July 2002 3Digest - NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400 32Mb AGP

This chip is presented by SUMA Platinum GeForce2 MX400 32MB AGP videocard.

Features:

NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400 chip, 200MHz clock rate;
32MB SDR SDRAM memory in 4 Hyundai 5.5ns microchips, 183MHz clock rate, 128-bit bus;
Peak fill rate in the multitexturing mode is 400 megapixels/sec and 800 megatexels/sec.

Wasn't overclocked.

Already in 1999 3D accelerator brands understood that it's unprofitable to release only one top model as it would cost much, and to reduce its price to the mainstream level ($100-150) means deprive yourself of superprofits. Therefore they decided to release a whole line of products with different capabilities and prices. After the release of GeForce2 GTS in the spring of the year 2000 for about $350 in the beginning, it as necessary to release something new for the mainstream market as well. So the summer brought GeForce2 MX, being a pared-down GeForce2 GTS. We've written many reviews about these cards, and everybody can find them in the video section.

Soon after GeForce2 GTS turned into a line of alike products (GeForce2 Pro, Ultra) the question about GeForce4 MX evolution has arisen. Especially, the market was full of pared-down cards with the latest GPU and 64-bit bus. So GeForce2 MX transformed into the GeForce2 MX200/MX400 line. The first was the pared-down GeForce2 MX (like a "doubly castrated"), the second was a little improved, as GeForce2 MX400 chipset was working at 200 MHz instead of 175 MHz. Yielding the pressure of users and manufacturers, NVIDIA allowed to use 183 MHz memory with this chip. So, GeForce2 MX400 is a little overclocked variant of the old GeForce2 MX. As it's known, GPU speed plays little role in such cards, as everything depends on memory bandwidth, so that advertised clock rate increase from 175 MHz to 200 MHz was just a marketing trick. Especially, as many MX400 cards were still supplied with 6ns 166 MHz memory.

Now, after the release of GeForce4 MX and with GeForce2 Ti prices reduction, the destiny of GeForce2 MX cards is predetermined. We now see as the price of the former gets close to that of the latter. Due to these reasons and because the latest drivers almost do not improve performance of GeForce2 MX400 we move this section into our archive.

On the 10th of July 2002 the latest drivers from NVIDIA are 29.80, 30.30 for Windows XP.