Canopus SPECTRA 2500 Riva TNT

The 3Dfx Voodoo2 still reigns as the top performer provided that you take advantage of its SLI capabilities, however if you don't have the money to purchase dual Voodoo2 cards then things are a bit more difficult to decide upon.

Super7 users should definitely stay away from the Riva TNT chipset, it simply isn't giving enough performance for the money, if you absolutely must have something with excellent visual quality, then the Matrox G200 is a better choice as it is more affordable and has more mature drivers.

Low end Pentium II (Pentium II 300 and below) owners will want to wait for the 3Dfx Banshee, with the release of those boards not too far away, it won't be that long of a wait. Of course, if you already own a Voodoo2 board, an upgrade to the Spectra 2500 would be overkill as all you really need is a Millennium I or something like that to handle your 2D acceleration.

Mid range Pentium II owners (Pentium II 333/350) may also want to opt for the Banshee as it should provide them with virtually equivalent performance at a much lesser cost, if you want the best overall performance at 1024 x 768 though, you will want to stick with the TNT.

High end Pentium II owners should eat up the Spectra 2500 as it provides outstanding performance, virtually identical to that of a single Voodoo2 while combining excellent 2D acceleration as well. While the drivers have yet to be finalized, once they are final you can expect the performance to only increase and stability to reach a more pleasant level, although no real stability issues were discovered during the Pentium II testing of the Canopus card.

Original Celeron owners are out of luck, your preference should definitely be for a 3Dfx Banshee or a Voodoo2/2D accelerator combo. The Spectra 2500, courtesy of the TNT chipset is just too dependent on the performance of the L2 cache of a system to make the original Celeron a good companion for it.

Finally, we have the Celeron A, if you don't mind overclocking your Celeron 300A, the Canopus Spectra 2500 is your dream come true as it will provide you with unbelievable performance and then some. It seems as if the Celeron A and the Spectra 2500 was a match made in heaven.

The Spectra 2500 doesn't come with any software/gaming bundle, so be prepared with your own titles to take advantage of the card out of the box, other than that (and the $200 price tag, although you can't get much more for $200 - TV Output, Reverse pass-through, optional video-in) the Spectra 2500 is an amazing card which will put a smile on even the most die hard 3Dfx fan.

Canopus Spectra 2500 AGP Accelerator
Price - $199.95
Website - http://www.canopuscorp.com

Overall Rating - 91%