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TNT owners are going to jizz their pants when 221 comes out. The voodoo 2 is dead. Tim has been locked in his chamber of magick conjuring up something very very cool indeed.

We're working with lots of hardware manufacturers (we hope to get a look at the Voodoo3 soon!). We are definitely not specializing in one technology - we want Unreal technology to run well on LOTS of different hardware! We're just glad that Tim's finally got robust, reliable performance on the TNT.

Huh!?! - I remember the words that TNT is.....who cares. Letīs wait (<g>) and see if Epic gives us some final solution for Unreal.

Yes, we have been doing a lot of soul searching lately regarding the graphics business. We truly love it but it hasn't been loving us back. The saturated Voodoo2 market over the summer gave us quite a start. The prices dropped like a rock and the channel was stuffed all summer. The SPECTRA 2500 sales have been great, in fact, too great. We underforecasted and ran out of product. Based on the summer experience with Voodoo2 boards, a decision was made to not restart manufacturing because boards would not be available until late January at the earliest. We had no idea demand would remain so strong. As time slips away and prices for TNT boards start to erode, we felt that we should not step back in. Our market in Japan remains strong and we will continue in that market with the 3200 and other products.

Thatīs a hard loss for us users outside, because Canopus made very innovative products in the past with surprising features, like 800x600 TV out with a RIVA 128 card and Voodoo passthrough on Spectra 2500.

You can easily overclock the ASUS V3400 with the new ASUS V3400 TNT Tweak - but what are the results you can get with it?
I made a couple of Benchmark-runs to find out: ASUS V3400 Overclocking

This software enables you to overclock your ASUS V3400TNT. You can change the chipclock (Engine) of the TNT and the memclock (Memory) of the board. In addition, you cann accelerate the Memory acces Time.
Important: This software is BETA!!!!! Use it on your own risk! You should not set values of more than 100MHz with TNT (Engine) and 120MHz Memclock (Memory) if you donīt know what your are doing!
Press the button 'Test settings' before you press 'OK' or 'use settings'!

Download: ASUS V3400 TNT Tweak v1.0b BETA

It has hardly ever been as easy to give my recommendations as in this graphics card comparison. The only TNT cards that I would buy are the Asus V3400TNT or even better the Asus V3400TNT/TV as well as the Hercules Dynamite TNT. Although those cards are the only two that come without a software bundle, the hardware and usability features speak for themselves. The Asus cards have the best cooling, good drivers, excellent 'overclockability' and the V3400TNT/TV has the best video-out feature and is the only one with video-in feature as well. The Hercules card also comes with very good cooling, the best drivers and a guaranteed 'overclockability' to 98/125 MHz.

You can find the complete test here. Note: I couldnīt find any slow memorytimings with my ASUS card as tom mentioned in his review. My card runs with a memclock of 110MHz as any other TNT card.

Stratics made a 3D card shootout and compared the nVidia TNT with 3Dfx Banshee, 3Dfx Voodoo2 and S3 Savage 3D:

I TNT- coupled with AGP 2x texture storage, 16MB of memory, 32 bit rendering and a host of other great features, the TNT is hard to beat. Benchmarks were always close to the top. Image quality is excellent with good color saturation and a minimum of banding in any game I used. This chipset will be great for any near 3D games.

3Dx Banshee made rank II, Voodoo2 rank III and the S3 Savage 3D rank IV. Check out the full shootout here.

Download: ASUS V3400TNT SDRAM Bios v2.04.17 INOFFIZIELLES RELEASE

So anyway, I've got my shiny new Riva TNT, but I was wondering where those 3D Now! drivers were, so I can play Quake 2 faster than a P2, and a higher res than SLI :). Also, our good buddy Keith, over at AMD, reminded me that the 3DNow! Quake 2 patch is not just for V2, but video cards that have 3DNow! OpenGL driver support, and that S3's is coming along nicely. Anyway, here's the scoop on 3DNow! RivaTNT drivers:

Hi Jeff,

We are working on adding support for 3DNow to our drivers. When the performance improvements and stability are where we want them to be, I
will make sure we release new drivers to the web. In short, the memory architecture on Super7 requires quite a bit more work in order to get
better performance.

Regards,
-Nick

Planethardware reviewed the ELSA Erazor II:

With a recommended street price of $169, it's definitely a bit pricey for a TNT board, most of which are now retailing for $130 to $140, but the addition of an onboard fan and custom drivers almost make up the the price difference, but not much. If you look hard enough for retailers around the net, you can find this exact board through sources like Pricewatch for around $130 and less, a reasonable price. This is simply a top quality TNT board,which lives up to every one of my expectations and beat some of them, I was very impressed.

You can find the full article here: Erazor II Review
Note: The card theyīve tested was equiped with a cooling fan. Elsa replaced this fan with a passive cooling solution (heatsink) in November/Dezember!

Adrian made a review of the Creative Labs Graphics Blaster TNT:

Personally, I think the Creative Labs Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT card is a great buy. It's cheaper than most other RIVA TNT cards while offering equal if not better performance, excellent driver support and a reasonably good shot at overclocking. Creative appears to be giving the RIVA TNT its personal touch and I think that's good news for GraphicsBlaster RIVA TNT users. Finally, someone cares enough to take a product and make it better where it counts most.

Check out the complete review: CL Graphics Blaster TNT review

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