August 2002 3Digest - NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400 64MB AGP

This chip is presented by Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 MX400 DH Pro 64MB, AGP videocard.

Features:

NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400 chip, 200MHz clock rate;
64MB SDR SDRAM memory in 8 MIRA 6ns microchips, 183 MHz 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 has turned into a line of similar products itself (GeForce2 Pro, Ultra), the question about GeForce2 MX development has arisen. Especially, as there appeared many pared-down cards on the latter with 64-bit memory bus. So, GeForce2 MX has tranformed into a line of GeForce2 MX200/MX400. The first is a pared-down GeForce2 MX ("double-castrated" so to say), the second is slightly better, operating at 200 MHz instead of 175 MHz. Yielding to users and makers, NVIDIA let them use 183 MHz memory with it. So, GeForce2 MX400 is a slightly faster GeForce2 MX. As you know, in these cards not GPU, but memory throughput plays the main role, so this heavily advertised clock rate boost is just a marketing trick. Especially, as very many ÌX400 cards have been still supplied with 6ns memory, operating at 166 MHz. Moreover, a number of companies decided to double the memory amount to 64MB. Naturally, the clock rate remained the same, and they've used the cheapest memory available. This has been a purely marketing trick for users, attracted by the memory amount.

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.

On the 10th of August 2002 the latest drivers from NVIDIA are 29.90, 30.00, 30.82 for Windows XP.