Creative Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT

1. Creative Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT in brief…

I know it’s a bit old, and I know also that almost no one will think of buying this product any more, however I’ve been using the TNT for a bit long time before I bought my new Graphics Card, so I felt like writing something about my old buddy.
It’s a very good card by the way, and in its time, I considered it one of the most good graphics card. My card was a PCI not AGP, so it’s a bit old fashioned but still was a great performer until its last day. Anyway, talking about the card, it’s a 16MB old graphics card (SDRAM).Ah and by the way, it was considered sometime the best 2D/3D combo card on the market.

2. Product Specifications

• Interface: Either PCI or AGP (but in my case PCI, and honestly I don’t know the difference in the performance and stuff between both)
• Installed Memory: 16 MB of 125MHz SDRAM
• Graphics Processor: NVidia RIVA TNT engine
• Data Width: 128-bit
• Maximum Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1200
• Maxmimum Supported Memory: 16 MB
• Operating System: I was using then Windows 98SE, I never tried it on the XP or 2000 system, so I don’t know, but supposedly it will work fine and it will be compatible with these OSs.
• Graphics Acceleeration: For 2D and 3D applications
• Model Numbers: CT6701 (PCI), CT6711 (AGP)
• Single-slot 2D, 3D graphics, and video accelerator
• Integrated 250MHz Palette-DAC supporting up to 1920x1200@75Hz
• MPEG1 / MPEG2 and full-motion video playback acceleration
• PCI Bus version 2.1 compliant for GB TNT PCI (CT6701)
• AGP Bus version 1.0 compliant for GB TNT AGP (CT6711)
• Multi-monitor Support
• VESA DDC 2B + DPMS
• Full Plug and Play compliant

3. Product Features
• Chipset highlights
o 128-bit wide graphics engine and frame buffer
o 180 million pixels/sec peak fill rate
o 6 million triangles/sec peak
o Large 12K on-chip cache
o 36 billion operations/sec pixel processing pipeline
• 3D features
o Optimized for Microsoft's Direct3D API
o Complete DirectX 6.0 support
o 100% hardware triangle setup
o Twin texel (TNT) 32-bit graphics pipeline
 2 texture mapped, lit pixels per clock
 Single pass multi-texturing support
 DirectX 6.0 and OpenGL ICD
 Square and non-square texture support
 Anisotropic filtering
o Triangle Setup Engine
 Setup hardware optimized for Microsoft's Direct3D API
o TextureBlend support examples:
 Anisotropic filtering
 Multi-texture
 Bump map
 Texture modulation
 Light maps
 Reflection maps
 Detail textures
 Environmental maps
 Procedural textures
 Sub-pixel accurate
o Per pixel perspective correct texture mapping
 Fog
 Light
 Mip mapping
o 24-bit or 16-bit Z buffer (floating point or integer)
o 8-bit stencil buffer
o Anti-aliasing: full scene, order independent
• 2D features
o High performance 128-bit 2D/GUI/Direct Draw Acceleration
o Fast 32-bit VGA/SVGA support
o Multi-buffering (Double, Triple, Quad buffering) for smooth animation and video playback
• Video Support
o Video Acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG1 / MPEG2 and Indeo?Planar 4:2:0 and packed 4:2:2 Color Space Conversion
o X and Y smooth up and down scaling with filtering
o Per-pixel color keying
o Multiple video windows with hardware color space conversion and filtering
o Vertical and horizontal stretching
• Interfaces
o Comprehensive AGP2X support
o Bus mastering DMA PCI interface
o 32-bit PCI version 2.1 or AGP version 1.0 with 2X data transfer and full sideband support

4. Inside The Box

• The Card Itself (AGP or PCI)
• Some cables I can’t remember it function
• Screws
• Some manuals and stuff
• The Driver CD
• Some other stuff I can’t really remember
• Bundled Software
o Forsaken® by Acclaim Entertainment
o Colorific® by Sonnetech, Ltd.
o 3DEEP by Sonnetech, Ltd.

5. Product Support

Simply there is NO support for this product anymore, its is far beyond old for any support. But I think you can find the drivers of this product at the nVidia website, so don’t worry.

6. Ease of Installation and Operation

Following the manual you get, you can install this card very easy.
And here are some steps for you to install the card (supposing its PCI)
a. First check that the power is all gone from your PC, try removing the cables to be 100% sure.
b. Check whether you have a free PCI slot or the AGP slot, surely you have cuz where are the other slots gone and you don’t have anything 2 c yet.
c. Anyway, remove the card from its case and smoothly try to fit it in the PCI slot, its very easy, but check first if your case has certain covers to be removed or something.
d. After installing the card, close the case
e. When you are done with the screws, plug in the monitor and try to boot your PC
f. Its supposedly will work just fine, else, try to go away from your PC cuz it will eXPLODE ! just kidding, try just to check the installments.
g. Here you go 
h. Very easy, isn’t it ?

7. System requirements
• IBM® PC or 100% compatible personal computer
• Intel® 90 processor or higher, or compatible for for Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT PCI (CT 6701)
• Pentium III processor or compatible for Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT AGP (CT 6711)
• Available AGP 1.0 compliant slot for Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT AGP (CT 6711)
• Available PCI 2.1 compliant slot for Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT PCI (CT 6701)
• 32MB of system memory
• 10MB of available disk space for full installation
• Microsoft® Windows® 95 OSR 2.x, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT® 4.0 with SP5 or Windows 2000
• CD-ROM drive installed
• VGA, multi-frequency compatible monitor

8. Device Benchmark Tests

Sorry, but I didn’t do any benchmarks for this card, and I don’t have it to it for you. Also I tried to search the internet for benchmarks, but I can’t find any.

9. Problems

Didn’t face any when I was using the card, however you have to have the updated version of the driver cuz the one on the CD make some problems.

10. Price

I don’t know its price now on the market, and I think it is not sold any more.

11. Why should I care?

I don’t know, simply I was thinking of my old card when my new card gave me some problems, and how I was happy at that time I used it, so I wrote this review, you can like it or hate it, its up to you, but still you can spare me a minute and give me your opinion.

12. Comments

My evaluation of the product is based on the time i purchased it, not now, so you can understand why I said that.

13. Anything Else!

Good bye old card

14. Sources Used in this document

Many website and the product manual, the one I know for sure is
http://www.creative.com
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.ciao.co.uk