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Posted by
Paul
"Crazyace" Bouthiller on October 11, 2001
Manufacturer: ProLink
Product: Pixelview GeForce 2 MX400
Find
prices for GeForce 2 MX videocards here.
The competition is tight in the entry
level 3d card market, and the Geforce2 MX seems to be the
hot ticket. Many manufacturers have released their own
renditions of this NVIDIA based board, which makes it a
little difficult in selecting a new video card. Geforce2 MX
cards have recently been replaced by Geforce2 MX 200 and MX
400 cards, so what does all this mean? Well, the latest
batch of cards carrying the MX200 and MX400 label are
similar in architecture, but they are “cranked up” thanks
to some extra cooling and faster ram. I can’t tell you
which card will be right for your system, but I can give you
a little insight on PixelView’s very own, Geforce2 MX400
AGP.
Software
& Installation
Don’t get too hyped up about the
included software, because there really isn’t much. What
you get is drivers, and that’s it. The drivers did install
pretty easy with an executable, but I opted to upgrade to
NVIDIA’s latest detonator for my review. Overall,
installation was quick and painless, without any problems.
TwinView
Display
This card does support TwinView display,
through the TV out function. Some GeForce cards offer
addition DVI adaptors on the back of the card, this one did
not. If you are looking for that feature, PixelView does
offer a similar card with an optional DVI connector on back,
and includes the DVI/VGA adaptor. The TV out feature offers
either an s-video out or a standard TV-out, and worked
flawlessly. Just remember that there is a possibility your
motherboard might not support it. I have heard of a few
cases that some motherboards do not supply enough voltage to
the card to support this feature.
Overclocking
This
was a little bit of a disappointment. The difference between
the different Geforce2 MX cards (MX, MX200, and MX400) is
the speed at which the clock and ram run at. This card comes
standard with the core running at 200MHz and the clock
running at 200MHz.The core comes with a nice little heat
sink/fan combination, but the ram is naked, without heat
sinks. I initially cranked the ram up to 220 MHz, and
clicked on “test”. I have always wondered why NVIDIA
bothered putting that button there, since I have never
actually failed the test with any other card while trying to
overclock on a reasonable level. This time I did. The card
locked up when I cranked the memory to 220 MHz. I tried 215
MHz, and observed some visual impurities. The card did seem
stable at 210 MHz, but the performance gains were not
substantial enough to include additional overclocked
benchmarks. The graphics chip itself was solid at 220 MHz,
but anything more than that was a bit unstable. These cards
don’t really obtain significant gains when overclocking
the chip; the key is to cranking up the ram. Overall, I
really thought I would have been able to hit 220mhz/220mhz
without any problems, but as you know, that was not the
case.
If
you don't want to see card specs and test system you can jump
to this page.
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