The regular TNT2 is quite a bit faster than the TNT2 M64, mostly because it has more than double the VRAM bandwidth.
As you said the TNT2 M64 is a budget card from 99 while the Pentium III 866 is one of the fastest Coppermine Pentium IIIs and released in 2000. There's certainly a bit of a mismatch going on. If you bought your computer for gaming you would probably not have combined those two. If you wanted a computer mostly for 2D applications it would have made sense though.
Still a TNT2 M64 is a good enough entry level Win9x gaming card and if you already have it you can't go wrong with it. If you feel you need more performance you can upgrade any time.
Edit: And yes, the TNT2 was part of Nvidia's high end segment when it launched.

If you want to get everything you can get out of the video card you already own, then a P3-866 should easily push it to it's limit. Some would call that a "bottleneck", but we could also call it "maximization".
The M64 will be a strongly limiting factor in 3D games but at least that leaves an obvious upgrade path if needed/wanted.

the TNT2 M64 is quite underpowered for a Coppermine 866. I used to have a TNT2 M64 in a Celeron 400MHz before I disassembled that system.
It will probably work just fine with the Coppermine, but would fit more closely to something like a Pentium 2 350MHz or so.
Like I said, it will work fine and this way you have a potential upgrade to look forward to 😜

A Geforce 2 GTS would be more suitable, period-wise. But in the end, it's your call. I had an M64 coupled with a Celeron 500 on an already "old" P2L97 in 2000. It did its job though, and I have fond memories of that system.

UltimateElectronic wrote on 2022-03-14, 05:13:

I've got a TNT2 M64 floating around and someone has a Socket 370 ASUS motherboard (I think it's a CUSL2, based on the photos) they're going to give to me which has a Pentium III 866.

I know that the TNT2 M64 was more of a budget card in comparison to the TNT2 but apparently the difference in performance is negligible compared to the TNT2 from what I've heard.

Was the TNT2 a high-end card when it released? And is it a good GPU to go with a Pentium III 866?

What these guys said. If you had a TNT2 on a system such as this, it should at least be a regular TNT2 or the TNT2 Ultra. More likely though, you'd pair a system such as this with a GeForce 2 or GeForce 3-class GPU if you wanted something well balanced - or a GeForce 4 or a Radeon 9x00-series if you wanted maximum performance. Anything much later than that and the bottle-neck will be clearly reversed.

I have a GF3 Ti200 in my 1 GHz PIII system, and these two are best buds. 😀

UltimateElectronic wrote on 2022-03-14, 05:13:

I've got a TNT2 M64 floating around and someone has a Socket 370 ASUS motherboard (I think it's a CUSL2, based on the photos) they're going to give to me which has a Pentium III 866.
I know that the TNT2 M64 was more of a budget card in comparison to the TNT2 but apparently the difference in performance is negligible compared to the TNT2 from what I've heard.
Was the TNT2 a high-end card when it released? And is it a good GPU to go with a Pentium III 866?

Here an M64 review:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/393/12

Riva TNT2 M64 is only good for testing unknown boards. Get GeForce 2/3/4/FX.

leonardo wrote on 2022-03-14, 14:23:

UltimateElectronic wrote on 2022-03-14, 05:13:

I've got a TNT2 M64 floating around and someone has a Socket 370 ASUS motherboard (I think it's a CUSL2, based on the photos) they're going to give to me which has a Pentium III 866.

I know that the TNT2 M64 was more of a budget card in comparison to the TNT2 but apparently the difference in performance is negligible compared to the TNT2 from what I've heard.

Was the TNT2 a high-end card when it released? And is it a good GPU to go with a Pentium III 866?

What these guys said. If you had a TNT2 on a system such as this, it should at least be a regular TNT2 or the TNT2 Ultra. More likely though, you'd pair a system such as this with a GeForce 2 or GeForce 3-class GPU if you wanted something well balanced - or a GeForce 4 or a Radeon 9x00-series if you wanted maximum performance. Anything much later than that and the bottle-neck will be clearly reversed.

I have a GF3 Ti200 in my 1 GHz PIII system, and these two are best buds. 😀

Well, I've got a couple of MX440s floating around the place that could go in there. I'd imagine those would make it a pretty maxxed out Pentium III rig. ։D

AlexZ wrote on 2022-03-14, 19:20:

Riva TNT2 M64 is only good for testing unknown boards. Get GeForce 2/3/4/FX.

Alright, will do. I have a couple of MX440s floating around so from what I've gathered, one of those would be a better bet.

AlexZ wrote on 2022-03-14, 19:20:

Riva TNT2 M64 is only good for testing unknown boards. Get GeForce 2/3/4/FX.

Alright, will do. I have a couple of MX440s floating around so from what I've gathered, one of those would be a better bet.

PARKE wrote on 2022-03-14, 16:05:

UltimateElectronic wrote on 2022-03-14, 05:13:

I've got a TNT2 M64 floating around and someone has a Socket 370 ASUS motherboard (I think it's a CUSL2, based on the photos) they're going to give to me which has a Pentium III 866.
I know that the TNT2 M64 was more of a budget card in comparison to the TNT2 but apparently the difference in performance is negligible compared to the TNT2 from what I've heard.
Was the TNT2 a high-end card when it released? And is it a good GPU to go with a Pentium III 866?

Here an M64 review:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/393/12

Thanks for that!

flupke11 wrote on 2022-03-14, 14:23:

A Geforce 2 GTS would be more suitable, period-wise. But in the end, it's your call. I had an M64 coupled with a Celeron 500 on an already "old" P2L97 in 2000. It did its job though, and I have fond memories of that system.

Fair enough. I have another Celeron 433 computer that has integrated SiS graphics and unfortunately doesn't have an AGP slot... Still quite miffed about that ։P

Tetrium wrote on 2022-03-14, 14:19:

the TNT2 M64 is quite underpowered for a Coppermine 866. I used to have a TNT2 M64 in a Celeron 400MHz before I disassembled that system.
It will probably work just fine with the Coppermine, but would fit more closely to something like a Pentium 2 350MHz or so.
Like I said, it will work fine and this way you have a potential upgrade to look forward to 😜

Ahh ok, fair enough. I think I had a TNT2 M64 in something a while ago, but I don't remember what happened to it.
I've decided to go with an MX440 as I have some of them around the place.

shamino wrote on 2022-03-14, 09:47:

If you want to get everything you can get out of the video card you already own, then a P3-866 should easily push it to it's limit. Some would call that a "bottleneck", but we could also call it "maximization".
The M64 will be a strongly limiting factor in 3D games but at least that leaves an obvious upgrade path if needed/wanted.

Maximisation. I like that ։P

Yeah, I had been told that 3D games wouldn't work hugely well on it if at all...

Doornkaat wrote on 2022-03-14, 05:29:

The regular TNT2 is quite a bit faster than the TNT2 M64, mostly because it has more than double the VRAM bandwidth. As you said […]
Show full quote

The regular TNT2 is quite a bit faster than the TNT2 M64, mostly because it has more than double the VRAM bandwidth.
As you said the TNT2 M64 is a budget card from 99 while the Pentium III 866 is one of the fastest Coppermine Pentium IIIs and released in 2000. There's certainly a bit of a mismatch going on. If you bought your computer for gaming you would probably not have combined those two. If you wanted a computer mostly for 2D applications it would have made sense though.
Still a TNT2 M64 is a good enough entry level Win9x gaming card and if you already have it you can't go wrong with it. If you feel you need more performance you can upgrade any time.
Edit: And yes, the TNT2 was part of Nvidia's high end segment when it launched.

Alright fair enough. Looks as though it's probably an imbalance for gaming from everyone here is saying.
As I don't have a GF2 or GF3, my plan is to go with one of the MX440s I have that aren't in anything... I'd imagine that it'd create more of a balanced system for gaming.

The GeForce 4 MX 440 is a very fitting card for this motherboard CPU combo.👍

UltimateElectronic wrote on 2022-03-17, 00:57:

flupke11 wrote on 2022-03-14, 14:23:

A Geforce 2 GTS would be more suitable, period-wise. But in the end, it's your call. I had an M64 coupled with a Celeron 500 on an already "old" P2L97 in 2000. It did its job though, and I have fond memories of that system.

Fair enough. I have another Celeron 433 computer that has integrated SiS graphics and unfortunately doesn't have an AGP slot... Still quite miffed about that ։P

My Celeron 400 rig not having AGP is one of the reasons I put a TNT2 M64 PCI in there in the first place 😜
I don't think I had a Voodoo 3 back then, but a TNT2 M64 PCI I did have. This was basically the very first PC I ever build myself so I had to make due with what I had at the time.

UltimateElectronic wrote on 2022-03-17, 01:00:

Tetrium wrote on 2022-03-14, 14:19:

the TNT2 M64 is quite underpowered for a Coppermine 866. I used to have a TNT2 M64 in a Celeron 400MHz before I disassembled that system.
It will probably work just fine with the Coppermine, but would fit more closely to something like a Pentium 2 350MHz or so.
Like I said, it will work fine and this way you have a potential upgrade to look forward to 😜

Ahh ok, fair enough. I think I had a TNT2 M64 in something a while ago, but I don't remember what happened to it.
I've decided to go with an MX440 as I have some of them around the place.

I think the GF4 MX440 is an excellent match for your CPU 😀
As a bonus, it should produce relatively little heat (and hopefully little noise as well) so depending on how retro your PC case it (older cases had much poorer cooling in general), your cooling will probably work fine if it already did.

Depends on what you consider as underpowered. TNT2 M64 can be easily bottlenecked by PIII-866 in 640x480 mode with 16-bit color.