NV5

NV5

Branding	RIVA TNT2 (early name: RIVA TNT+), later "NVIDIA TNT2"
Architecture	NV5
Announcement date	Late 1998
Release date	March 1999
End of production	Late 2002
PCI vendor ID	10de (Nvidia)
PCI device ID	many, but first was 0028
DirectX hardware supported version	6.0
OpenGL hardware supported version	1.2 (hardware) 1.5 (software)
Max VRAM clock	150MHz (TNT2); 166MHz (Pro); 183MHz (Ultra) (configurable by OEM)
Max core clock	125MHz (TNT2); 143MHz (Pro); 150MHz (Ultra) (configurable by OEM)

NV5 is an improved version of NV4. Initially conceived as a mere die shrink and clockspeed increase of NV4 in response to the delays and clockspeed downgrades that beleaguered the NV4 project, as development continued more features were added to the chip; additional features include support for 32 MB of VRAM and AGP 4X. NV5 survived for several years as an increasingly low-end option and was the first NVIDIA GPU to have multiple SKUs, with the straps, VBIOS, installed VRAM and value of NV_PMC_BOOT_0 being used to configure the branding and configuration of the chip. Initially branded as RIVA TNT2 (after RIVA TNT+ was considered), the "RIVA" was dropped when NVIDIA repositioned it as a low-end option. Production most likely ended in 2002. Typically, a TNT2 card was packaged with either 16 or 32 MB of VRAM.

Production of the high-end SKUs likely ended around the time NV10 was released in late 1999, but the Vanta was produced until at least 2001 and TNT2 M64 chips were manufactured at least as late as September 2002.

SKUs

Note: graphics cards vendors could and often did configure the card outside of the stated specifications. For example, there was a Falcon Northwest Special Edition Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 SE produced by Falcon Northwest and Gullemot which had specialised high-speed (for the time) VRAM chips and only used very highly binned GPUs; the core clock on these cards was 195MHz and the VRAM clock 235MHz

VANTA LT: Extremely low-end variation of TNT2 M64. Identical to VANTA-16, but VRAM is limited to a mere 8 megabytes and AGP 4X support is disabled - only AGP 2X can be used.

VANTA-16: Very low-end variation of TNT2 M64, with a core clock of 100MHz and a memory clock of 125Mhz.

RIVA TNT2 M64: Low-end variation of NV5 (known as NV6) with a 64-bit bus.

RIVA TNT2: Mainstream option with a core clock of 125MHz and a memory clock of 150Mhz, released in 1999.

RIVA TNT2 Pro: High-end option with a core clock of 143MHz and a memory clock of 166Mhz, released on October 22, 1999.

RIVA TNT2 Ultra: Enthusiast option, with a core clock of 150MHz and a memory clock of 183Mhz, released in March of 1999.