TNT2 M64 Vanta - less driver jank. Could be slower, depending on your Savage 4 specs, which vary wildly.

Well, TNT2 even has Win16 support.

32 MB probably won't make a difference. Geforce2 MX has low power consumption, maybe some tweaking is needed instead.

Thank you to everyone for your opinions . Both cards are Manli-branded, so rather lowend, but work smoothly.
Savage is clocked at 110/110, while Vanta 125/125 - Vanta does have 6ns of memory, so it's no problem to overclocked it a bit to the frequencies of standard TNT2, Savage then overcomes, though not significantly. Even Savage would go a bit faster, but I don't know how far and how it would turn out on performance (7ns VRAM).

I was still thinking about Voodoo3 2000 PCI, but to my surprise it is noticeably weaker in 3DM99 than the two cards mentioned (Savage and Vanta over 3000 pts, 35 and 28 FPS vs 1900 pts and 27 and 14 FPS with V3).
So it really seems like the best choice of the aforementioned will be to leave Vanta there.

@Putas:
I read somewhere that the Ali V boards sometimes had trouble getting enough AGP power, so I thought that was my problem, too.
GF2 worked for me in 2D, they passed the 3D test in dxdiag, but in 3DM the computer freezes and a restart is necessary.
I'll try a few more tweaks in the registers that are written about online and see if anything changes.

I don't know about desktops, but i know that laptop versions of the S3 savage (such as the amilo pro laptops) are a savage pain in the neck to get working properly under win98 with acceleration, so my immediate choice would be one of the nVidias... and that's before i even try running actual games.

S3 Savage 4 has issues with GUI mouse acceleration, from my experience.

Savage 4 cards can be problematic from a driver standpoint.
With that being said, it's probably a bit faster than a M64 version of the TNT2.
Hard to say, without knowing which version you have. But you said Vanta with 125/125 clocks.
The Nvidia card with definitely be less of a headache.

If you aren't opposed to eBay, I would try and pick up a cheapish full TNT2 Pro, or even a OEM Geforce2GTS.
You can probably score one under $20 shipped if you are patient.
A Voodoo 3 is a good option, but they won't be cheap to find no matter what.
Even a Velocity 1000 or Banshee will be way more money.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-02-13, 18:31:

Savage 4 cards can be problematic from a driver standpoint. With that being said, it's probably a bit faster than a M64 version […]
Show full quote

Savage 4 cards can be problematic from a driver standpoint.
With that being said, it's probably a bit faster than a M64 version of the TNT2.
Hard to say, without knowing which version you have. But you said Vanta with 125/125 clocks.
The Nvidia card with definitely be less of a headache.

If you aren't opposed to eBay, I would try and pick up a cheapish full TNT2 Pro, or even a OEM Geforce2GTS.
You can probably score one under $20 shipped if you are patient.
A Voodoo 3 is a good option, but they won't be cheap to find no matter what.
Even a Velocity 1000 or Banshee will be way more money.

That's not the problem, I have both the GF2 GTS Pro (but it freezes in 3D) and Voodoo3 (but that has surprisingly lower performance in this build than I would expect, as I write above) and I don't want to buy another card just yet, maybe later.
If I can't get one of those GF2 running up there, I'll leave that Vanta for now.

Ydee wrote on 2023-02-14, 17:07:

Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-02-13, 18:31:

Savage 4 cards can be problematic from a driver standpoint. With that being said, it's probably a bit faster than a M64 version […]
Show full quote

Savage 4 cards can be problematic from a driver standpoint.
With that being said, it's probably a bit faster than a M64 version of the TNT2.
Hard to say, without knowing which version you have. But you said Vanta with 125/125 clocks.
The Nvidia card with definitely be less of a headache.

If you aren't opposed to eBay, I would try and pick up a cheapish full TNT2 Pro, or even a OEM Geforce2GTS.
You can probably score one under $20 shipped if you are patient.
A Voodoo 3 is a good option, but they won't be cheap to find no matter what.
Even a Velocity 1000 or Banshee will be way more money.

That's not the problem, I have both the GF2 GTS Pro (but it freezes in 3D) and Voodoo3 (but that has surprisingly lower performance in this build than I would expect, as I write above) and I don't want to buy another card just yet, maybe later.
If I can't get one of those GF2 running up there, I'll leave that Vanta for now.

Gotcha.
I guess I missed that part.

Honestly with any recent non plus K6 chip I have used...has been rather disappointing for me.
I think that my fonder memories of using my old PC Chips K6/2 combo is just not very accurate. Rose colored lenses I suppose.
They just don't perform as well as I remember.

The plus chips make a very significant difference.
Also I have had rather bad luck with ALi chipsets with AGP implementation.
People can say all they want about the VIA MVP chipsets, but when combined with the right drivers I have always had a good easy experience with them.
You do leave some memory bandwidth performance on the table though.

TNT2 Vanta-16 for the win.

Better and more stable drivers. Some of them overclocks madly. I have one Vanta from year 2001, and it overclocks memory to 200 mhz, of course core is going obligatory 150 mhz, tried 160 still worked. At 160/200 (64-bit), it's like TNT2 on 160 mhz/ 100 mhz (128-bit), so not so far from regular TNT2.

Finally, I managed to get the GeForce2 cards to work with the board by editing the keys in the ALi AGP registers (thanks to the instructions on the Planet3DNow! website http://www.planet3dnow.de/artikel/diverses/al … nt2/index.shtml and http://www.planet3dnow.de/files/regs/aladdin_tweak.reg)

However, practical performance in games has only increased cosmetically due to the weak CPU, so the most practical option will really be to keep Vanta there or replace her with some full-fledged TNT2/PRO/Ultra.
I thank everyone for their advice and help.

Ydee wrote on 2023-02-18, 07:42:

However, practical performance in games has only increased cosmetically due to the weak CPU, so the most practical option will really be to keep Vanta there or replace her with some full-fledged TNT2/PRO/Ultra.
I thank everyone for their advice and help.

Not sure which Nvidia driver version you used, but try benchmarking your MX400 with something like 7.76.

Some later drivers expect CPUs with more modern instruction sets (SSE and such) so they might not be a good fit for your K6-2.

Thank you for the advice, I'll try it - I think I tested with something like 21.83?

If you play a lot of Unreal based Games, the S3 may have better texture quality and is native supported with s3 metal.

Otherwise, the TNT has better Drivers.