Yep TNT2 M64 was a great card as long as you didn't try 32bit and/or high resolution.

I had a Pentium 133 with SIS 6326 PCI card and then upgraded to a TNT2 M64 PCI. Was an amazing upgrade. Massive CPU bottleneck but was amazing.

Hard to get a PCI TNT2 M64 now!

mwdmeyer wrote on 2023-05-11, 08:06:

Yep TNT2 M64 was a great card as long as you didn't try 32bit and/or high resolution.

32 bit color was definitely possible even with a TNT2 M64. There was actually a common misconception at the time, that you 'could not use 32 bit colors' (probably semi-fake news spread by 3dfx employees 😜 ).
Well, let me tell you, I played a lot of games at 800 x 600 x 32 with this card, and they looked great and ran perfectly well (the Tomb Raider series comes to mind - most of these games were running at max speed, since they all have a 30FPS frame cap). Not to mention that, during that era, 20+ FPS was ULTRA-playable for me. 😁 As I said, my previous card had been an ATI Rage IIC, so you could imagine that the TNT2 M64 was the closest thing to a 'rocket' that I had seen by that point. 🤣
So, yeah, you couldn't play ALL games in 32 bit color, but many ran just fine.

mwdmeyer wrote on 2023-05-11, 08:06:

Hard to get a PCI TNT2 M64 now!

Yeah, fortunately I already have a few. One of them has a very slightly faulty memory IC that I need to fix, but it's very hard to notice the artifacts unless you specifically look for them.

Tetrium wrote on 2023-05-11, 07:12:

Maybe an odd question, but if you felt like you never needed anything more, then why did you use it for only more than a year? T […]
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HanSolo wrote on 2023-05-10, 18:32:

I got myself a TNT in late '98 because I needed a capable AGP card for my new Celeron 300A. That card I used for more than a year and never felt like I needed anything more. With the above prices I would also say that the Voodoo3 was not for everybody. Adjusted for US inflation that's $270 for a V3-3000. Actually for me the no-brainer is the TNT2 M64. But the market was constantly changing back then so few weeks earlier or later things might have looked completely different.

Maybe an odd question, but if you felt like you never needed anything more, then why did you use it for only more than a year?
To me the TNT felt lacking fairly quickly (used it for as long as that rig kept being used on a regular basis, about a year or 6) and its touted 32 bit gaming performance never seemed to be actually playable.
Ahh yes, the TNT2 M64. Definitely one of the more useful cut-down budget cards.

A friend offered me his used TNT2 Ultra for a good price. Must have been about 1.5 years after I bought my TNT.
Of course I'm not saying the TNT ought enough for everybody for 10 years 😀 But just like bloodem says, back then it was perfectly fine to play at 20-25 fps. It's always a question of how much the extra fps or 32 bit color is worth to you, but everything was playable with a TNT.

Maybe I'm forgetting something, but the TNT was released around April 1998, so for about one year that was the fastest gaming card on the market? Except for maybe a Voodoo2 SLI.

..I think I have to get me some more TNT and TNT2 cards for my collection ..

Remember when some factory got damaged during an earthquake or burned down and SDRAM prices basically tripled or quadrupled almost overnight?

Totally forgot it but now that you mention it, it's all coming back again 😀 Jiji earthquake

Not all TNT2 M64 cards were build identical. There were many vendors, I must've had in my hands over 200 of them (not exaggerating, probably way more). Depending on the model / ram config / cooling / core&memory clock, the performance would vary drastically, maybe even 50% from card to card.

50% is certainly exaggeration. Also there are four separate products - M64, M64 Vanta, M64 Vanta-16 and Vanta-LT.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-11, 22:23:

50% is certainly exaggeration. Also there are four separate products - M64, M64 Vanta, M64 Vanta-16 and Vanta-LT.

Afaik two of those are same thing 😀, 8MB should be called LT but I remember buying them in oem bulk (noname cards in plastic bags) just called Vanta and nothing else. From what I remember all overclocked back to TNT2 clocks on the chip, ram was lottery. 8MB version was the cheapest card available that could deliver solid 480p gaming, much better than experimenting with Savage4.

aaronkatrini wrote on 2023-05-11, 19:05:

Not all TNT2 M64 cards were build identical. There were many vendors, I must've had in my hands over 200 of them (not exaggerating, probably way more). Depending on the model / ram config / cooling / core&memory clock, the performance would vary drastically, maybe even 50% from card to card.

Are you sure? I was under the impression that they're all pretty much the same (i.e.: bad) in terms of raw specs, and, of course, they all come with the dreaded 64 bit memory bus (hence, the M64 naming 😁 ).
All of the TNT2 M64 cards I came across (including the card I had 23 years ago), had the same 125 MHz core / 143 MHz memory (7 ns ICs), and a total memory bandwidth of less than 1.2 GB/s.

If you're referring to Vanta, then... yeah, that's definitely slower (never had one, though, and not really interested in ever testing it 😁 ).

The vanilla Riva TNT2 is basically the same as the M64, but comes with the full 128bit memory bus, so ~ 2.4 GB/s memory bandwidth.

bloodem wrote on 2023-05-11, 07:53:

I can't even describe what the TNT2 M64 meant for me. I went from an S3 Virge DX to an ATI Rage IIC (haha, 'major' upgrade!). […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2023-05-10, 22:21:

I respect the TNT M64 for it's very late 90s 3D chops, but grind my teeth when I flip open another early atx box looking for treasure and find only a middling P4 and a TNT M64 🤣

(I think I've accidentally/incidentally collected more TNT M64 than any other combined range now)

I can't even describe what the TNT2 M64 meant for me.
I went from an S3 Virge DX to an ATI Rage IIC (haha, 'major' upgrade!).

Finally, in the year 2000 I upgraded to a Riva TNT2 M64, and... all of a sudden, all of my 3D games were actually running!!! Not only that, but they looked as they were supposed to! 😁
Truthfully, this card meant everything to me. My favorite gaming memories revolve around it.
And, having said that, even though I own quite a few TNT2 M64s nowadays, I just realized that I don't have this card in any of my full builds - I should definitely fix that. 😀 It is not a card that one typically chooses for a retro build (since there are much better and still cheap options nowadays), but I personally should use it.

I did use it, if only because at the time it was my best PCI graphics card and I did like it for what it was 😀
Later on I used a Vanta (essentially a lower clocked M64) in combination with a Voodoo 2.
Could use it to try out games to compare it with a Voodoo 2 rig to compare the 2 rigs how they play games or something. Anyway, go build a rig around one soon 😋

TNT2 M64 is plentiful and I think it's a nice card. Fairly good and definitely better performance than many of the other commonly available contemporary cards, but TNT2 M64 is not GF2 MX.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-11, 07:45:

NV ever made a cut-down budget version of TNT

TNT had cut-down version with 64-bit bus and 8Mb VRAM. Vanta LT was probably direct replacement.

Still no sign of the cut down TNT1 anywhere?

Vanta LT is a cute little card. Especially if it's from good brand, which followed Nvidia spec. Easily destroys any budget competition. Probably one of the main reasons 3 competitors belly flopped in 2000. LMAO.

Still no sign of the cut down TNT1 anywhere?

What sign? Cut-down TNT were literally normal TNT PCBs with half of the memory not soldered.

bloodem wrote on 2023-05-12, 07:33:

Are you sure? I was under the impression that they're all pretty much the same (i.e.: bad) in terms of raw specs, and, of course […]
Show full quote

aaronkatrini wrote on 2023-05-11, 19:05:

Not all TNT2 M64 cards were build identical. There were many vendors, I must've had in my hands over 200 of them (not exaggerating, probably way more). Depending on the model / ram config / cooling / core&memory clock, the performance would vary drastically, maybe even 50% from card to card.

Are you sure? I was under the impression that they're all pretty much the same (i.e.: bad) in terms of raw specs, and, of course, they all come with the dreaded 64 bit memory bus (hence, the M64 naming 😁 ).
All of the TNT2 M64 cards I came across (including the card I had 23 years ago), had the same 125 MHz core / 143 MHz memory (7 ns ICs), and a total memory bandwidth of less than 1.2 GB/s.

If you're referring to Vanta, then... yeah, that's definitely slower (never had one, though, and not really interested in ever testing it 😁 ).

The vanilla Riva TNT2 is basically the same as the M64, but comes with the full 128bit memory bus, so ~ 2.4 GB/s memory bandwidth.

The TNT2 M64 (broadly speaking any cut down TNT2 card I mean) was produced for a longer while iirc, so build quality and nomenclature accuracy may have degraded as the M64 variants leaned more and more towards being bottom-of-the-barrel products.
So at the end of their useful product cycle, some of these cards may have gotten shoddy and inaccurately named and perhaps fitted out with whatever heatsinks or leftover memory chips they may have had left at that stage.

So I'd say it's definitely possible build quality has been quite varied between individual TNT2 M64 cards.

I didn't use too many of them and I certainly didn't benchmark a lot of them. We liked using them as the computers we build were for people who were basically going to use it for just internet anyway and they tended to 'just work' 😜

Tetrium wrote on 2023-05-12, 08:03:

The TNT2 M64 (broadly speaking any cut down TNT2 card I mean) was produced for a longer while iirc, so build quality and nomenclature accuracy may have degraded as the M64 variants leaned more and more towards being bottom-of-the-barrel products.
So at the end of their useful product cycle, some of these cards may have gotten shoddy and inaccurately named and perhaps fitted out with whatever heatsinks or leftover memory chips they may have had left at that stage.

So I'd say it's definitely possible build quality has been quite varied between individual TNT2 M64 cards.

That's entirely possible, since the same thing happened with the GeForce 2 MX400 branding. I can't even count how many OEM/cheapo 'MX400' cards I came across that had the MX400 GPU under the hood (with the higher core clock of 200 MHz) and a 64bit memory bus instead of 128.
And because these cards are very starved in terms of memory bandwidth, the performance was basically identical to that of the GeForce 2 MX200.

So it's very possible that some TNT2 M64 cards out there are actually Vantas / Vanta LTs in disguise. Although, at least in this case, you can probably just "overclock" them a bit and basically end up with a true TNT2 M64. Whereas, if you have a fake GeForce 2 MX400, you are stuck with the 64 bit memory bus. 😁

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-05-12, 07:56:

Still no sign of the cut down TNT1 anywhere?

What sign? Cut-down TNT were literally normal TNT PCB with half of the memory not soldered.

Wait what? That's it? 0.o
That's kind of an ehhh... anticlimax, 🤣!
Guess I can be glad I never saw one of those in the flesh.

Vanta LT is a cute little card. Especially if it's from good brand, which followed Nvidia spec. Easily destroys any budget competition. Probably one of the main reasons 3 competitors belly flopped in 2000. LMAO.

Yes, if you just want a 2D card filling in your AGP slot while also being small sized pcb and 'just working' to combo with your Voodoo 2s, I'd say Vanta is one of the better picks.

Definitely.
From my PoV TNT2 M64 managed to successfully take over the spot that S3 TrioX/Virge (and to a lesser degree Ati Rage II) had previously held.

Could almost say it also helped 3dfx go out, but tbh from hindsight, essentially 3dfx themselves put one of their own feet into their own coffin before NV even had to do anything.
Shame really. 3dfx cards could have made for some excellent budget cards.

bloodem wrote on 2023-05-12, 08:26:

That's entirely possible, since the same thing happened with the GeForce 2 MX400 branding. I can't even count how many OEM/cheap […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote on 2023-05-12, 08:03:

The TNT2 M64 (broadly speaking any cut down TNT2 card I mean) was produced for a longer while iirc, so build quality and nomenclature accuracy may have degraded as the M64 variants leaned more and more towards being bottom-of-the-barrel products.
So at the end of their useful product cycle, some of these cards may have gotten shoddy and inaccurately named and perhaps fitted out with whatever heatsinks or leftover memory chips they may have had left at that stage.

So I'd say it's definitely possible build quality has been quite varied between individual TNT2 M64 cards.

That's entirely possible, since the same thing happened with the GeForce 2 MX400 branding. I can't even count how many OEM/cheapo 'MX400' cards I came across that had the MX400 GPU under the hood (with the higher core clock of 200 MHz) and a 64bit memory bus instead of 128.
And because these cards are very starved in terms of memory bandwidth, the performance was basically identical to that of the GeForce 2 MX200.

So it's very possible that some TNT2 M64 cards out there are actually Vantas / Vanta LTs in disguise. Although, at least in this case, you can probably just "overclock" them a bit and basically end up with a true TNT2 M64. Whereas, if you have a fake GeForce 2 MX400, you are stuck with the 64 bit memory bus. 😁

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some later TNT2 M64 cards out there with memory chips that are binned much higher than the frequency the memory is run at, depending on whatever stock the manufacturer happened to have available at the time. And even more so if TNT2 M64 ever got a die-shrink, which I don't know if this ever happened but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Tetrium wrote on 2023-05-12, 09:05:

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some later TNT2 M64 cards out there with memory chips that are binned much higher than the frequency the memory is run at, depending on whatever stock the manufacturer happened to have available at the time. And even more so if TNT2 M64 ever got a die-shrink, which I don't know if this ever happened but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Well, there certainly was no die shrink for the TNT2 M64, but you could say that the GeForce 2 MX was its 'die shrink', a very worthy successor. 😁 The GeForce 2 MX was truly a leap forward in terms of price to performance. Me and all of my friends got one (I upgraded from the TNT2 M64 to a GeForce 2 MX400), and the performance uplift was awesome (although, still far from the insane jump in terms of... everything... that I had seen when going from a Rage IIC to the TNT2 M64).

It's the same with CPUs. I will never forget the feeling of upgrading my K6-2 500 to a Thunderbird 1333. It's a jump in performance & stability that I've never experienced again since then. All other subsequent upgrades have been like: "yeah, it's noticeably faster". 😀

bloodem wrote on 2023-05-12, 09:15:

Tetrium wrote on 2023-05-12, 09:05:

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some later TNT2 M64 cards out there with memory chips that are binned much higher than the frequency the memory is run at, depending on whatever stock the manufacturer happened to have available at the time. And even more so if TNT2 M64 ever got a die-shrink, which I don't know if this ever happened but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Well, there certainly was no die shrink for the TNT2 M64, but you could say that the GeForce 2 MX was its 'die shrink', a very worthy successor. 😁 The GeForce 2 MX was truly a leap forward in terms of price to performance. Me and all of my friends got one (I upgraded from the TNT2 M64 to e a GeForce 2 MX400), and the performance uplift was awesome (although, still far from the insane jump in terms of... everything... that I had seen when going from a Rage IIC to the TNT2 M64).

It's the same with CPUs. I will never forget the feeling of upgrading my K6-2 500 to a Thunderbird 1333. It's a jump in performance & stability that I've never experienced again since then. All other subsequent upgrades have been like: "yeah, it's noticeably faster". 😀

Well..GF2MX was a different beast as its improvements were really quite substantial compared to TNT2 M64 for me, because it has the one thing that the TNT2 M64 missed...great performance. GF2 MX was an awesome card for its time and definitely deserves its own place in the spotlights 😀.

As far as main rigs are concerned, I went from a Katmai 550MHz to an Athlon64 2.2GHz and the performance differences are almost incomparable 😋
Things went so fast back then..
I did have some in-between rigs though of various performance levels and I also used other people's computers more often back then.

Speaking of TNT2 M64/Vanta, 3dfx had answer in form of ~$55 Velocity 100. Much better proposition for ss7 users than tnt/tnt2, especially after unlocking second TMU. The problem at that point was STB acquisition - Everyone and their dog were manufacturing cheap noname M64 cards in Taiwan, while 3dfx couldnt ramp up Velocity output without sacrificing 2000/3000 numbers with their sole Mexico facility. I havent seen Velocity being offered at all in Europe/Poland.

As product out-of-the-box, Velocity was worse than M64/Vanta.

Yes, but it was $55 vs $75. Imo fair deal for maybe what, 5% less fps in 480p? higher resolutions werent all that usable on those low end cards.

Tetrium wrote on 2023-05-12, 10:55:

As far as main rigs are concerned, I went from a Katmai 550MHz to an Athlon64 2.2GHz and the performance differences are almost incomparable 😋
Things went so fast back then..

Sorry, but my K6-2 500 to Thunderbird 1.33 GHz upgrade still wins in terms of performance and stability jump (especially if your Katmai was running on a 440BX motherboard). 😜
In your case, the performance jump is greater than mine, but in terms of stability... you were probably in a much better position. 😁
At that time, I had a FastFame Ali Aladdin V board and it's by far the worst board I've ever owned in my life. I really wish I could get my hands on it again... trying to make that platform run stable (with the knowledge I have now) would be my greatest achievement! 😀