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Either way, when a single Voodoo2 outscores a TNT by some 5fps in Quake 2 at 640x480 then it's safe to say once again that the TNT is no Voodoo2 killer. It's certainly on par with a Voodoo Banshee though. The TNT scores slightly higher (by a frame or two) than the Voodoo Banshee in Demo1 at the higher resolutions (800x600 & 1024x768). However the Voodoo Banshee does beat the TNT at 640x480 though. Either way the performance between the Voodoo Banshee and the TNT is pretty close on the K6-2. And once again, with the Voodoo Banshee being some $50 cheaper and giving you the option to sample Glide based games the TNT doesn't seem all that sensible. Incoming was also a close call between the Voodoo Banshee and the TNT, with the Banshee outscoring in most cases (the TNT did get a higher fps in 1024x768). However, Sin was just too slow with a TNT and virtually unplayable in the low 20s. This was in single player I might add- what the frame rate would be with a much more robust benchmark is not too hard to imagine. The Voodoo Banshee wasn't all that much quicker but if you want to play at 640x480 then 24fps is pretty acceptable. Add to that that AMD will of course optimize 3DNow! and then it may even hit the 30fps mark.
(1) Sin - (2) Incoming - (3) Quake 2 demo1 - (4) Quake 2 demo2
With a Pentium II 300Mhz it was roughly the same story. The Voodoo2 beat the TNT based Spectra 2500 by a significant amount. And in SLI the Voodoo2 literally smoked the TNT by roughly 15fps in all resolutions. Even the Voodoo Banshee beat the TNT in 640x480 although the TNT did beat the Banshee at the higher resolutions. This shouldn't be in question though as with only one TMU the Banshee isn't supposed to compete with the TNT. The TNT was always pitched as a 'Voodoo2 killer', which once again it isn't.
If you want to get the max in terms of performance then the Voodoo2 in SLI is the way to go- if you've got the cash to splash that is. Even so the price of the Voodoo2 is really coming down to around $159. And with that in mind some Voodoo2 vendors that I've spoken to recently have said that by Xmas they will most likely try doing an SLI bundle for a competitive price. Somewhere below $300, which should go down a treat.
The only reason to go for the TNT instead of a Voodoo2 on a lower spec machine would be for the higher resolutions or better image quality. But playing Quake2 at 1600x1200 might look nice but at 10.1 fps on a K6-2 300Mhz it just doesn't shake a leg. The fact that the TNT does have the ability to render at 32-bit is of course nice but in practice the scores tend to be low. Incoming was still pretty playable though at 32-bit. But with parallel performance, the Voodoo Banshee makes more sense on the mid and lower end PC's of this world. And don't forget that you also get to play Glide based games with a Voodoo Banshee, which isn't an option with an Nvidia TNT. Why pay $50 more for a TNT, with roughly the same 2D and 3D performance (a lot of the time the performance is lower)? Beats me…
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