The RIVA TNT2 is a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT (NV4). RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator. The "TNT" suffix refers to the chip's ability to work on two texels at once (TwiN Texel). Nvidia removed RIVA from the name later in the chip's lifetime. The main competitor to the TNT2 was the Voodoo3, which compared to the TNT2 lacked 32-bit color output in 3D. This was a distinguishing point for the TNT2, while the Voodoo3 was marketed under the premise of superior speed and game compatibility. The 3dfx Glide API was still popular at this time, and frequently performed faster and with better image quality than non-vendor locked APIs Direct3D and OpenGL. Some games also had exclusive 3D features when used with Glide, including Wing Commander: Prophecy, and the popular Unreal had a troubled development history with regards to Direct3D and was plagued by issues such as missing details in this mode.

Voodoo3 cards render internally in 32-bit precision color depth. This is dithered down for the 16-bit framebuffer, which is then postprocessed by a 2x2 box filter in the RAMDAC, dubbed "22-bit equivalent" output by marketing. 32-bit rendering became much more important with heavier use of alphablending and multipass effects in games, however.

thumb|Chaintech A-MX20 Nvidia TNT2 ()

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.

Variants

thumb|[[Diamond Multimedia Viper V770 AGP, 32 MB video memory]]

Falcon Northwest, a high-end PC company, and Guillemot, an international video card manufacturer, at one point cooperated to create the Falcon Northwest Special Edition Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 SE. It was a TNT2 Ultra card designed to operate at a record-breaking 195 MHz core and similarly impressive 235 MHz RAM. This was far and away the highest clocked TNT2 model released. The card used special extremely low latency (for the time) 4.3 ns SDRAM to achieve the high RAM clock speed. The regular Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 came with the core clocked at 175 MHz and memory at either 183 MHz or 195 MHz, depending on which RAM chips the board arrived with.

The Creative 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra came clocked at the standard 150 MHz core and 183 MHz RAM. However, Creative included a unique software package that allowed the user to run software that used 3dfx's Glide. This wrapper, named Unified, was not as compatible with Glide games as real 3dfx hardware, but it was also the only card available other than a 3dfx card that could run Glide software. The main use of the wrapper was to allow 3D acceleration of games that only supported Glide 3D accelerators.

Hercules equipped their Dynamite TNT2 Ultra with faster-than-stock components, as well. The card came with a 175 MHz core clock and 200 MHz memory. The card lacked TV output, however.

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! colspan="4" |Fillrate

! colspan="4" |Memory

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! colspan="2" |Latest API support

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! style="text-align:left" |Riva TNT2 M64

|October 1999

| rowspan="1" |NV6

| rowspan="2" |TSMC 250 nm

| rowspan="1" |

| rowspan="1" |

| rowspan="4" |AGP 4x, PCI

| rowspan="2" |125

| rowspan="2" |150

|rowspan="4" |2:2:2

| rowspan="2" |250

| rowspan="2" |250

| rowspan="2" |250

|rowspan="4" |0

|8 <br>16 <br>32

|1.2

| rowspan="4" |SDR

|rowspan="1" |64

|?

|rowspan="4" |6.0

|rowspan="4" |1.2

|-

! style="text-align:left" |Riva TNT2

|March 15, 1999

| rowspan="3" |NV5

| rowspan="3" |15

| rowspan="3" |90

|16<br />32

|2.4

| rowspan="3" |128

|?

|-

! style="text-align:left" |Riva TNT2 Pro

|October 12, 1999

|TSMC 220&nbsp;nm

|143

|166

|286

|286

|286

|16<br />32

|2.656

|?

|-

! style="text-align:left" |Riva TNT2 Ultra

|March 15, 1999

|TSMC 250&nbsp;nm

|150

|183

|300

|300

|300

|16<br />32

|2.928

|?

|}

Competing chipsets

  • 3dfx Voodoo2
  • 3dfx Voodoo3
  • Matrox G400
  • ATI Rage 128
  • S3 Graphics Savage4

References

  • TNT2 - The Mainstream 128-bit TwiN Texel 3D Processor. Archived
  • Drivers of Giga-Byte TNT2 M64 for Win98/2000/NT/XP