TNT2 M64 16MB vs 32MB \ VOGONS

TNT2 M64 16MB vs 32MB

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First post, by appiah4

Posted on 2018-10-23, 04:06

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Between the two of these cards, is there a significant performance gap in a faster P3 system? I would think the 32MB would be able to accomodate things like 32-bit color and higher res textures in later games like Quake 3 but the card is a Voodoo2 class hardware no? That means it would not be suited for beyond 800x600x16 (32 in earlier games) and 16MB should theoretically be enough?

Asking because I hve a passive 16MB and an active cooled 32MB and I was hoping I could opt for silence (if I am going for a card with a fan I may as well stick the GF2 MC400 PCI in there) and not lose much.. I have a 9250 PCI in there at the moment but its not the best card for DOS games supposedly (we will see) so something that can do Win9x and DOS with passive cooling would be nice..

Reply 1 of 6, by amadeus777999

Posted on 2018-10-23, 11:10

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The M64 is kinda slow when it comes to 32bit color "drawing" because of its "crippled" bus.
The 16 vs 32MB issue seems kinda inane due to this, serious, shortcoming - 1GB+ vs 2GB+ per second in memory "bandwidth".

Just run Quake III on an M64 32MB and see if it fits your performance window. From what I can remember though... it's rather slow even in 640x480x32.

Reply 2 of 6, by appiah4

Posted on 2018-10-23, 12:57

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amadeus777999 wrote:
The M64 is kinda slow when it comes to 32bit color "drawing" because of its "crippled" bus.
The 16 vs 32MB issue seems kinda inane due to this, serious, shortcoming - 1GB+ vs 2GB+ per second in memory "bandwidth".

Just run Quake III on an M64 32MB and see if it fits your performance window. From what I can remember though... it's rather slow even in 640x480x32.

That is what I thought; it is basically a Voodoo 2 equivalent so I would expect 800x600x16 is the max playable resolution I would get get out of it in Quake 3.. Which is kind of fine, when you think about it.

A regular TNT2 though, I guess 32MB would make it possible to use 800x600x32 as opposed to topping out at 1024x768x16. I doubt even a regular TNT2 has the horsepower to do 1024x768x32 though, one would probably need a GeForce/Radeon for that?

Reply 3 of 6, by Fusion

Posted on 2018-10-24, 05:54

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The TNT2 (Pro/Ultra as well) all suck at Quake III. Even running 1024x768 with 16bit colour, you don't get the best performance.

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Reply 4 of 6, by appiah4

Posted on 2018-10-24, 06:38

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Fusion wrote:
The TNT2 (Pro/Ultra as well) all suck at Quake III. Even running 1024x768 with 16bit colour, you don't get the best performance.

Well, obviously Voodoo 2 class hardware is not the 'best' to run a demanding 1999 game on, but the M64 can run Quake III at 800x600x16 at 50+ fps no problems. TNT2 Pro/Ultra comfortably do 30+ FPS at 1024x768x32 in this game with a mid-range P3 CPU.

Reply 5 of 6, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 2018-10-24, 14:04

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Quake III is quite VRAM demanding on some maps with 16-bit color depth, but 32-bit textures.

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Reply 6 of 6, by amadeus777999

Posted on 2018-10-28, 10:17

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As SerpentRider stated there are two issues - memory size and memory speed. For drawing in 32bit color you need more "speed" and for the "assets" you need more ram.

I remember back when we were playing QIII that I always had to set the texture quality to 16bit, when using maximum quality settings(no "rounddown"), or the 16MB RIVA would choke due to swapping memory over the bus. To circumvent any slowdown I used 512x384 and overclocked the card.

Memory wise QIII/Map09 was especially demanding.

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