GeForce MX , recommended ?

[Vulcan]

hey..
i currently have a voodoo 3 3000 and a pentium III 450 mhz and much to my surprise ,most games run just fine - jedi knight II ,Return to Castle Wolfenstein.(almost unnoticeable stutter).
please understand me..i like to play games but i'm not a fanatic who wants 500 fps or something like that ..i just wanna be able to play.

i plan to move to a Pentium 4 1.6 Ghz in a few days, will the geforce 2 mx do the job for me ?? will i be able to play opengl/D3D games with reasonable 3D performance and quality ??
(maybe even good performance ????)

Thanks In Advance !!! :confused: :rolleyes:

[kato]

Is it an MX 200 or 400? SDR or DDR? what are you planning on spending.

because if under $100 will fit your budget, I'd check this out first
<a href="http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ATI7500-64" target="_blank">http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ATI7500-64</a>

this radeon 7500 would set you up a little better for newer games and the TV out is a big bonus (IMO :D )

[Vulcan]

actually 100$ is my budget...

and i was reffering to the gegorce2 mx 400 ddr...

sorry about that..

now before i go and question about the radeon..what about my question about the geforce ?

[kato]

the geforce2 mx400 ddr is a middle of the road card, maybe slighty below middle of the road considering what is leading edge right now. . . but unless you are planning on spending $50 everytime the latest game comes out it should game just fine.


the radeon 7500 will blow it out of the water though and set you up a little better for the future as it is more on par with the lower higher end geforce 2 ultras and locker clocked geforce 3's.

I'm a little partial though. I've always been an ATI fan (love the architecture), and it seems that they are getting their driver development in better order now which makes their products even more attractive.

[Vulcan]

what are the main differences between the geforce 2 and the mx ??

what do i "lose" by getting the mx ?

[TrackMan]

I just bought a Radeon 7500 this Sunday for 90 bucks. I've found that while the drivers are a little rough around the edges compared to my old Geforce 256, the speed and features are well worth it. I use my PC to watch a few DVDs and the Radeon gives much clearer quality. Also, the TV out and dual display support is a nice bonus. My old Geforce 256 is just as fast as a Geforce MX400, so since the Radeon blows away the GF256 it will obviously blow away the GF2MX400. I would definatly go with the Radeon.

[Vulcan]

to tell you the truth ...i'm a 3dfx fan...but that's all over now..

i am considering the geforce because nvidia releases drivers quite often and the card supports 32 bit and transform & lightning and acceleration for movie playback...

does the radeon provide all of this ?
is it a new card this radeon 7500 ?

[kato]

[quote]Originally posted by Vulcan:
<strong>to tell you the truth ...i'm a 3dfx fan...but that's all over now..

i am considering the geforce because nvidia releases drivers quite often and the card supports 32 bit and transform & lightning and acceleration for movie playback...

does the radeon provide all of this ?
is it a new card this radeon 7500 ?</strong><hr></blockquote>

Radeons do support T&L and ATI's DVD playback is almost always hailed as the best in the industry.

product spec <a href="http://www.atitech.com/products/pc/radeon7500/index.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>

[Darren Wilson]

[quote]Originally posted by kato2274:
<strong>

Radeons do support T&L and ATI's DVD playback is almost always hailed as the best in the industry.

product spec <a href="http://www.atitech.com/products/pc/radeon7500/index.html" target="_blank">HERE</a></strong><hr></blockquote>

unless you fall into the trap of buying a 7000 or VE model as these have the T&L removed.

[freddy]

[quote]Originally posted by Vulcan:
<strong>what are the main differences between the geforce 2 and the mx ??

what do i "lose" by getting the mx ?</strong><hr></blockquote>


can someone answer this please.

[Darren Wilson]

GeForce2 MX

Memory Interface: 64/128-bit SDR, 64-bit DDR
Texels per Second: 700 Million
Memory Bandwidth: 2.7GB/s

GeForce2 MX 400

Memory Interface: 64/128-bit SDR, 64-bit DDR
Texels per Second: 800 Million
Memory Bandwidth: 2.7GB/s

GeForce2 MX 200

Memory Interface: 64-bit SDR
Texels per Second: 700 Million
Memory Bandwidth: 1.3GB/s

GeForce2 Ti

Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR
Pixels per Second: 1 Billion
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4GB/s

GeForce2 Pro

Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR
Pixels per Second: 800 Million
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4GB/s

GeForce2 GTS

Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR
Pixels per Second: 1 Billion
Memory Bandwidth: 5.3GB/s


Hope this helps with the comparisons as a rough guide.

[kato]

[quote]Originally posted by freddy:
<strong>


can someone answer this please.</strong><hr></blockquote>

my understanding has been that there has always only been 1 core i.e. geforce2 all the other designations (GTS, MX200 MX400, Ultra, Pro, Ti etc etc) are based on the core clock speed and type and speed of memory.

a MX200 or MX400 isn't going to push the same core and memory speed as a Geoforce 2 GTS. They are value cards, priced and crippled accordingly.

I don't really like the idea. it just confuses consumers. But I can see it from Nvidia's perspective. If you have a run of chips that don't test at the geforce2 refernce speeds (for say the GTS models,) you don't have to trash them just send them off to be part of lower clocked geforce2 MX value boards. And if you get a nice yeild of chips that can test above reference speeds, then those can be overclocked and called "ultra" and carry a nice expensive price tag.

[kato]

vulcan

this should give you a pretty good idea of where a geforce2mx stacks up. <a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020418/index.html" target="_blank">Tom's Hardware Guide</a>

look specifically at the 3d mark benchmarks as those are pretty much universally accepted amoung gamers as a good way to bench your video sub-system

[Vulcan]

before i take a look at tom's hardware guide.. you should know that the radeon you suggested is valued around 180$ here ...and the geforce 2 mx 400 with 64 mb and tv out is valued here 73$...

the radeon is too expensive here..

[Radical Dreamer]

[quote]Originally posted by Vulcan:
<strong>before i take a look at tom's hardware guide.. you should know that the radeon you suggested is valued around 180$ here ...and the geforce 2 mx 400 with 64 mb and tv out is valued here 73$...

the radeon is too expensive here..</strong><hr></blockquote>

If you want to stay with a low cost high performance card take a look at the GF 3 Ti200 or even the GeForce 2 GTS, you can pick one up online for somewhere in the neighborhood of $90-100 and htey have DDR memory and draw a substantial amount more polygons per second, not to mention the fact that the memory bandwidth is much higher

[Ryuutsume]

For the money, I think a GeForce 2 Ti would be right up your alley. That seems to be an excellent middle of the road, semi-highend card. Going with AMD processors seem to help as well. P4, and Celeron are just too slow, and over-priced. Unless you FEAR using AMD for some reason, AMD chips are definitely recommended.

[Darren Wilson]

[quote]Originally posted by Ryuutsume:
<strong> P4, and Celeron are just too slow,</strong><hr></blockquote>

I am not going to get into this debate, but have you used a Northwood core P4??? You will be very surprised.

[Vulcan]

hey....

again..what you rightfully suggest costs here about twice as much you said...

for better or worse this is what i bought :

NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400 GPU
• AGP BUS or PCI
• 64MB
• 200MHz Core Clock
• 166MHz Memory Clock
• 350MHz RAMDAC
• API Support for DirectX®, OpenGL ICD® for windows
• VGA Connector and TV/S-video Out*

256-bit 3D and 2D graphics accelerator
• NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer™
• Integrated Second Generation Transform and Lighting Engines
• 4 Texels per clock
• 32-bit color with 32-bit z/stencil
• Cube environment mapping
• DirectX and S3 texture compression
• High Definition Video Processor (HDVP)
• AGP 4X


i haven't tested it with the new games yet but i will very soon.

one question though...i installed both win me and xp each on a separate partition and there is a BIG difference with the directx diagnostics.i ran the "test direct 3d/direct draw" on the win me and the cube started spinning like there's no tommorow...but on win xp the cube didn't spin nearly as fast..same goes for the direct draw test...(i installed the latest nvidia drivers 28.32..With a new Pentium 4 1.6Ghz)
DOES that mean that games will run slowly on the XP ?????

[Matridom]

[quote]Originally posted by Radical Dreamer:
<strong>

If you want to stay with a low cost high performance card take a look at the GF 3 Ti200 or even the GeForce 2 GTS, you can pick one up online for somewhere in the neighborhood of $90-100 and htey have DDR memory and draw a substantial amount more polygons per second, not to mention the fact that the memory bandwidth is much higher</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yup, the Geforce2 is still a pretty good card.. I've had mine for over a year now and i'm very happy with it. Mine's an ASUS 7700 Pro Pure (64 meg DDR) and i have it overclocked STABLE at the Ultra speeds. It takes the newer games without a glitch and that's with a 800 MHZ Processor.

From the looks of the upgrade, you'll be happy with any of the newer video cards. The differences between the cards are minor (well relatively). nVidia works on brute force, where ATI tries to finess things better.. Either way, You'll be estatic with your purchase.

[Six Eyed Smily]

by the way, what happened to those nice geforce 2 ultra cards? they seem to have disapeared off the market. pity - they were good little cards as they were the only one of the geforce 2 family that had more enhancements than just upping clock speeds

[migxxv]

I just got a GeForce 2 GTS-V and found many others at <a href="http://www.pricewatch.com" target="_blank">www.pricewatch.com</a> and it was only $53.72 total, with tax and S&H. It is a very good card, especially for the money and reacts pretty well to overclocking (mine is only revision B, revision C is supposed to be way better :) )

[Stryfe]

I have to say that you made a good choice, Vulcan. I've had my GF2 MX-400 card for quite some time and it can run pretty much everything even at regular clock speeds. Of course, overclocking would allow it perform even better. Just make sure you don't crank the GPU speed to like 400 MHz. :D <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />