The NVidia GeForce 2 MX
Top End Performance At Bargain Basement Prices - And It Over-clocks too!

By Dave "Davo" Altavilla
7/7/00
 

 Full Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS,  Pentium !!!  866,  Abit CX6 Motherboard, 128MB of RDRAM, WD Expert AC418000 7200 RPM ATA66 Hard Drive,
NVidia GeForce2 MX Reference Design AGP card, Kenwood 72X CDROM,
Win 98SE, NVidia 5.32 Drivers, DirectX 7.0a

Benchmarks / Comparison On The GeForce2 MX Budget Performance.... an oxy-moron?  We don't think so.

We decided to run the GeForce2 MX through the D3D Gauntlet, 3DMark2000, first.

3DMark 2000 Test

In the test we did at stock clock speeds, we tested at 640X480 and 800X600 resolution.  These were batch runs showing it with and without Hardware T&L.  The test shows impressive D3D performance to say the least for a card we are told will retail for right around $120 (oooh we can almost smell that attractive $99 price point coming down the road). 

In the over-clocked test on the right, you notice we tested out through 1024X768.  This is so you can compare them to the Gladiac GeForce2 GTS scores we took not long ago, right here.  The only difference you notice in these two tests is that we setup both boards to do Hardware T&L and the Gladiac also had Software T&L on its test, while the GeForce2 MX test has Pentium III optimization scores listed.  We thought we would point that out just for clarity.   What you should compare are the Hardware T&L based scores since these are of the same basic setup.  What is interesting to note is that the GeForce2MX is nearly on par with the Gladiac up to 1024X768X32.  Again, with a little bit of inexpensive cooling and a "healthy" over-clock, the GeForce2 MX really shines.  At stock speed, you still can't go wrong with GeForce 1 DDR level performance for $120.

You know what's next......

Quake 3 Arena Timedemo Benchmarks

First let's look at the GeForce2 MX versus a GeForce1 and GeForce2 GTS

Lagging slightly in 32 bit color versus a GeForce 1 SDR and ahead most of the time versus the GF1 SDR in 16 bit color, the GeForce2 MX holds its own.  A GeForce2 GTS is substantially faster than both cards but that was to be expected.  Regardless, with the new features including Digital Vibrance Control and Twin View, it will be hard to justify buying a GeForce 1 SDR.

But wait... you want GeForce 1 DDR class performance but not the price, right?  Let's see what our over-clocked Quake 3 scores look like and then wrap this thing up.
 

GeForce2 MX Over-Clocked Quake 3 Score and The Wrap-Up