<%BANNER[top_768x90]%>
<%BANNER[banner_468x60_h]%>
NVIDIA to Make Some Changes to Its Low-Cost Chips Family
by Anna Filatova
02/28/2001 | 08:06 PM
One of the employees of a graphics card company who asked us not to mention his name here, told us that NVIDIA is planning to change the product range of its low-cost graphics family, since the company will be working hard on pushing forward its most expensive graphics products in the near future.
- VANTA 8/16MB. These graphics chips will be targeted for entry level, but their price will be slightly increased in order to encourage the customers to buy newer chips.
- TNT2 M64 16/32MB. This product is quite popular among the major OEM companies. Nevertheless, in order to encourage them to buy newer chips, the price on TNT2 M64 16/32MB will be increased tangibly.
- TNT2 Pro. In early March NVIDIA will stop manufacturing these chips. Then around two months later all the shipments of these chips will also stop. As an alternative to the discontinued chip, NVIDIA suggests GeForce2 MX200.
- GeForce2 MX. This family will be split into three separate models:
- MX100: 32bit, 8/16MB DDR SDRAM;
- MX200: 64bit, 32MB SDRAM. It will replace TNT2 Pro.
- MX400: 128bit, 32/64MB SDRAM. In other words, it’s just a regular GeForce2 MX.
These three MX models will have different core and memory frequencies.
The fact that NVIDIA pays a lot of attention to GeForce2 MX family can’t remain unnoticed. It is evident that these chips (three models) will one day turn out the only ones in the low-cost graphics market.
MX100 cards are expected to occupy the niche in the Lowest-End market, which doesn’t care that much for high performance, actually (they will probably appear on the same level as S3 Trio).
As for MX200 everything is absolutely clear: 64bit memory interface will limit the performance. And the graphics cards based on this chip model will easily fit into the mainstream sector.
The last one, MX400, is none other but a former GeForce2 MX.
<%BANNER[banner_468x60_f]%>