Review: Guillemot's RIVA TNT2 M64 Cougar Review 11.21.99
By: iCHoR
Cougar?
Cheap card for high performance. That
is the general idea of the release of this card. Guillemot's Cougar
is toned down economic version of the TNT2. Like the Celeron is
to its big brother the Pentium III. As of November I saw the Cougar
going for 87 dollars. Its suppose to retail for $99.99 after
the rebate but if you look around you can find deals.
The Difference
What is the difference? What makes
the cougar so cheap? What is the performance trade off for its price?
It is a 64 bit card. Normal TNT2 have 128 bit bus. Its still the
same processor, and in lower resolutions the same speed however
as one would increase resolutions the speed difference will be noticeable
and quite distinctly. Simply put this card was built for the economic
user. 87 dollars for good quality 3d card is very good. Image quality
that I witnessed is top notch. The difference between the cards
is that the Cougar isn't as fast as its big brothers the TNT2. In
lower resolutions the Cougar isn't that bad at all. Its good. At
the higher resolutions are increased the Cougar's performance isn't
as spectacular.
Specifications
- 128-bit 3D processor for fast frame rates
- Over 1GB/s on-board RAM bandwidth
- TwiN Texel™ architecture (32-bit textures
are applied in pairs in a single clock cycle) with full true
32-bit 3D rendering, enabling:
- Unrivalled visual quality now required
in games
- The rendering of 32-bit games
- Advanced 3D functions: anti-aliasing,
fogging, lighting, mip-mapping, fully operative bump mapping,
32-bit Z/stencil buffer for greater depth detail
- Complete OpenGL ICD® and Direct3D™
/ DirectX ™ hardware support
The Performance
As stated above the Cougar isn't the
super High end performance card. I tested this card on a tweaked
Celeron 300a.Clock speed set at 450 and maximum cooling. Basically
the Poor Man's performance setup.
Quake II
Time demo
16Bit Quality
 Notice how in the lower resolutions the cougar
does very well.
Quake III
version 1.08 Time demo
16 Bit Quality
3d Mark 99
The 64 bit bus and the 128 bit bus really
make a difference in 32 bit color. As you can see how much the performance
of the cougar deteriorates in 32 bit. Nevertheless Cougar is still
a very good 3d card. Especially considering the price.
Conclusion
At first I felt a little disappointed
that the Cougar didn't perform that well. Then I remembered one
very important thing. Price. For under $100 what can you ask for?
It is the same reason why I haven't bought the quickest Athlon chips.
Instead I and the masses buy the Celeron chips because the price
difference is so large and the performance difference is significant
at times but the tradeoff can be made to keep a little more green
inside my wallet. Though this card isn't for the high resolution
gamer, I would buy it for economical reasons. Retailing at 99 dollars
you can't beat the performance with the same buck.
Value: |
95 |
Performance: |
85 |
Features: |
85 |
Documentation: |
90 |
Overall: |
93 |
Final
Rating:
89.6%
|
