|
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| Quality
and Installation Of The X-Micro Hulk
V GeForce 2 MX |
| On
with the show! |
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Physical
inspection reveals that this
card has good, clean traces and there was no
excess solder to be found. When I first
looked at this card I felt that this was well
crafted.
I particularly like the inclusion of both
RCA and S-Video TV outputs which gives the user
some flexibility when upgrading their external
video devices. (TVs, VCRs...etc)
The
nVidia reference design of the GeForce 2 MX
doesn’t call for a heat sink or a fan of any
kind, yet the good folks at X-Micro had the
presence of mind to add one anyway.
On top of that, they even used thermal
paste to insure good heat transfer, a very nice
touch in our opinion.
All but the
most hardcore overclockers should
appreciate the default setup. 
Even
though the addition of a heat sink and fan are not
required, if you're going to do something, do it
right. The heat sink and fan are secured
with two flimsy plastic rivets. This
resulted in a relatively loose seal between the
chip and the heat sink.
Considering that the reference design
specification doesn’t even call for a heat sink,
this isn’t earth shattering but maybe if it were
seated more securely we might have had even better
luck when overclocking. Another
nice design feature is that they made the fan a
standard two prong connection rather than
soldering the connections to the board.
This should prove invaluable if the fan
ever needs to be replaced in the future.
However, we were a little disappointed when
we tried to unplug the fan from our test card and the
entire plug and base came off, leaving us with two
bare prongs sticking out of the board.
This wasn’t a huge issue but we’d
expect that if we tugged on the wires the
plug would stay in place. 
The
drivers included with the card are the standard
Detonator 3 6.31 reference drivers; no tweaks
or utilities were added. We
didn't take any screenshots because there was
nothing new to see. :) If you've seen one
set of Detonators, you've seen them all! If there is one thing that I must comment on
though,
it's the feature called Digital Vibrance.
I've seen BigWop and Davo discuss this feature
in some of their earlier reviews, but I had no
idea how cool it would be to see for myself. 
Digital Vibrance is a lot like the color
setting on your T.V. The more that you
adjust it, the more intense the colors are
displayed on the screen. Normally I consider
these types of features "fluff", but in
this case I think it's a great option and one that
I haven't turned off yet. In the eyes
of this reviewer there is a definite quality
improvement. With the amount of time I spend
surfing and working in "office type"
apps any image quality improvements are very
welcome!
Over-clocking
and Gaming Performance |
