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There has
never been a better time to be a gamer. The CPU
war between AMD and
Intel
has brought processor prices way down, and a slew of
excellent video chipsets are available at virtually
any price point. ATi's Radeon, STM's Kyro II and
nVidia's GeForce 2 MX are all widely available at
prices well below $100. Couple a video card
based on any one of these chipsets with a 1GHz.
processor, and you'll have a very capable gaming rig
without having to spend a ton of money.
That is
exactly what we did here tonight. We've taken
Abit's latest entry into the budget video card
market, the Siluro T400 and installed it into our
1GHz. Athlon test system. The Siluro T400 is a
64MB AGP card base on nVidia's GeForce 2 MX400
reference design. We've all seen many similar
cards as of late...let's cut to the chase and see what
the Siluro T400 is made of...
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| Specifications
Of Abit's Siluro T400 |
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A 64Mb
Budget Card |
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Specifications:
- Chipset:
Geforce2 MX400
- Nvidia 256-bit
Hi Performance 2D and 3D accelerator engine
equipped
- AGP 2X /4X
Support, AGP texturing, Fast Writes Support
- Integrated
350MHz RAMDAC, resolution up to 2048 x 1536
@75Hz
- Equipped 64MB
SDRAM 128 bit bus Interface running at 166MHz
- 200 MHz core
clock, 400 million pixels /sec, 800 million
texel /sec fill rate
- 2.7GB/sec
memory bandwidth
- Second
generation transform and lighting (T&L)
engines
- DirectX,
OpenGL Optimizations Support and S3 texture
compression
- 32-bit
Z/stencil buffer
- Complete
support for DirectX 7.0and DirectX 6.0, Direct
5.0
TV out (Siluro T400 only:
- Digital video
output by integrated NTSC/PAL encoders
- Complete S-VHS
& Composite Video-Output Ports support
- High quality
DVD Playback
-
High-Definition Video Professor (HDTV) for
Full-screen Video playback of 720p and DVD
resolution
Advanced support for DirectDraw:
- Hardware color
space conversion (YUV 4:2:2 and 4:2:0)
- 5-tap
horizontal by 3-tap vertical filtering
- 8:1 up scaling
and downscaling
- Per-pixel
color keying
- Multiple video
windows with hardware color space conversion
and filtering
- DVD
sub-picture alpha blended composition
- Video
acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-1, MPEG-2
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THE BUNDLE:
The Abit
Siluro T400 ships in an unusually shaped, triangular
box, designed to help make the product stand out on
retail shelves when stacked next to the
competition....
Inside the
box you'll find a very complete bundle, especially
considering the price of the T400. Included with
the Siluro T400 is an S-Video cable, and adapter to
use either S-Video or standard composite video-out, a
very complete user's manual and a CD containing all
necessary drivers and utilities. Also included
is a full version of WinDVD 2000. WinDVD 2000 is
one of the best software DVD players available for the
PC...we must praise Abit for including this excellent
program with their "budget" T400.
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