By Andrey Vorobiev

This chip is presented by Creative 3D Blaster GeForce2 MX 32 MBytes DDR AGP.

Features:

• NVIDIA GeForce2 MX chip, 175 MHz clock rate;
• 32 MBytes DDR SDRAM memory in four Hyundai 7ns microchips, 143 (286) MHz clock rate , 64-bit bus;
• Peak speed of scene drawing in multitexturing mode is 350 megapixels/sec and 700 megatexels/sec.

Wasn't tweaked.

After the release of GeForce256 cards, NVIDIA representatives have began to understand that following releases wouldn't replace previous cards due to the short period between the new releases. Therefore it has been decided to build a so-called 'ladder' of the market niches, so that every accelerator would have belonged to one of them according its price and perfomance. The release of GeForce2 GTS has been marked by a much higher price for them than for any other of the previous cards. It has been meant that a cheap solution named GeForce2 MX would follow the release of more expensive variants to occupy a low cost niche and to replace more expensive and less faster GeForce256 cards. So, the Summer'2000 has brought us GeForce2 MX that is very popular today. And though this exact GPU is the lowest, its speed and perfomance features very well correspond to the low price for such cards. But due to some unclear reasons NVIDIA has decided to release a standalone card on this chip, and I must say it's the slowest of all 32 MBytes GeForce2 MX due to 143 MHz memory installed. The memory type isn't even important, as the 64-bit bus reduces all DDR memory features to zero. In addition the company has stopped manufacturing this card and soon this ridiculous product will disappear from the market. This card was tested with new drivers for the last time in 3Digest.

For the 20th of July'2001 the latest drivers from NVIDIA are 8.03, 12.90 and 14.10. As the drivers differences are equal for all MX200 cards, there's no sense in comparing drivers separately for each of these cards. See NVIDIA GeForce2 MX200 32 MBytes section for more information about drivers.

I advise you to read about S3TC influence on speed and perfomance, because S3TC realization in OpenGL is important nowadays, and it shows good results.

You can compare screenshots taken on this card with reference ones taken on NVIDIA GeForce3.

Games / Cards	1	2	3	4	5	6
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	7	8	9	10	11	12
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	13	14	15	16	17	18
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX						-
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	19	20	21	22	23	24
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX		-		-
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	25
NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX
NVIDIA GeForce3

Game list:

• 1. Quake3
• 2. Unreal
• 3. Unreal Tournament
• 4. No One Lives Forever
• 5. Serious Sam
• 6. Colin McRAE Rally2
• 7. American McGee's Alice
• 8. Mercedes Benz Truck Racing
• 9. Sacrifice
• 10. F.A.K.K. 2
• 11. Need For Speed V (Porshe 2000)
• 12. Real MYST
• 13. Blade of Darkness
• 14. Giants
• 15. 3DMark2001: Game1
• 16. 3DMark2001: Game2
• 17. 3DMark2001: Game3
• 18. 3DMark2001: Game4
• 19. 3DMark2001: Dot3
• 20. 3DMark2001: EMBM
• 21. 3DMark2001: Vertex Shaders
• 22. 3DMark2001: Pixel Shaders
• 23. Black & White
• 24. Undying
• 25. Anachronox

I shall mark that these cards sometimes have Z-buffer working incorrectly in 32-bit mode when Z-buffer itself is 16-bit, what causes artefacts. Such problems were noticed on some games with Unreal Tournament engine. Thus I recommend you to use utilities like Riva Tuner for fine tuning, and pay attention to Direct3D settings of such games.

2D quality is outstanding. Soaping effects can be seen only on some low-quality monitors in 1600x1200. But there are some low-quality cards present that give soaping effect on good monitors. And I shall mark that 6.* version drivers are not compatible with the software for sound cards based on Yamaha processor, as well as with SoftXG100 software synthesizer. Start or Close Window buttons can be spoiled by some "garbage" in 2D mode.