PCI cards like these are good for use in systems that don't have AGP, like socket7 for instance (though it would be overkill in those). Or as a second video card in an AGP system, e.g. for multi-monitor setups.

It would be great with a late Pentium MMX or a Pentium 2 or early Celeron that doesn't have AGP. Is this actually an original TNT or is it a TNT2?

Original TNT. Creative CT6700

Creative? That's nice. i have seen MANY tnt's trough the years but they always are diamond viper v550's, i've never seen another brand here. TNT2 we had far more flavors but diamond was still very popular.

It is a decent card and performs the same as the crippled TNT2 M64. According to the Anandtech review it is faster than a matrox g200 and comes pretty close to a single voodoo2 sometimes.

Don't forget Riva TNT PCI is slower than regular AGP. My tests show AGP is 40% faster... so PCI TNT lacks quite a lot to match V2 performance.

I also have the Creative AGP TNT card, but I have a place for that one in one of the builds I am going to do...

Just cant find a home for this one for now.....

The TNT PCI is one of the fastest DOS video cards, very compatible, and has built in VESA 2.0. It makes the perfect graphics card for a Pentium-based DOS PC.

I always felt like TNT was one of those cards that was kinda an in-betweener use case card. It won't do anything that a TNT2 wouldn't do better not to mention all your Geforce MX options which are really good as well, and if your ok with the level of performance it provides a Voodoo 3 would do that and give you Glide capabilities as well.

I am curious as to what your other build is.

havli wrote:

Don't forget Riva TNT PCI is slower than regular AGP. My tests show AGP is 40% faster... so PCI TNT lacks quite a lot to match V2 performance.

wow....that is quite a difference. What is the reason for that? Is the pci version castrated?

havli wrote:

Don't forget Riva TNT PCI is slower than regular AGP. My tests show AGP is 40% faster... so PCI TNT lacks quite a lot to match V2 performance.

Interesting!!
Is this the average from your benchmarks? You have done a lot of benchmarks... even with a faster Athlon XP, you would never pair with a TNT building a rig, but it's to compare all card together.
http://hw-museum.cz/benchmark-2-16.php
http://hw-museum.cz/benchmark-2-20.php

For example, i have a Hercules 3D Prophet II MX PCI. Would be interesting how much it is slower than the AGP model. Looking at your benchmarks, you have compared PCI and AGP versions, mainly
Voodoo3, 4 and 5, the Voodoo Banshee, the Kyro and the RivaTNT.

Yes, exactly - the first link (Performance summary - old games)
I have no idea how AGP vs PCI would look like on older PC... like PII or K6. But when using AXP the performance hit is rather significant.

This chart is based on the same benchmark methodology. Actually I made it back in 2011 like the rest, just never made it to the public. Maybe when my website redesign is readym I'll update the article. 😀

meljor wrote:

wow....that is quite a difference. What is the reason for that? Is the pci version castrated?

The short answer is:

PCI bus runs at 33MHz and has a bandwidth of around 133Mbps (or 16.6 MBps).
AGP bus runs at 66MHz and has a bandwidth of around 266Mbps @ 2x, 533Mbps @ 4x, or 1.066Gbps @ 8x.
Also, AGP allows the graphics card to directly access system memory through its dedicated bus.

But also remember that when AGP was first released, a LOT of video card makers only installed an AGP-to-PCI bridge chip on their cards in order to allow it to talk on the ABP bus, otherwise their PCI and AGP cards were identical (same memory chips, same processors, same internal configurations). But even then, you're still getting nearly twice the data throughput on the AGP bus because of the 66MHz bus clock.

It took years before card makers actually designed their graphics cards AROUND the AGP bus, but by that time, PCI-Express was just on the horizon.

And for the OP, I got a Riva TNT2 32MB AGP card for my Win98 rebuild and paired it with a pair of STB Voodoo2 12MB cards. I haven't installed a game yet that required me to step away from the Voodoo cards and use the TNT2 chip, but it was hella-cheap at only $10 + Shipping on Ebay. And it works.

I am tying an AGP TNT with 2 Voodoo2 cards in a Windows 98SE build as I try to keep my stuff all same year or within 8-12 months of each other for all parts. In this case 1998 parts.

IMHO main reason is an AGP Texturing feature used by TNT and all modern AGP cards.
Voodoo3 not using AGP advanced features and PCI version is not so crippled compared to AGP.

BTW: ATI Rage 128 used in PowerMac G4 is reported to use 66MHz PCI Bus.
What other PCI cards used 66MHz PCI feature? (if we ignore 64bit PCI-X with 133MHz used in server boards)

Smack2k wrote:

Just cant find a home for this one for now.....

How about in a socket 3 system? Perhaps with a Pentium Overdrive? With a POD100 it will give you 30 fps in GLQuake.

As much as I try to keep things specific to years, I was thinking of the Socket 5 Motherboard I have paired with a Pentium 75..

Socket 3 sounds good, but none of my socket 3's have PCI slots in them....

Socket 5 system sounds like a great thing to use it for.

meljor wrote:

Creative? That's nice. i have seen MANY tnt's trough the years but they always are diamond viper v550's, i've never seen another brand here. TNT2 we had far more flavors but diamond was still very popular.

Being from the same country, I can say that I've had the exact same experience 🤣

TNT1 only ever seen the Diamond ones. TNT2 I actually have seen an ASUS one (though when I got it or found it, I had hoped it was a GF1), but most were again Diamond ones (both TNT2 non-Ultras and TNT2 Ultras).

Btw, I liked having a TNT2 16MB PCI graphics card in my non-AGP Celeron 400 rig 😀

Tetrium wrote:

Being from the same country, I can say that I've had the exact same experience lol […]
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meljor wrote:

Creative? That's nice. i have seen MANY tnt's trough the years but they always are diamond viper v550's, i've never seen another brand here. TNT2 we had far more flavors but diamond was still very popular.

Being from the same country, I can say that I've had the exact same experience 🤣

TNT1 only ever seen the Diamond ones. TNT2 I actually have seen an ASUS one (though when I got it or found it, I had hoped it was a GF1), but most were again Diamond ones (both TNT2 non-Ultras and TNT2 Ultras).

Btw, I liked having a TNT2 16MB PCI graphics card in my non-AGP Celeron 400 rig 😀

I have an ASUS TNT2, is an ASUS AGP V3800/16M HP OEM, i checked that card and is a full TNT2 card with only 16 MB RAM though