Gainward CARDEXpert TNT2

Founded in 1984, Gainward started out making video cards in Taipei, Taiwan. Since then, they've grown rapidly and have worked with almost every major video chip manufacturer. Not many had heard of Gainward, partially due to their large OEM focus, but many of the "generic" video cards you find are in fact made by Gainward. Ever seen a CARDEXpert board? That's Gainward. Actually, they also do a lot of OEM manufacturing work for larger, better known video card manufacturers. They won't say who, but rest assured that the list includes some of the most famous video card manufacturers in the world.

So we weren't surprised at all when Gainward set out to produce a TNT2 based product. After all, they're sort of the Shuttle of the video card industry - making a board with seemingly every chip available. Traditionally, we've found Gainward cards to be fairly plain with few frills, but always solid products. How did the TNT2 fare in an extremely competitive market? Let's find out...

Specifications
(courtesy Gainward)

Based on NVIDIA’s RIVA TNT2 TwiN-Texel 32-bit 2D/3D Multimedia Graphics Engine

• 128-bit Wide Frame buffer Interface Supports up to 32 MB SDRAM
• 300 MHz Palette-DAC Supports up to 2048x1536 @ 60Hz
• 66 MHz AGP Clock Rate and Full Sideband AGP 4X/2X Mode
• DVD Sub-Picture Alpha-Blended Compositing
• Video Acceleration for DirectShow MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and Indeo
• LCD Resolution up to 1280x1024 and Color Depths up to 16 Million

Features

• RIVA TNT2 TwiN-Texel 32-bit Graphics Engine
• 2 Texture-mapped, Lit Pixels per Clock
• Single Pass Multi-texture Rendering
• 24-bit or 16-bit Z-buffer, 8-bit Stencil Buffer
• High Performance 128-bit 2D/GUI/DirectDraw Acceleration
• 128-bit Wide Frame buffer Interface Supports up to 32 MB SDRAM
• 300 MHz Palette-DAC Supports up to 2048x1536 @ 60Hz
• Variable Length Burst DMA Bus Mastering for Data transfers over 900 MB/s Throughput
• 66 MHz AGP Clock Rate and Full Sideband AGP 4X/2X Mode
• TextureBlend Supports Multi-texturing, Bump-mapping, Texture-modulation,
• Light Maps, Reflection Maps, Detail Textures, Environmental Maps, Procedural Textures
• 32-bit ARGB Rendering with Destination Alpha
• Point Sampled, Bilinear, Trilinear and 8-tap Anisotropic Filtering
• Per Pixel Perspective Correct Texture Mapping (Fog, Light, and MIP-Mapping)
• Wide Cache RAM and 256-bit Data path
• 128-bit Graphics with over 2.4GB/s Throughput
• Minimal Software Overhead on Key GDI Calls and DirectDraw
• Optimized Direct Frame Buffer (DFB) Access with Write-combining
• Palette-DAC Pipeline Accelerates Full-Motion Video Playback, Sustaining Fast Frame Rates with High Quality Color Resolution
• True Bilinear Filtering for Scaled Video, and Compensation for Filtering Losses with Edge Enhancement Algorithms
• Back-end Hardware Video Scaling for Video Playback
• Multiple Video Windows with Hardware Color Space Conversion and Filtering
• DVD Sub-Picture Alpha-Blended Compositing
• Video Acceleration for DirectShow MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and Indeo
• Supports PanelLink Digital Interface for LCD Monitor
• LCD Support for VGA,SVGA,XGA,SXGA 18/24 TFT Color Monitors
• LCD Resolution up to 1280x1024 and Color Depths up to 16 Million
• VESA EDID Support for LCD Type Auto-detect

DRIVER SUPPORT

• Microsoft Windows 98/95/NT4.0.
• Microsoft Windows 2000(Optional)
• Direct X
• OpenGL ICD