I've been reading a lot of comments about the TNT and an AMD CPU. I currently have a P233MMX with a Creative TNT AGP card. I am planning to upgrade to a K-6 III. I really scared about installing an AMD chip in my computer. What should I do? Should I stick with a P233 MMX? So far, I haven't had any problems running games. Maybe the only complaint is I start windows slower than when I had a ATI card plus a Voodoo card. Any comments????
They're not that bad. I've got a K6-2 350 and games run fine on it. If you're really obsessive then no, they're not baby-bottom smooth but that's without 3DNow drivers. The only game I had a problem with was half life, which chopped horribly at a heavy scene (only very occasionally). I think HL has 3dnow drivers too, plus nvidia is releasing 3dnow TNT drivers sometime soon.
A K6-III will definitely be faster than your P233, if you want the extra speed then go for it. I'm hoping the 3dnow drivers turn out well, apparently the latest "leaked" prerelease ones have shows pretty good increases (no numbers tho dagnabbit)
Well anandtech had those prerelease drivers before nVidia let them out. He did complete benches on the new drivers www.anandtech.com . I dont know if he still has the results up but the improvement was about 5 fps to 10, okay I guess but not for an AMD system, if you really want 32 bit color an AMD system is not good enough to push the framerates for good performance with a TNT. 3dfx will probably hold the top spot with AMD owners for a long time. I sold my TNT cause the cpu limited my framerates to about 40 in everygame, and that is only in 16 bit color.
Vidfreek:
I have gone to look for myself, If I get back before I return.....Keep me here
nVidia just released their new reference drivers yesterday (6/4/99). I don't know how well they address 3DNow usage but it's worth a try for all the AMD/TNT owners. Check it out at nvidia.com.
I am really interested in the latest TNT reference driver, please explain the results.
You can just ignore what most people said if they never own a TNT card or a AMD K6-2/3 CPU, only takes the advice from the people who has 1st hand experience. Also ignore commercialized benchmarks without industrial approval.
My opinion is that TNT is second best card for AMD K6-III, while Vooodoo3 is still the best card at this time. A future release of 3D Now optimized driver for TNT/2 will likely to give the card a lot of boost, with a huge amount of increase on rendering speed.
Check out the hardware sites... apparently the new 3DNow drivers for TNT/TNT2 push the TNT consistently ahead of a Voodoo 2. So TNT is really that good with AMD now.
Sushi-roll, I think you would be a whole lot better off if you got a Abit BX-6 motherboard and celeron 400 and overclocked it to 498. When overclocked they are about as fast as an equally clocked Pentium II. Games like halflife will run a whole lot better than the amd cpus. Also the TNT performs a whole lot better on celeron systems. I have a amd k6-2 350 and it runs extremely slow in half-life on a voodoo2 card. My friend has a Celeron 366 and a voodoo2 card and it runs a whole lot better in half life.
Don't listen to all these negative bull**** about AMD.
Let me tell you from my experience:
My system:
2013PA motherboard
350mhz AMD overclocked to 400mhz
STB TNT
128MB PC-100
Latest driver from Nvidia, ver 1.88(3DNow)
Quake2: 800x600 32bit mode = 58fps
By the way, it is as SMOOTH as a baby bottom!!
Half-Life too, NO PROBLEM..
Very smooth under direct X 6.1 and no chopping like others.
It is a matter of knowing HOW to setup your system right to get the best result.
I know horror stories from Intel users too who get chopping and no smooth baby bottom.
It shows they haven't setup their system right.
I usually get 35-40fps without 3DNow instructions and with it I get 20-25fps more which was a shock to me. That not even using powerstrip and with it I got 62-67fps.
What makes you worry is all that crazy market hypes which gives TNT a bad name.
Yes, all depends on if u CPU is fast enough to take advantage of TNT/TNT-2 and the 3DNow optimization in the near future. I am using a K6-III 400 Mhz CPU OC to 450Mhz with CL GB RIVA TNT. It beat both Celeron 433 and PIII 450 on Quake II with the TNT driver v1.76 (which is partially 3DNow optimized) A fully optimized 3DNow driver from NVIDIA will give TNT/TNT2 a lot of boost, probably makes the K6-III class CPU the fastest gaming machine up to date.
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