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NVIDIA GeForce2 MX Reference Graphics Card Review

This is a new mainstream product from NVIDIA based on GeForce2 GPU, which we all know as NV11. It featurestwo new and quite interesting technologies, such as TwinView and Digital Vibrance Control.

by FastSite
07/30/2000 | 12:00 AM

No one will dare doubt that NVIDIA is currently a No. 1 graphics company in the market. A number of really interesting and successful solutions, the company has offered within the last year, seems to be covering nearly all the market niches. However, some market sectors still remained free from NVIDIA invasion, and this is exactly where the new graphics product will fit: the mainstream graphics market. In fact, this is pretty easy to carry out with a not very expensive product but at the same time featuring quite enough cool things to win the mainstream users' hearts. Yes, we are talking about the product, which has been known to us as NV11 all this time and which we have already discussed in our Early Preview. Now we all learned its true name: GeForce2 MX. <%BANNER[article]%>

As you can understand from the name of this GPU, it is based on the GeForce2 GTS core and "MX" stands for "multitransmitters", which is directly connected with the new feature supported by this GPU. GeForce2 MX possesses the so-called TwinView (Dual Display) architecture, which includes a Dual-Link Transmission-Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) transmitter. So, GeForce2 MX appears the only graphics processor capable of driving dual digital displays independently, while fully supporting analog RGB (VGA) and TV-out. However, we will talk about it later in our review.

Well, let's take a look at the specifications of this GPU as they appear in reality, so that to get a better idea of what we are actually dealing with.

Specification

3D Graphics

Well, if you take a look at our NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Reference Card Review, you will see that NVIDIA GeForce2 MX has the following significant differences from its elder fellow. To get a better idea of what has been changed, we suggest looking at the table below:

  GeForce256 GeForce2 MX GeForce2 GTS
Core Frequency 120MHz 175MHz 200MHz
Rendering Pipelines 4 2 4
Pixel/Texel Fillrate 480/480 350/700 800/1600
Memory Bandwidth 2.7/4.8GB/sec 2.7GB/sec 5.3GB/sec
Polygons/sec 15 million 20 million 25 million
Technology 0.25 micron 0.18 micron 0.18 micron

In fact, a quick look at this table gives us to understand that GeForce2 MX is a lighter version of GeForce2 GTS and that NVIDIA absolutely correctly positioned it as a mainstream solution against the background of the performance desktop GeForce2 GTS. However, these few issues are far not all the innovations introduced in new NVIDIA chip. So, let's discuss a couple of other interesting peculiarities, which may serve as very important attractions.

TwinView

If you have read our Matrox Millennium G400 MAX Review, you should remember our discussion of the DualHead technology implemented in this graphics card. The technology introduced in GeForce2 MX is similar to DualHead in a certain way. The main idea of these two technologies is to allow you to connect an additional displaying device to you system. However, unlike the technology from Matrox, which can't boast the support of LCD monitors, NVIDIA TwinView (aka Dual Display) allows to connect virtually any combination of TVs, flat panels, and monitors and GeForce2 MX appears the first device to support two digital flat panel displays through dual integrated TMDS transmitters.

The GeForce2 MX supports dual displays with a single chip. There are a variety of combinations supported, including:

GeForce2 MX possesses two separate and independent video pipes and two CRTC (Cathode Ray Tube Controller), which transfer the data formed by the graphics processor into the integrated RAMDAC, into the external (optional) RAMDAC, into the dual channel transmitter of the digital signal or into the TV encoder.

TwinView supports several working modes, which can be very helpful for different sorts of tasks. They are:

Digital Vibrance Control

Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) is another innovation introduced in NVIDIA GeForce2 MX. It aims at making the images you see on your monitor close to ideal providing the lighting conditions for crisp, bright, clean pictures. DVC is a patent pending innovation that allows the user to digitally control the saturation of all images, color separation and intensity through a simple control panel. As a result, you are supposed to get richer color, and brighter, cleaner, more ergonomically pleasing images. According to NVIDIA specialists, DVC can compensate for sub-optimal lighting, reducing the chance of serious physical injury from eyestrain and increasing productivity. It improves all forms of visual output and works for digital flat panels, LCD projectors, monitors, and TVs.

Here are a few examples of the DVC in action. The left part of the image is given with DVC disabled and the right one - enabled:

 

Well, in fact we got the impression that DVC implies in the first place software gamma control. Certainly, the images on the right look brighter, but couldn't that be achieved with the conventional gamma settings? Anyway, this is what we get from the DVC option, and we have to admit that NVIDIA kept the word: with Digital Vibrance Control enabled the color is richer, brighter and cleaner. However, it is really surprising that this technology was introduced only in GeForce2 MX, especially bearing in mind that it was implemented solely on the software level.

Well, it's high time we stopped discussing theoretical stuff and passed over to our today's hero: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX Reference Card. Please, meet!

Closer Look

Here is NVIDIA GeForce2 MX Reference Graphics Card:

 

The card we had at our disposal was an NVIDIA reference card. The manufacturers will base theircards on this design that's why their end-products shouldn't be too different from the reference.The card is made on AGP 2x/4x interface, has 32MB SDR SDRAM located in 4 chips on the front side ofthe PCB. The microchips are made by Hyundai and feature 6ns access time. The memory working frequencyis 166MHz.

A really interesting peculiarity of this graphics card is the absence of an active cooler on the chipset. The only device, which serves the cooling purposes is a pin heatsink of a relatively big size. This is quite logical, actually, bearing in mind that there are twice as few pipelines as by GeForce2 GTS and hence fewer transistors. As a result, the chip dissipates less heat and doesn't need a cooler really. Though the package of GeForce2 MX is of the same size as that of GeForce2 GTS, the die is much smaller, which tells on the heating, of course. We even suppose that this solution could be quite suitable for use in mobile computers as well due to this important peculiarity.

If we take a closer look at the card, we will notice that it is equipped with a TV-out. However, the entire circuitry as well as BrookTree869 microchip responsible for this function is located on the daughter card. The card is also equipped with the DVI (Digital Video Interface).

Overclocking

Well, since we have already mentioned that the chip heats very insignificantly, we get every reason to suppose that it should overclock pretty cool. In fact, the overclocking potential of the chip is quite promising. We managed to increase its frequency up to 220MHz. However, as far as the memory overclockability is concerned, it appears not that nice at all. As usual, memory bandwidth turned the major bottleneck of GeForce2 MX graphics card. It worked normally at the maximum of 210MHz, which is not the best result we hoped to get. That's why we can hardly expect our graphics card to show any impressive performance growth in 32bit color. It will be tangible but not so impressive as in 16bit color mode.

Installation and Drivers

Well, we are through with the features of our GeForce2 MX reference card. Now let's pass over to the tests. First, take a look at the configuration of our testbed:

The work with the graphics card starts with the drivers installation, of course. Actually, the reference drivers for GeForce2 MX are the good old detonator drivers, which suit for GeForce2 GTS as well. That's why we won't discuss the drivers peculiarities here, since you may take a look at them in our NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Reference Graphics Card Review.

We ran all the tests with detonator drivers version 5.30. However, there is already a newer version 6.0 available, which supports TwinView technology we have just discussed above.

Performance

We will start with 2D graphics, as usual. Since the 2D core of NVIDIA GeForce2 MX is absolutely the same as that of NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS, there isn't much to discuss here. You may take a look at one of our reviews devoted to GeForce2 GTS based graphics cards. We will simply remind you that the quality and performance in 2D shown by the cards on GeForce2 GTS were very high. Graphics cards of this class meet the requirements of the mostly all users. As for the DVC implementation, we didn't notice any particular improvement of the 2D image quality caused by the use of DVC. However, we hope we will be able to feel its power later on, when we will consider other GeForce2 MX based graphics cards.

We will use the following two games to consider the performance of NVIDIA GeForce2 MX in 3D-graphics:

These tools should be quite enough to give us a good idea of the graphics card's performance when working via two main API. For a more illustrative comparison we added the results shown by three more graphics cards to our charts: Creative 3D Blaster GeForce256 Annihilator (NVIDIA GeForce256 SDR), Creative 3D Blaster GeForce256 Annihilator Pro (NVIDIA GeForce256 DDR) and Creative 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 (NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS).




You can see pretty well that NVIDIA GeForce2 MX is in general a bit faster than GeForce256 with SDR memory, which we actually expected to happen. In 32bit color the difference is really insignificant, especially in Quake3. GeForce256 with DDR memory proved faster everywhere, because the SDR memory bandwidth is the hindering factor and the system with the DDR graphics card is much better-balanced all in all. However, as for the performance of the overclocked GeForce2 MX, it appears really striking. The performance gain is quite noticeable and sometimes GeForce2 MX manages to leave behind GeForce256 with DDR memory. Note that the overclocked card worked with minimum extra cooling (there was just one more additional cooler in the PC case). Of course, we can't generalize the results shown by this graphics card and refer them to all future cards based on GeForce2 MX, however, we still hope that overclocking fans will find a nice piece for their needs.

Conclusions

Well, as the charts showed the performance of NVIDIA GeForce2 MX was not that bad at all and hence the cards on this chip will compete with those on GeForce256 with SDR memory. However, bearing in mind that GeForce2 MX can boast some very interesting advantages compared to its primary competitor, the game will most likely end in favor of NVIDIA's new baby. Among these advantages, we should certainly mention: TwinView and second generation T&L implemented in a new chip.

As far as the recommended price is concerned, the announced $150-170 seem to be a bit higher than most of you have probably expected, however, you should be able to get a card on NVIDIA GeForce2 MX without the TwinView function (no second display out) for a bit lower price.

Highs:

Lows:

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