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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.
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| Specifications
Of Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 MX |
| Yes...another
reference board! |
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nVidia
GeForce2 MX GPU:
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Hypertexel
architecture ( 4 texels per clock )
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32MB
on-board memory
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20M
Triangles/sec through T&L and Set-up
, 700-Megatexel fill rate
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Full
acceleration for Microsoft DirectX 7 and
OpenGL 1.2 ICD
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2.8
GB/s memory bandwidth
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20
million triangles/sec
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Digital
Vibrance control
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NVIDIA
Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
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High-Definition
Video Processor (HDVP)
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32-bit
color
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32-bit
Z/stencil buffer
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Cube
environment mapping
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DirectX
Texture Compression & S3TC support
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Comprehensive
AGP 4X support with fast writes and
execute mode
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Integrated
350MHz RAMDAC, resolution up to
2048x1536, True Color @ 60Hz
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High
Definition Video Processor for fast DVD,
2D and video processing (with enhanced
motion compensation)
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NTSC/PAL
TV-Output with flicker filter TV output
(w/ flicker filter)
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Digital
dual display architecture, supporting
dual CRTC/simultaneous dual display
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User
Manual
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Leadtek
WinFast Software Pack (Contains Software
Driver)
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DVD
Magic CD(Contains WinDVD program &
bundled utilities)
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WinFast
DVD
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Colorific
from E-color
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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
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