I'm back to testing and Benchmarking a few of my non-3dfx Cards.

Among that I found a RivaTNT2 Pro, so I just gave the supposed 3dfx-Killer of these days a go.

Nice to see how NVidia boosted the performance, but see for yourself :

http://www.falconfly.de/temp/IQ-Radeon7200-vs-RivaTNT2pro.gif

ATI : Catalyst 5.5, max. Quality, 32bit Textures
NV : Detonator 61.76 (16/07/2004), max. Quality, 32bit Textures

32bit Textures were chosen on the Radeon as well since the TNT2 does not support DXT/Compressed Textures. Both ran on absolutely identical settings.

Just note that the Detonator isn't too old (the latest I could install for that ELSA Erazor III pro).

Old but still a deva vu about old Image Quality discussions ;)

Nice. I haven't seen that done since the Reverend did that at Voodoo Extreme (I think) where he had a V5 5500 showing with and without FSAA X 4.

I would be cool if you could add a voodoo3 in the mix.

Since I'm cycling through the Cards and can't use NVidia Reference Drivers on the ELSA, I won't touch that TNT2 Pro again ;)

Blurring of the ground textures and some of the rooftops is interesting, looks like the Nv driver is a bit too aggressive in that respect.

wrote on 02.06.05 at 13:20:08:

and can't use NVidia Reference Drivers on the ELSA,

Interesting you mention that, when I was testing my Canopus Spectra 2500 the latest drivers won't install either as it doesn't "detect" a TNT board!

I think it's due to the PCI DeviceID.

At least with ELSA, the company actually was liquidated and only recently re-emerged (with no continued support for their legacy products from the pre-crash time).

I'm sure that with OmegaDrive's Drivers those should work as well (otherwise requires manual fiddling in the .inf)
I could imagine NVidia removed ELSA PCI DeviceID's from official support, since the company was supposed to vanish.

The Image Quality tests work only in the Professional Version, after finishing a run one just needs to save the Project as (pick any filename).
Together with the Results, the Images are saved in their own Quality folder.

The textures on the TNT2 are dreadful!  The worst of the lot.
True, Voodoo3 can only produce 16-bit, but have you seen the more depth and extensive shadows that are created from environment objects (the cobbled floor for example).  Much better than ANY of the other cards you benchmarked.