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During the last few
years, the growth of the add-in video card market
has been phenomenal.
The chipsets powering these boards have
been flying off production lines at a dizzying
pace. One
company, nVidia, has consistently cranked out
chips more powerful than the last.
Traditionally with this increase in power,
comes an increase in price.
Not so with the GeForce 2 MX that powers
the Abit Siluro MX we?re looking at today.
nVidia found
themselves in a dominant position when one of
their main competitors missed a product cycle.
They?re high-end chipset sat alone at the
top of all the benchmarks?so, why not make an
entry-level chip and see how we fare in the budget
market? That
must have been the thought on nVidia?s mind when
contemplating the GeForce 2 MX.
To put things in very simple terms, nVidia
took their powerful GeForce 2 GTS chip, removed 2
pixel pipelines, lowered the clockspeed and
installed standard SDRAM, resulting in a fairly
powerful, relatively inexpensive product.
Abit, most
recognized for their excellent overclocking
motherboards, saw the potential in the booming
add-in market, decided to venture into it and the
Siluro line of video boards was born.
Davo took a look at the Abit
Siluro GF256 GTS 64MB DDR a little while
back. Today we?ve got it?s little brother in the
labs. Let?s
find out what happens when Abit and nVidia
collaborate on an entry-level product?
Click to Enlarge all
Images.
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| Specifications
Of Abit Siluro MX |
| Look
Familiar? |
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Incorporates
NVidia?s GeForce2 MX processor:
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HyperTexel
architecture with 4 texels per clock
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175MHz
core clockspeed
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166
MHz SDRAM clockspeed
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Integrated
350MHz RAMDAC (resolutions up to
2048x1536, True Color @ 60Hz)
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20M
Triangles/sec through T&L and Set-up
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700-Mtexel
fill rate
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350-Mpixel
fill rate
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2
dual-texturing pipelines (4 texels/clock
cycle)
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4X
AGP with Fast Writes/AGP 2X compatible
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Full
acceleration for Microsoft DirectX 7.x and
OpenGL 1.2 ICD
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DirectX
Texture Compression support
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Vivid
NTSC/PAL TV-Output with flicker filter
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Digital
TwinView display architecture (supporting
simultaneous dual display)
Second
Generation GPU Architecture:
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100%
hardware triangle setup
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New
3D features: per-pixel shading and
lighting for rich, lifelike materials and
cinematic effects
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2nd
Generation Hardware Transform &
Lighting Engine
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Per-pixel
Shading: nVidia Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
featuring
High
Quality TV/Video Output and DVD Playback:
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Supporting
TV: NTSC and PAL TV output in 640x480 and
800x600
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High
Definition Video Processor (HDVP) for
full-screen, full-frame video playback
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TwinView
Architecture
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Simultaneous
and independent dual-display control
- Simultaneous
and independent support RGB Monitor and TV
output
| The
specifications of the Abit Siluro MX read like
virtually all other MX reference designs?which
is not necessarily a bad thing!
The only real drawback of these MX boards
is the use of standard SDRAM.
Obviously to keep the prices low (you can
find many MX boards for around $100) manufacturers
such as Abit must use cheap SDRAM on their boards. Our Abit Siluro MX came equipped with 6Ns Hyundai RAM clocked
at a default speed of 166MHz.
Early
Voodoo3 owners should recognize the Hyundai name
and remember the high degree of overclockability
that it offered.
Unfortunately, standard SDRAM,
clock-for-clock offers only half of the bandwidth
of DDR SDRAM, widely used with the GeForce and
GeForce 2 GTS line of cards. This results in lower performance at higher resolutions when
compared with the older GeForce 1s, even though
the MX has a higher theoretical peak fillrate.
Installation
and Drivers
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