No, some Banshees and i740s had it too. 1998 must have been the year it started to become mainstream. Could be that some earlier obscure CAD card had it but I doubt it, since they weren't single chip designs with significant heat output on a small space.

Also there was this (aftermarket?) cooler for Voodoo2: http://tdfx.de/pic/stealth_v2cooler_01.JPG

There were some before 1998 that had fans but were not consumer cards and were limited to only the high end. The Banshee and i740 as well some of the Riva TNT cards were the first consumer cards to have fans. ATI didn't have anything that needed a fan until the Rage Fury era and Nvidia didn't have anything that really needed a fan till the Geforce 256/Geforce2.

m1so wrote:

What was the first videocard to have active cooling? Was it the TNT2?

My Diamond Monster Voodoo 2. 😊 It didn't actually ship with a fan but after having 2 die on me I added one to the third one, that did the trick.

I was a fan of the first Voodoo card... 😉

What about Canopus Pure3D II? May be it was one of the first

There was a Pure 3D (Voodoo1) with an optional fan upgrade.

My Quantum3D X-24 has a cooling fan. It was optional, but it was still 1998. Canopus also had a first generation Riva TNT (not TNT2) card with a fan in 1998.

Canopus also had a V2 with a fan in 1998