Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 MX

Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 MX - Page 1

The Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 MX
Worth every cent...and then some...

By Marco "BigWop" Chiappetta
10/10/00

nVidia has been on a roll as of late.  They are seemingly starting to dominate the performance gamer market with their powerful GeForce 2 GTS.  As if that wasn?t good enough, they will soon be releasing an ?Ultra? model that will further establish their position.  Being a dominant force in a single market segment isn?t enough for nVidia though.  Their design win with the Microsoft X-Box should establish nVidia as a major player in the console market.  They have an integrated chipset on the way which will surely be popular in the sub $1000 PC market and the chipset used on the Leadtek card we?re taking a look at today, the GeForce 2 MX, is squarely targeted at the budget gamer / office PC arena.  nVidia shows no mercy. 

I know many of you see the words ?budget gamer? and cringe but let me assure you the GeForce 2 MX is no performance slouch.  The MX should really be called a ?low cost performance solution??its ?Bang-for-the-Buck? is unrivaled. 

The Leadtek GeForce 2 MX that we?ve got here in the lab is basically a reference design but with a few extra features.  Baseline MX cards will offer a simple analog monitor-out connector, while the ?high? end will have dual monitor outputs and be able to power 2 monitors (2 analog CRTs, or 1 analog and 1 digital) using nVidia?s TWINView technology.  The Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 MX  has a standard analog output and TV-Out.  This card has a few other features to differentiate it from other reference boards but we?ll get to those a little later.

                         

Specifications Of Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 MX
Yes...another reference board!

  • nVidia GeForce2 MX GPU:

  • Hypertexel architecture ( 4 texels per clock )

  • 32MB on-board memory

  • 20M Triangles/sec through T&L and Set-up , 700-Megatexel fill rate

  • Full acceleration for Microsoft DirectX 7 and OpenGL 1.2 ICD

  • 2.8 GB/s memory bandwidth

  • 20 million triangles/sec

  • Digital Vibrance control

  • NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR)

  • High-Definition Video Processor (HDVP)

  • 32-bit color

  • 32-bit Z/stencil buffer

  • Cube environment mapping

  • DirectX Texture Compression & S3TC support

  • Comprehensive AGP 4X support with fast writes and execute mode

  • Integrated 350MHz RAMDAC, resolution up to 2048x1536, True Color @ 60Hz

  • High Definition Video Processor for fast DVD, 2D and video processing (with enhanced motion compensation)

  • NTSC/PAL TV-Output with flicker filter TV output (w/ flicker filter) 

  • Digital dual display architecture, supporting dual CRTC/simultaneous dual display

  • User Manual

  • Leadtek WinFast Software Pack (Contains Software Driver)

  • DVD Magic CD(Contains WinDVD program & bundled utilities)

  • WinFast DVD

  • Colorific from E-color

  • 3Deep from E-color

  • Cult3D form Cycore

The Leadtek GeForce 2 MX has 32MB of 6ns Samsung SDRAM on board set to run at a default memory clock of 166MHz (FYI, the default core clock is 175MHz).  The memory on this board, worked perfectly at its default speed but we?re unhappy to report that there was very little margin for overclocking.

Since memory bandwidth is such an issue with the GeForce series of cards, we were a little bit disappointed.  It?s tough to hold anything against a product because it doesn?t perform as you?d like when you?re running it out of spec but we?re talking about the MX here!  If there was ever a chip made that perfectly fits the criteria for overclocking, this is it!

Installation and Drivers

 

Tags:  GeForce, Win, force, leadtek, fast, DT, EA, K

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