Which is better? RIVA TnT or Banshee?
One thing's for sure, I know there's a lot of hype goin on here in Malaysia (yes that's where i come from ; not a bad place to be) about the 2 cards and i just need some expert advice and/or opinion about the 2...
I currently have a STB VElocity 4400TnT. And it is fast.The Voodoo Banshee is a voodoo2 with only 1 texture processor and no SLI setup. CAn't understand why they released something underpowered right after the voodoo2. The TnT is a kick chipset. I bought it mainly because it scales upward ,and will keep for a while. I'm not into buying new cards every 3 months
3Dfx released the Banshee to attack the budget end of the market, it was never intended to supercede the Voodoo2. In terms of absolute "betterness", the TNT is much better, but requires a fairly good kick-in-the-arse from a powerful CPU in order to perform at its best.
Basically the best choice depends on your computer. If your computer isn't top-end, get a Banshee. The TNT, as Chanse said, scales really well with the CPU and hence you only get your money's worth out of one if you have a powerful computer. If you've got a "lowly" MMX computer or a low-end PII, a Banshee is probably the best choice. Better CPUs will give you great performance with a TNT card. All of this is highly ironic at the moment because I'm running a computer that's slower than a Pentium 90
Hey guys thanks for your replies..... I just want you to know that I really appreciate you guys taking time to reply... well there is one more thing... since the RIVA TnT requires a top performance cpu to live up to its standard, is it ok for me to use a 300a Celeron (possibly overclocking it to 450MHz ) or an AMD K6-2 350MHz for this particullar card? Advice me on this one guys...
I think the TnT is a great choice on any platform. I'm running a dual P Pro 180Mhz, which is not very fast for games, but the TnT smokes. It may scale up with a better cpu and really shine, but i do feel i've gotten my 179.00 worth
Hi SoundZ... Celeron 300a @ 450MHz sounds mighty fine... I'm planing to get one myself... what kind of motherboard would you recomend me on getting? Is cooling an important factor here? If so how do I reduce the heat from the chip?
Is the performance of the 450MHz Celeron chip just as good as a Pentium 2 450MHz?
I am using the AOpen AX6B MB, and have 5 fans in my case (2 are the squirrel cage fans that you can get at Radio Shack for 9.95)that keeps things cool.The Aopen MB is great cuz it is jumperless, so all you do to OC the celeron since the clock is locked @ 4.5 is run the bus speed @ 100mhz. All of the parameters are done thru the BIOS. This board is great, and it even has a windows utility that tells you the CPU temp and other essential voltage settings.Goodluck
The celeron 300a overclocked to 450 will be close to the pII 450 in some things, but most it will be about the same power as a PII 400 or so. You may get some programs that will run slower, but there should not be many. And there may even be some programs that you will run that will run faster than a pII 450, due to the on die cache of the celeron runing at cpu speed.
Thanks guys for your replies. Actually I was planning to get an AMD 350MHz with the Diamond Viper v550 but since there is no direct support for the RIVA with AMD, I'm deciding to stick with the Celeron 300a. This is what I got down to :