nVidia vs. Voodoo4

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

So I’m sitting downstairs reading the newspaper Sunday morning when my motherboard starts filling the room with smoke. Not good. Long story short, I’m posting this message on a brand new system.

So here’s the deal: the new computer has a nVidia Riva TNT2 Pro on it. 32MB of on-board memory. The dead computer has a three-month old Voodoo4 4500 card, also with 32MB, which I’m reasonably sure survived the meltdown just fine. So which one should I go with?

FYI, gaming was the entire reason I upgraded the old computer to the Voodoo4 in the first place, so that’s primarily what I’m interested in here.

#2

Stick with the TNT2. Voodoo’s quality has dropped considerably in the past couple years, and nVidia’s managed to surpass 'em.

#3

If it is a crippled TNT2 (the M64 variant…I am unsure as to what a pro is) stick with the Voodoo 4. They would be pretty close to each other in raw speed if it is the std variant with the 128Bit wide bus so it would be personal preference then.

Personally, I prefer the image quality of the newer voodoo’s opposed to NVidias products.

#4

I personally prefer nVidia, mostly because the opengl support has been more mature longer. Now that 3dfx has gone under, that’s another consideration. Not so much because you’re not considering which to buy, but the nVidia card may get updated drivers, the voodoo4 won’t.

For raw performance numbers, check out anandtech.com . I’m not sure, but I think they’d be quite close.

What you may really want to do is use both. There’s no reason that you can’t put both cards in the system (unless they’re both AGP). Dual monitor is something you’ll never want to give up.