Gigabyte GeForce2 MX400

Introduction

With the GeForce 3 based line of cards gaining momentum in the graphic card arena, does the market still hold a place for the GeForce 2’s? For now definitely that’s a “YES”. No need to take my word for it, just read some of those GeForce 3 reviews out there. Notice how the Ultra gets the edge over the GeForce 3. The reason; well it’s quite simple really. The GeForce 2 Ultra cards have been optimised well for today’s games, and as for the GeForce 3 cards, well we got to wait a few more months to see the splendours of the InfiniteFX engine. So the question remains, where does the GeForce 2 market stand today? At the moment it’s still at the same position as before. Fact is right now the investment on a GeForce 3 cannot be justified and as a result the potential of the GeForce 2 still remains. The GeForce 2 line of graphic cards offer the most diverse range of products to consumers of all norms.

With the introduction of the GeForce 3 every graphics card manufacture seems to be gearing up to reap the fruits from the high-end gaming market. With everybody focusing on the high-end side, we at Technoyard decided to think of the mediocre gaming folk and today we bring to you the Gigabyte GeForce 2 MX 400.

If you’re new to this arena the GeForce2 MX chip, has been designed for the budget conscious folk among us. Initially when Nvidia launched the GeForce2 MX chip their main goal was to increase market share from 20% to 60% with their new product.

Last year we witnessed some of the best flurry among video card manufactures when nVidia and ATI were on a head to head battle to out perform each other. Before ATI came to the scene nVidia pretty much secured the high-end gaming market with their GeForce 2 GPU. ATI fired back by introducing the Radeon chip a few months later. A company not known for their high-end graphic products, overnight became a force to recon with.

Not to be outdone nVidia recently introduced the GeForce 2MX 200 and the Geforce 2 MX400 chipsets in order to secure their positioning the value gaming market with sheer brute force. The GeForce 2 MX 400 is the newest addition to the GeForce 2 MX range of cards. So what does it have in offer to out perform its predecessor?

The GeForce 2 MX400 Chip

The Geforce2 MX 400 chip is not a totally new GPU at all. Rather it’s based off the original GeForce2 MX. So what’s different in the MX400? Well to our surprise the GeForce 2MX 400 chip differs from the GeForce 2MX only with regard to the core clock speed. The MX400 comes with a default core speed of 200MHz while the GF2 MX comes with a core speed of 175MHz. However the GeForce 2MX reference board used here had no problems at all operating at 200MHz in all our tests. As for the rest of the chip’s architecture it’s the same as the GeForce2 MX.

As you all must know the GeForce2MX chipset is a scaled down version of the GeForce 2 GTS. nVidia offered the GF 2MX chipset by scaling down on the GF2GTS core. Instead of the 4 rendering pipelines of the GTS the GF 2MX has only two. What this means is that it leaves the GF2 MX with only half the fill rate of the GF2 GTS.

There’s no change in the memory bus either. The same 128-bit SDR bus remains.

As you can see there’s absolutely no change between the GF2 MX chip and the GF2 MX 400 except for its clock speed. It would have been a welcome feature if nVidia decided to increase the 128-bit memory bus speed, which cripples the performance of these cards by half. On the plus side of it is that now the GeForce 2 MX 400 comes at the same clock speed as the GeForce 2 GTS.

I’m sure most of you are a bit confused right now as to what to expect in real life with regard to this expanding GeForce2 MX range. Well here’s a table showing the competitive advantage of each. (taken from nVidia Web site)

Specifications:

• 256bit graphics core
• 0.18 micron technology
• 175MHz graphics core working frequency
• 2 rendering pipelines, with 2 texturing blocks each
• 128bit (SDR) memory bus Or 64bit (DDR) memory bus supporting 166-300MHz correspondingly
• The supported memory types include: DDR SGRAM and a standard SDR SDRAM/SGRAM
• 8-64MB local graphics memory
• 2.7GB/sec memory bus bandwidth
• Pixel fillrate: 350Mpixels per second
• Texel fillrate: 800Mtexels per second
• 350MHz integrated RAMDAC ” Max display resolution
• 2048×1536 at 60Hz
• Integrated Dual-Link TMDS transmitters, which allow connecting two digital displays independently
• External bus interface: full AGP 4x/2x (including Fast Writes).
• Built-in High-Definition Video Processor (HDVP), which allows turning PCs into full-quality DVD players and HDTV receivers/players
• Digital Vibrance Control, which makes all images including 2D, 3D, and video more colorful and vibrant, even on digital flat panels

3D Features

• Nvidia 2nd Generation 256-bit Geforce2 MX-400 GPU
• Integrated 2nd generation T&L engine
• 400M pixels/sec.
• 800 Mtextel Fill Rate
• 20M triangles/sec setup
• Nvidia QuadEngine Technology
• Order independent Full Scene Multisample Anti-aliasing
• 32-bit color with 32-bit z/stencil
• DirectX and S3TC texture compression