.

Rolled back to 30.82 - didn't seem to make any difference.

Installed RivaTuner and immediately found one source of slowness: turns out the card is a vanilla TNT2, not a TNT2 Ultra as its name would suggest. 😢

I also found the setting labeled "Enable GL_SGIS_MULTITEXTURE in 16-bit modes", and this made a huge difference. Thanks for the tip.

The good news is that it seems to be happy running at Ultra speeds. No artifacts or lockups so far.