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THE
DRIVERS:
The drivers included with the
Abit Siluro T400 are basically standard nVidia reference
drivers with an Abit logo added. We won't bore you
with any screen-shots, if you've seen one set of reference
drivers, you've seen 'em all! :) Abit also includes
an overclocking utility called "Graphic Max" with the
Siluro T400. The "Graphic Max" utility is similar to
many overclocking apps currently available, with sliders to
independently adjust
the core and memory clock frequencies.
The drivers included with the
card installed without a problem, but we were a bit
disappointed because they were a fairly old revision of
nVidia's reference drivers. A quick trip to Abit's
website looking for a newer revision revealed that the drivers they have available
to download are also very old, and are dated September
2000! Needless to say, we did not benchmark the card
with the included drivers, we used nVidia's official
12.41s for our benchmarking.
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| Installation
& Quality |
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Plug it
in...Turn it on... |
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INSTALLATION:
Installation of the T400
went without a hitch. We plugged it into the AGP
slot on our clean Windows Millennium test system, booted
up, pointed to the drivers when prompted and we were ready to
go. No extraordinary measures were needed to get
the Abit Siluro T400 up and running.
IMAGE
QUALITY:
The Siluro T400's image
quality is on par with all other GeForce 2 MXs.
The only real change made to the MX400 core when
compared to "older" GeForce 2 MXs is a slight bump in
clockspeed. Nothing has changed that would alter
the quality of the image output.
One thing I've mentioned
in all of my GeForce 2 MX reviews, is the Digital
Vibrance feature that has been incorporated into all
GeForce 2 MXs and GeForce 3s. The Digital
Vibrance settings allow users to alter the color
saturation and vibrance to improve overall image
quality. Our man Dave went much more in-depth on
this feature when he covered the MX at launch...check
out this link for more detailed information.
THE CARD:
As we usually we do with
any new product the enters the H.H. labs, we gave the
Abit Siluro T400 a thorough physical inspection before
installing it into our test system...
If you we paying attention
on page one, you surely noticed that the Siluro T400
does not come with an active cooling solution.
This card is outfitted with a simple aluminum
heatsink. We removed the stock heatsink to
uncover what type of TIM (Thermal Interface Material)
was used, and found an adhesive pad. We would have
preferred to see the stock heatsink mounted with
spring clips and thermal paste, but considering the
relatively miniscule amount of heat generated my the
MX400 chip, a simple heatsink is adequate.
nVidia's original reference design didn't call for any
cooling on the MX in the first place.
Our Siluro T400 was
equipped with TV-Out, but this card is available
without TV-Out as well. Picture quality on
a television is OK for gaming, but don't expect to use
a large television in place of a monitor...the
resolution is simply too low, resulting in blurred
text. The TV-Out works great for DVD playback
though, and because of the GeForce 2 MX400's TwinView
technology, you can output a DVD to your television
and still work on your monitor simultaneously.
The RAM installed on our
Siluro T400 was 8x8MB, 6ns EliteMT clocked at 166MHz,
but we had very little trouble jacking things up a
bit...
Test System and
Some Benchmarks
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