Product Comparisons
The main competitor to the TNT2 was the 3dfx Voodoo3. What the Voodoo3 lacked when compared to the TNT2 was 32-bit color. This was the main selling point of the TNT2, while the main selling point of the Voodoo3 was the speed advantage it often had over the TNT2. The 3dfx Glide API was still popular at this time, and frequently performed faster and with better image quality than alternative renderers (such as Direct3D and OpenGL). Some games also had exclusive 3D features when used with Glide, including Wing Commander: Prophecy.
Voodoo3 cards render internally in 32-bit precision color depth. They then use a post filter within the RAMDAC to change to a 22-bit equivalent output that is close in quality to 32-bit color without 32-bit rendering's hardware demands. While Voodoo3's 16-bit output is superior to TNT2's 16-bit output, it lacks full 32-bit color support. It was very difficult to capture this 22-bit image because it was processed by the DAC, not by the 16-bit 3D hardware. Screenshot software captures from the framebuffer rather than the monitor output and thus does not capture the 22-bit image. This is why many 16-bit quality comparisons between TNT2 and Voodoo3 erroneously regard TNT2 16-bit quality as close to Voodoo3 when in reality Voodoo3 16-bit quality was close to TNT2 32-bit quality. These errors worked in Nvidia's favour.
The Voodoo3 and TNT2 also differ in that the Voodoo3 has a single dual-texturing pipeline (1x2), while the TNT2 has two single-texturing pipelines (2x1). This means that in games which only put a single texture on a polygon face at once, the TNT2 can be more efficient and faster. However, when TNT2 was launched, single-texturing was no longer used in most new games.
One alarming fact that many hardware review sites noted was that the TNT2 could still be outperformed by two 3dfx Voodoo2 running in SLI mode. In games that supported the Glide API, Voodoo2 SLI setups were able to consistently perform faster and offer better image quality than the TNT2. Voodoo2 cards were more than a year old but could still beat current Nvidia technology.
Read more about this topic: RIVA TNT2
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