The TNT card is a 2X card, but read on--I don't know if that matters to your
situation or not:

The TNT Vs. Banshee debate is fairly endless, both companies have legitimate
claims.  The Banshee is based upon the 3Dfx Voodoo Chipset, and therefore is
compatible with "glide" (a special 3Dfx API) based games. Many games run
better on the Banshee than the TNT because of this.  However, the TNT has a
"Twin Texture Unit (TNT)", like the VooDoo2.  This means the TNT can do
multitexturing in a single clock cycle, whereas the Banshee would require 2
cycles to do the same amount of work.  The diffence is only noticed in games
that support multitexturing, Quake2, being the most popular.  MANY games
don't take advantage of the feature, and in those games the differnce in
speed is rather meaningingless.  Also, the TNT can render 3D images in 32
bit color, and the Banshee cannot (however you take quite a performance hit
on the TNT, when you do).

A couple things to consider:  The TNT is available in PCI varieties, if
that's the card you want I'd recommend a PCI version.  Perhaps someone else
who understand the AGP bus better than I can answer the question about the
AGP TNT working.  I would guess it would, without the added sideband path to
system memory, but that's just a guess on my part.  The Banshee will provide
the best compatibility with all existing games.

I'd recommend looking at the games you plan to run, if some of them are
"Glide" games, go with the Banshee, otherwise, yes the TNT might squeak by
in performance.

To inject MY opinion into the question about a Diamond vs. STB TNT card:
3Dfx has purchased STB.  STB has pledged to support it's existing card
holders.  However, they will not be releasing any new drives for the V4400,
because Nvidia, the maker of the TNT chip will not release new code to them.
This means future driver updates to the STB card will have to be of the
generic, reference variety direct from Nvidia, and Bios updates would be
extremely unlikely.

Dan Shaughnessy

> I would like to obtain better gaming graphics.  Is the Nvidia Riva TNT
card
> 1x?  Tom's Hardware rates it higher than the Banshee based cards.  What is
> your opinion?  Would a Diamond Riva TNT or STB velocity 4400 work in my
> machine?  Thanks for your help.
>
>
> The answer depends somewhat on how you use your computer.  My first
thought
> would be to recommend a Banshee based card, such as the Diamond Monster
> Fusion.  All Banshee's operate at 1X AGP.  They provide excellent 3D for
> games and are very good in normal windows/business apps.  However, if you
> don't do any 3D gaming the Matrox Millenium G200 is probably a better bet.
> It is a 2X card, but will run in 1X mode.  The Matrox card is generally
> considered the best consumer card for windows/business apps.  Either card
> can be found for about $100.00 these days, as a new generation of cards is
> just around the corner (again).

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