Low End TNT Based Systems

The Super-7 Test System AnandTech used was configured as follows:

• A Pentium MMX 233 on either an Iwill XA-100 (Aladdin V) or a FIC PA-2013 (MVP3) for compatibility testing

• 64MB Mushkin SEC PC100 SDRAM

• Western Digital 5.1GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive

• AOpen 32X IDE CD-ROM Drive

• Windows 98 with all of the latest patches/drivers installed

The benchmark suite consisted of the following full version game titles

• Forsaken - Running the Nuke Demo

• Quake 2 v3.17 using Demo1.dm2 and Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo

In-Depth Gaming Performance Comparison Charts

Quake 2 - Open GL Performance
Pentium MMX 233	Timedemo - 640 x 480
-	demo1.dm2	crusher.dm2
Creative Labs PCI Graphics Blaster TNT	26.9	12.5
-	Timedemo - 800 x 600
-	demo1.dm2	crusher.dm2
Creative Labs PCI Graphics Blaster TNT	26.8	12.5

Well, it turns out that the TNT chipset isn't too greatly limited by the PCI bus as it still packs a powerful punch even when paired with the Pentium MMX 233. Producing a range from 12 to close to 30 fps under Quake 2, and scores well above 50 fps under Forsaken for Direct3D performance, the TNT isn't too bad for a Socket-7 system especially considering the image quality the TNT brings to the game.

The crusher.dm2 scores will improve if you couple your processor with an AGP TNT instead of the PCI card used in these tests, just because of the increased transfer rates capable on the AGP bus in comparison to the PCI bus. With an AGP accelerator texture swapping becomes less of an ordeal and a smaller amount of performance degradation occurs with larger textures, a definite plus in the newer and upcoming 3D games.