Nvidia Riva TNT2

Historia

M64 and VANTA were budget versions of the TNT2. The nVidia original of this card was also called the GM1000-32. The M64 means this card has a 64-bit memory width (as opposed to the TNT2s 128-bit memory width). This results in half the memory access performance. Typically the VANTA cards (also 64-bit memory width) run a 100 MHz core clock frequency as well as memory speed, so are even slower than most M64 cards. The Riva TNT2 M64 was a graphics card by NVIDIA, launched in October 1999. Built on the 250 nm process, and based on the NV5 B6 graphics processor, in its 64 variant, the card supports DirectX 6.0. The NV5 B6 graphics processor is a relatively small chip with a die area of only 90 mm² and 15 million transistors. It features 2 pixel shaders and 0 vertex shaders, 2 texture mapping units and 2 ROPs. Due to the lack of unified shaders you will not be able to run recent games at all (which require unified shader/DX10+ support). NVIDIA has placed 16 MB SDR memory on the card, which are connected using a 64-bit memory interface. The GPU is operating at a frequency of 125 MHz, memory is running at 143 MHz. Being a single-slot card, the NVIDIA Riva TNT2 M64 does not require any additional power connector, its power draw is not exactly known. Display outputs include: 1x VGA. Riva TNT2 M64 is connected to the rest of the system using an AGP 4x interface. Rough theoretical performance of this card is 250 MPixel/s pixel rate, and 250 MTexel/s texture rate. Memory bandwidth is approximately 1.144 GB/s. Typically in real gaming performance, the M64 will outperform the original TNT at lower resolutions (320x200, 640x480 or 800x600) but starts to be on par with TNT performance levels at anything higher, due to having a smaller memory bandwidth. You can overclock an M64 card however, so focus this on the memory clock for best performance gains. Cards with 32 MB of memory helped the TNT2 Model 64 compete in higher-resolution settings, and in late 1999 this would have been a mid-market choice; not the cheapest slowest card around, but also not the fastest, and for under £90 was within reach of many. If you were in the market for an nVidia card but had more cash to throw around youd instead look at the TNT2 Ultra.