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I'm
sure most of you are looking at this article and wondering, "Who is X-Micro"?
Wasn't the Hulk a bad television show from the
seventies? Well X-Micro is a relatively new
company to enter the video card market. Formed in 1999,
X-Micro has made it's presence known by offering
several video cards and trying to compete
with such heavy hitters as Abit,
ATI and Elsa.
Since they are focusing on the video market, who better to ally
themselves with than nVidia? nVidia has
solidified their position as a leader in the
design and production of
high performance GPU's, and as you can see, there
are several OEM's out there who have made it
clear that the nVidia GeForce line is the current GPU of choice.
The
last thing I think of when I hear GeForce 2 is the
word "budget" but that is exactly what
X-Micro is trying not to break by offering the
Hulk V. With a retail price of $105, the
Hulk V is a standard GeForce 2 MX based card with a few
added touches. The model we tested offers a
standard analog output as well as 2 TV-OUT ports
(1 RCA & 1 S-Video). A second monitor
output is optional.
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| Specifications
Of The X-Micro Hulk V GeForce 2 MX |
| Gosh
this looks familiar! |
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3D Features
- Nvidia 2nd
Generation 256-bit Geforce2 MX GPU
- Integrated
2nd generation T&L engine
- 700
Mtextel Fill Rate
- 20M
triangles/sec setup
- Nvidia
QuadEngine Technology
- Order
independent Full Scene Multisample
Anti-aliasing
- 32-bit
color with 32-bit z/stencil
- DirectX
and S3TC texture compression
High
performance 256-bit 2D acceleration
- Optimized
for multiple color depths including 32,
24, 16, 15 and 8-bit per pixel
- True color
hardware cursor
- Multi-buffering
(double, triple, quad buffering) for
smooth animation and video
Video
playback
- Enhanced
Motion Compensation for full screen
video playback of all DVD/HDTV
resolution
- Video
acceleration for DirectShow, Mpeg 1,
Mpeg 2, and indeo
- 8:1 up
scaling and downscaling
- Multiple
video windows with hardware color space
conversion and filtering
OS support
- Windows
95/OSR2, Windows 98, Windows 2000,
Windows NT
- Linux
XFree86 4.0.1 (RedHat 6.1)
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The
X-Micro Hulk V GeForce 2 MX ships with
32MB of standard 6ns Samsung SDRAM running at
a default clockspeed of 166 MHz.
You'll
see a little later on that we were able to kick it
up a notch or two though. For
now, let's see how the Hulk V is put together... Quality
and Installation
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