RIVA TNT2

The RIVA TNT2 was a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT (NV4). RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator. The "TNT" suffix refers to the chip's ability to work on two texels at once (TwiN Texel). Nvidia removed RIVA from the name later in the chip's lifetime.

Overview

The TNT2 core is almost identical to its predecessor the RIVA TNT, however updates included AGP 4X support, up to 32MB of VRAM, and a process shrink from 0.35 μm to 0.25 μm. It was the process shrink that enabled improved clock speeds (from 90 MHz to 150+ MHz), which is where the substantial performance improvement came from.

The TNT2 offered a higher quality feature-set than some of its competitors, pioneered by the RIVA TNT, such as 32-bit color in 3D and support for larger 2048×2048 px textures. RIVA TNT2's competition included the 3dfx Voodoo2, 3dfx Voodoo3, the Matrox G400, and the ATI Rage 128.