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The
Skywell
Magic TNT
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TNT
Power at bargain basement prices!
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| When
nVidia's first generation TNT Video Chipset came into the market
place, the industry was amazed at the raw performance of a product
that actually had the ability to rival 3dfx's Voodoo 2 chipset. Time
marched on at the fast and steady pace that drives the PC industry
and newer technologies are now coming to fruition that will surpass
the original TNT chipset. Ultra TNT2, Voodoo 3 and S3's Savage4
products will be on the shelf by mid April. As a result, the legacy
technology of yesterday (which was not so long ago) now has it's
cost driven down to very attractive prices. This scenario fairs well
for the original TNT because of its solid performance which today is
still very respectable. The Magic TNT from Skywell
brings a low cost / high performance solution to users who do not
have the spare change to spring for today's latest a greatest
graphics products. Here's why... |
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SPECIFICATIONS
NVIDIA RIVA TNT
- True 128-bit
- Bus Type:
- PCI 2.1
compliant
- AGP 2X/1.0
compliant
- Memory:
- 16MB 125MHz
SDRAM
- Integrated
RAMDAC
- 250MHz
- Horizontal
Sync Signals:
- 31.5KHz-108.5KHz
- Vertical
Refresh:
- 60Hz-200Hz
- Maximum Dot
(Pixel) Rate:
- 250MHz RAMDAC
- Monitors
Supported:
- Standard and
Multi-frequency Analog Monitors
- DDC2B Plug
and Play
- Video
Playback:
- MPEG-1,
MPEG-2 (AGP only, U.S. and Canada only), Indeo & Cinepak
- Multi-tap X
and Y scaling and filtering
- Color space
conversion
- Connectors:
- DB-15 analog
monitor connector (VESA DDC2B)
- Performance
- 180Mpps fillrate (180Mtps)
- 6Million triangles/sec throughput
3D
FEATURES
- Alpha-Blending
- Anisotropic
Filtering
- Anti-Aliasing
- Bilinear
Filtering
- Bump Mapping
- Environment
Mapping
- Fogging
- Gouraud
Shading
- Hardware
Triangle Setup
- MIP Mapping
- Perspective
Correction
- Specular
Highlights
- Subpixel
Precision
- 9GFLOP
Floating Point Geometry
- Texture
Mapping
- Transparency
- Trilinear
Filtering
- TwiN Texel
Engine
- Z-Buffering
2D
FEATURES
- True 128-bit,
125MHz Single-cycle Windows Graphics User Interface(GUI)
Acceleration
- Hardware
Accelerated 2D Drawing Primitives
- Full featured
128-bit BitBLT Engine
- Full Hardware
256 ROP(Raster Operation)
VIDEO
ACCELERATION
- MPEG-1,
MPEG-2 (AGP only, U.S. and Canada only), Indeo & Cinepak
- Multi-tap X
and Y scaling and filtering
- Color space
conversion
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| Skywell
ships this board with the standard reference drivers from nVidia. We
got the version .48 with our board so we quickly installed the
Detonator 1.20 version drivers recently released from nVidia. For a
complete review of the performance of this board we wanted to
compare it to its more costly cousin from STB, the Velocity 4400.
The cost savings of going with the lesser known name of Skywell
may prove to be this boards best asset. Lets take a look how it
stacks up! |
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Our
Test System
Full
Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Pentium 2 -333 Overclocked to 525,
Shuttle HOT-649A Dual Processor Motherboard, 128 MB of PC100 CAS2
RAM, IBM Deskstar 10GXP 10GB 7200 RPM EIDE UDMA Hard Drive, IBM
4.5GB DDRS34560D 7200 RPM Ultra SCSI 2 Drive, STB Velocity 4400 TNT
w/ 16 MB AGP Video Card or Skywell Magic TNT AGP Video Card w/ 16
MB, Monster Sound MX300 PCI Audio Card, Toshiba SDM1202 3rd. Gen.
4.8X DVD/32X CDROM, TNT Detonator Drivers Version 4.11.01.0120.
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Overclocking
We overclocked
both the Magic TNT and Velocity 4400 at 100 Mhz. Core Processor
speed and 120 Mhz. memory speed. This was the fastest we felt we
wanted to go without sacrificing stability. Both cards tended to
produce artifacts at higher clock rates both within Windows and in
3D Games. The Magic TNT held up strong against the Velocity in this
category and the Velocity historically has been the TNT overclocking
champ!
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2D
The 2D on the
Magic TNT is a crisp, bright and clear as with any other TNT card.
We twisted the resolution up to 1280X1024 and were impressed with
the clarity. Here are some basic Windows benchmark numbers.
Wintune
98 Offline Test Results
| CPU |
(1)
Intel Pentium II with MMX@500 MHz |
(1) Intel
Pentium II with MMX@500 MHz |
| Video
Board |
Skywell
Magic TNT |
STB
Velocity 4400 |
| Video
Mode |
1024x768@16bits/pixel |
1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM |
128
MB |
128 MB |
| OS |
Windows
98 4.10.1998 |
Windows 98
4.10.1998 |
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Area
Tested
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Magic TNT
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Velocity
4400
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| CPU
Integer |
1516.291
MIPS |
1516.685
MIPS |
| CPU
Floating Point |
607.773
MFLOPS |
601.9473 MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) |
87.4554
MPixels/s |
99.38857
MPixels/s |
| Direct3D |
140.5782
MPixels/s |
140.6612
MPixels/s |
| OpenGL |
81.62524
MPixels/s |
82.71684
MPixels/s |
| The
Magic TNT lags slightly behind the Velocity in the 2D Video test but
closes the gap in D3D and OpenGL. |
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3D
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| Image
quality for the Magic TNT is perfect. We tested Quake 2, Half Life,
Falcon 4 and Kingpin. All looked amazing with good saturation and
detail. This is to be expected from a TNT based board. Let's look at
the frame rates vrs. the Magic's competition. |
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Quake
2 Version 3.20
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| Again,
as we can see here, the Magic TNT lags be a small margin. These
types of differences are imperceptible during a typical game
session. |
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Falcon
4
(Tested
w/ Frame Counter on runway and stopped)
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| This
is a very close race indeed. Falcon 4 can be very demanding in
certain spots in a given theater. We started with the "Take
Off" training mission which has lots of ground activity at the
point of departure. This causes a worst case scenario with respect
to frame rate. |
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3D
Mark 99 Lite
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| The
Magic again comes in a nose length behind the Velocity but this is
truly in the "photo finish" category! |
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| Over
all the Magic TNT is a quality built product with very respectable
performance numbers to back it up. If you are in the market for a
low cost graphics accelerator with few compromises, this is your
card. The Magic TNT from Skywell can be found at various on line
vendors for well under $100 ! |
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The Skywell
Magic TNT earned a Temp-O-Meter Rating of....
85
Light
the fuse and stand back!
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| -Davo |
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