Comparison of Graphics Cards with NVIDIA's RIVA TNT Chip

STB Velocity 4400

STB was the first company to release a graphics card with the RIVA TNT, but nothing much has changed since then. Today everyone knows that the TNT gets very hot and you would expect that a card maker is aware of that. The heat sink of the Velocity 4400 is the worst of them all, the chip gets up to 71 degrees Celsius already at 90 MHz chip clock only. This is probably also the reason why I was completely unable to clock the card any higher than 100 MHz chip clock, any higher speed would most likely lead to melt down conditions. It wouldn't surprise me if you come across instabilities in small computer housings at the default 90 MHz already.

The Velocity is equipped with a video out, which is nice, but unfortunately the quality is not up to satisfying any higher expectations, the flicker is visible almost permanently.

The drivers are ok, not particularly impressive but certainly better than the Diamond drivers. Again, the STB driver doesn't give you the ability to adjust the monitor refresh rate, you have to use the Windows 98 'Adapter' setting.

Summary

The Velocity 4400 is the cheapest TNT-board available, but its heat sink is just about living up to the price of the card as well. The performance of the card is good, but you can hardly overclock it. All in all the STB card gives me the impression as if the designers were rather interested in rushing out a product than spending any time on detail. Since the launch nobody was bothered to improve the board anymore, and that is why the Velocity 4400 is only reaching 5th place in this TNT card comparison of six cards.