TNT FAQ - At this point io try to give some answers about problems and questions you might have with your RIVA TNT card. I donīt have all possible hardware cinfiguration and canīt buy all new games, so I need oyur help. If youīve solved a problem that other people might have and the solution canīt be found here: let me know! - Share your information.
 

TNT and Super Socket7
To run the TNT on SS7 mainboards you must have the newest Bios Version for your mainboard. For that youīve to go to the Website of the board-manufactorer.
In addition you should use the newest drivers. The most drivers are solved with TNT drivers based on 0.38, 0.39 or newer reference drivers. If you areīnt shure about that and you can try if your problems are solved with the 0.41 reference drivers.
A driver for your mainboard is also important. The newest drivers can be found on the website of the board manufactorer or dirctly from the chipset-company (ALI - SIS - VIA). A good page to find them is the Mainboard drivers/bios page of the german site Computerhilfe.com. The newest TNT-drivers can be found on the Downloadpage. These problems do not occur with P-II chipsets.
Another Windows patch for AMD K6-2 with 350MHz can be found here. (19/11/98)
 

TNT and its IRQ
A TNT card must have a interrupt. If you mainboard bios offers a setting 'enable IRQ for VGA' you have to enable it. The PNP bios cares for the IRQ then. Itīs important that this IRQ is not used by other cards. The might be some problems with onboard components (SCSI/USB) because these devices are handeled as PCI devices and routed to one of the PCI slots. You should not use a PCI card that requires an IRQ in such a slot. Because the AGP slot-IRQ is shared with the PCI slot right under it you can get big trouble if your mainboard bios routes the IRQ of a onboard SCSI controller to that slot.
The slots, that are used by the boardvendors are different, so you canīt say what slot is used (19/11/98)
 

TNT and ASUS P2L-97
The are problems with older releases of the ASUS P2L-97 mainboard and the RIVA TNT because it does not supply enough power to zhe AGP slot. Thereīs a rework solution available, but you should contact the ASUS support first before you start cutting on your board.
This is only a problem of the P2L-97!! Other boards like the P2B do NOT have these problems. Other news are simply wrong! (19/11/98)
 

Mainboard BIOS Update

Read the readme-files that come with the new bios first. In addition you should keep an eye on the flasher util and ensure that itīs the right one for your board. Some vendors send you on a odyssey.
the update itself does only work in DOS-mode (hold F8 a system boot before windows is loaded) . A windows DOS box is not enough. Then follow the instructions that come with the bios flasher. (19/11/98)
 

3D image quality

Some D3D or openGL games offer a video-setting called RIVA or NVIDIA. You should NOT use them because most are for the older RIVA 128(ZX) that does not have all features that are supported by the TNT. Only if you can find TNT you shoukd use that setting. Mostly 'D3D default' offers all supported features or try some others. Also take a look in the readme file or helpfile that comes with the game. (19/11/98)
  

Tweaken
Tweaking or optimizing your drivers settings is not as important as it was with RIVA 128. Most games work very well with the default settings.
The Tweak tools of the vendors are mostly different so the values in the tweak utils might have other names. But their drives are based on the reference drivers of nVIDIA. So you have the possibility to make settings 'by hand' in the registry if your tweak tool does not have that option.
For that you must press 'Start - run' and enter regedit.

The TNT  Settings canbe found in: 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software....' in the folder NVIDIA Corporation or in folder of the card manufactorer:

As an example: NVIDIA Reference drivers:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\RIVA TNT\Direct3D

or ELSA drivers: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ELSA\ERAZORII\D3D

Some possibel settings your tweak may not offer:

ANTIALIASENABLE - value to 0 (DWORD) - disable antialiasing

NOVSYNC - value to 1 (DWORD) - disable vertical syncronosation with your monitor

MIPMAPDITHERENABLE - value to 0 (DWORD) - disable Mipmmap-Dithering

DX6ENABLE - value to 1 (DWORD) - enable DirectX6 functions

AUTOMIPMAPMETHOD -value to auf 0 (DWORD) - disable automipmapping

But beware: Changing the wrong values in the registry may crashl windows-installation! (19/11/98)
 

Overclocking

Like other graphics cards the TNT can be overclocked. For that you need a software like Powerstrip. Creative Labs offers an own tool for its cards. You have to test which values are stable with your card. Because of spreading in memorychips and various system-cooling itīs not possible to give you some values that work with every card.
Note: You should only try to overclock if your system runs stable and without crashes! If thatīs not the case you should not overclock because you canīt find the extreme points of your card. You waranty is gone if your card gets overheated because of overclocking! (19/11/98)
 

Windows installation

You should about a new installation if youīve used another VGA card before. I made some TNT tests with my old RIVA 128 installation and there where no problems with the old '128 drivers but there might be problems with other cards youīve used before.
You should not use the old Win95a version. Itīs crazy that you canīt update your old Win isntallation or buy it as an update. So take one newer version of a friend. Win95 OSR2.1 (+USB patch) or OSR2.5 are OK. (19/11/98)
 

Win95 - AGP

If you use Windows 95 older than OSR 2.5 you have to update your system because it does not recognize AGP. That occurs in error-messages when windows starts. The AGP patch masks as USB-patch (980KB). Windows 98 does not have these problems. But you still have to use the newest Mainboard drivers (19/11/98)
 

TNT - AGP or PCI

Most of the TNt cards are only available in an AGP version. Only Diamond and STB offer a PCI version. But you should really think future-oriented. The TNT needs a fast CPU to perform best (300MHz or higher). AGP also allows using system memory. This option is also available with the PCI cards, but itīs much slower like AGP 2x. In future games the size and resolution of the textures will explode. Then 16MB are no longer enough. (19/11/98)
 

0.35 Micron and its sucessor

The TNT is made in 0.35 first, as the 3Dfx Banshee. That results in a higher voltage and that follows in higher temperatures. As a result NVIDIA reduced the chipclock to 90MHz. These problems are like the problems with the first AMD K6 CPUīs. In germany the TNT-2 version that is build in 0.25 Micron will be available about march99 at CeBit time and will offer AGP 4x and up to 32MB. Rumors speak of a clock of about 150MHz. (19/11/98)
 

are there any cards that come with a higher clockspeed?

NO!
At the moment, all vendors use the values given out by NVIDIA: 90MHz Chipclock, 115MHz Memoryclock. (19/11/98)
 

SDRAM or SGRAM

TNT cards are available with SDRAM or SGRAM. Because of the adressing modes at 16MB there is no advantage of SGRAM at that amount of RAM. SGRAM advantages only at 8MB or in future (TNT-2) with 32MB. So higher performance at 16MB is not possible only by using SGRAM. (19/11/98)
 

Referencedrivers

The board-vendors get the newest referencedrivers from NVIDIA. These drivers are modified and extended by the board vendors as they want. Only a few versions of these referencedrivers are public. As an example: NVIDIA only offers v0.36a. But the newest Diamond or ASUS drivers are based on the version 0.41! Reference driver does not automaticaly mean better driver!(19/11/98)