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

By Dave "Davo" Altavilla
7/7/00
 

H.H. Test System
Our test bed for the GF2MX

 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.

A GeForce SDR card is retailing for right around $125 at this point, with a number of online vendors.  However, the GeForce DDR cards are close to $200.  We wanted to see if we could approach GeForce1 DDR speeds with a little bit of over-clocking (or a lot for that matter).  Here are the results...

Quake 3 Arena Timedemo Test

At 57.5 fps at 1024X768X32 in High Quality mode, I would say we are pretty much there as far as GeForce1 DDR level performance goes.  Actually, a GF1 DDR card would come in at around 63 fps with this setup.  Either way, this is great performance from a card that retails for well under $150.

Finally, one of the other features the GeForce2 MX boasts is HDTV/DVD performance and quality unrivaled by any other player in the market.  Let's just see about that....

Mad Onion - Video 2000 Mark Test

These are indeed great scores.  You can refer to our Video 2000 Round-Up here.  The card is basically on par with the Rage Fury Pro in DVD playback.  This is fantastic performance and quality.  The one area the GeForce2 MX lags slightly is feature support.  With on board IDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform... more big words) the Rage is a little less CPU dependent but not by much.  Playing DVDs on our system was great with the GeForce2 MX.


We are going to leave this page open a little and possibly come back to the Digital Vibrance feature of the GeForce2 MX, when new drivers are available.  Until then, we can say with conviction that the GeForce2 MX is going to be a VERY strong competitor in the Business and Value markets for 2D/3D Graphics.  We envision many OEM design wins for NVidia with this chipset and solid if not spectacular retail sales backing it up.  The price point alone will draw many cost conscious consumers in. 

We're giving the GeForce2 MX a HotHardware Heat Meter Rating of ....

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