I decided to buy TNT card, but I can't make up my mind!!!
1. Velocity 4400. not great 2d/3d speed and some driver problems.
2. VIPER 550. great performance, good driver support from diamond, but some compatibility problems
3. Creative Labs TNT. great performance, VERY LOW PRICE!!!!
HELP ME OUT WITH A CHOICE. MY FAVOURITE IS CREATIVE TNT.
Still get a tnt, but get a Canopus Spectra 2500 card. That is if you have an agp port on your mother board. If not get one of the others.
My reasoning:
1) Canopus has the best drivers of them all.
2) The spectra 2500 has higher quality tv-out at higher resolutions, and will run both tv and monitor at the same time.
3) The spectra 2500 is the most stable.
4) More features like the witchdoctor technology for voodoo1/2 reverse pass through.
5) The only video card to ever score a 10 at the office of Maximum pc magazie (formerly boot magazine)This got their Kick ***! product award.
But if this does not suit your fancy, or if you only have a pci bus, then get the velocity 4400. Its drivers are more stable than diamonds, and It has applets for controlling d3d, opengl and tv-out settings. Both card got a 9 by maximum pc, but the velocity 4400 got a Kick ***! product award.
Thanks collinj.
First thing is that you didn't convince me about buying Spectra2500.
1)OK, Spectra might have the best drivers
2)TV out is good, but I'm not looking for a TV-out
3)Spectra2500 is not the most stable, specially on resolutions above 1024*768, when picture starts to get worse.
4)Thumb's up for Witchdoctor, but I'm not looking for that either.
5)Whatever.
Viper is still card with many problems and Creative TNT has good performance as Viper and I didn't hear too many noise about Creative, so I hope it's ok.
So I guess my choice is STB 4400 or Creative.
If there is any site that compares these two cards let me now!
I dont know where you read about the canopus spectra 2500, but from all the reviews I have read, they say that the canopus one is the most stable, because canopus did not overclock the card in the drivers. Diamond and stb have the habbit of overclocking the video cards, to get better performance on benchmarks. The tests also showed that the diamond and stb cards were "purposely" dropping frames on some benchmarks to show higher frame rates than the card can actually do. Canopus does not do this with their drivers, and the reviews I have seen show it to be more stable because of it.
Also the canopus supports higher resolutions and refresh rates than all the other cards do. 3d performance is slightly behind the others due to the overclocking issue I just mentioned. There have been no spec/direct reviews of the creative tnt that I have been able to find so far, but unless you can find this card for significantly cheaper than the others, dont get it. It is a total reference product. Board is straight reference design for a non tv-out card, and the drivers are reference drivers from nVidia, with creatives name on them. The performance of all these cards are on par with each other, with the exception of the canopus being slightly slower on benchmarks. The stb and the diamond cards are almost the same. If I find more about the creative, ill let you know.
HEHEHE.collinj you're not listening to me. I probably agree that Spectra is the most stable card right now because it is not overclocked and it supports higher resolution, but bandwith is not great at all and there is some ringing in the signal, that is more obvious on higher resolutions (above 1024*768).
I've heard that Real 3D StarFighter is dropping frames to gain speed but nothing like that for STB.
And I don't feel like giving extra 50-80$ only for TV-out and Witchdoctor which I probably will never use.
It looks like my choice is STB, but I really wanna find out something about Creative TNT, it kicks *** on every benchmark and it costs around 100-100$!!!!!
Spectra is just way to expensive....
A friend of mine just bought a Creative TnT, and except for the lack of tv out, it runs on a par with my Velocity. And as for reference designs, most cards now are all reference designs, with maybe a fan added, or some new "technology" (witchdoctor is great, but to me the whole reason i spent 199.99 on a TnT is to not buy a voodoo2)
I installed a Viper V550 in early September. I have had NO problems what so ever. I almost purchased a new monitor until I saw the speed and image quality improvement with the TNT. Amazing! (I replaced an STB Virge S3 3D DECELERATOR).
I presume that all TNT cards are REAL GOOD since all are basically referance cards with some minor tweaks (STB has new drivers to solve some of their initial problems). Go for features, price and support.
Canopus's spectra is not a reference board. It is in a different form factor (its about half the size of other tnt cards), and utilized features that none of the other boards are using.
Canopus has never jumped to the market with a card that is not much more than the chip makers reference design. All of their cards vary from the chip makers reference boards.
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