Specifications
3D Features
- Integrated Second-Generation Transform and Lighting
- Two independent pixel pipelines
- 4 texels per clock
- 700-Mtexels fill rate
- 20 Mtriangles/sec setup
- Hardware Anti-aliasing
- 32-bit Colors, with 32-bit Z/stencil buffer
- High Quality Texture Filtering, including Anisotropic
- Advanced per-pixel, perspective-correct texturing and shading
- Per-Pixel dot product 3 bump mapping
- Per-pixel lighting and shading
- Cube environment mapping
- Projector textures
- Multi-texture and multi-pass
- BRDF Support : Bi-Directional Reflectance Distribution Functions
- Textures modulation
- Light maps
- Reflection maps
- Procedural textures
- DX7 texture compression (DXTC, S3TC)
- Fog and Depth Cueing
- Radial or linear
- Per-vertex or per-pixel
2D Features
- High-performance 256-bit 2D acceleration
- Optimized for multiple color depths including 32, 24, 16, 15 and 8-bits per pixel
- True-color hardware cursor
- Multi-buffering (double, triple, quad buffering) smooth animation and video playback
Video Features
- High Definition Video Processor (HDVP) for full-screen, full-frame video playback of all HDTV and DVD and resolutions
- DVD and HDTV ready motion compensation for MPEG-2 decoding up to 1920x1080i ATSC format
- Independent hardware color controls for video overlay
- Hardware color space conversion (YUV 4:2:2 and 4:2:0)
- 5-tap horizontal by 3-tap vertical filtering
- 8:1 upscaling and downscaling
- Per-pixel color keying
- Multiple video windows with hardware color space conversion and filtering
- DVD sub-picture alpha blended composting
- Video acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and Indeo
Available MX200/400 models from Inno3D
GeForce2 MX400:
- AGP or PCI bus
- 64MB / 32MB SDR RAM (128 bit bus Interface)
- optional TwinView (Dual VGA)
- optional TV output
GeForce2 MX200:
- AGP bus
- 64MB / 32MB SDR RAM (64 bit bus Interface)
- optional TwinView (1 VGA + TV)
- optional TV output
Specs In Detail
As you might have already guessed by reading the name of this videocard, the card is based upon the fastest GeForce2 MX series GPU available, the MX400. But what does this 400 number mean? What's the difference between the MX400 and the MX200? And last but not least, where did the original GeForce2 MX go? Well, I'll try to give you an answer to these question in a very simple way. In fact there's not much of a difference actually ... hang on ... you'll see what I mean!
Do you remember the original GeForce2 MX specs? It featured a 175MHz core clock and a 128bit SDR or 64bit DDR memory data bus with the memory clocked at 166MHz. This resulted in a 'poor' memory bandwith of 2.7Gb/s and fill rates of 350 Mpixels/sec and 700 Mtexels/sec. I hope this short reminder has refreshed your memory. Now let's compare the new MX flavors (MX200 and MX400) against these specs ...
Let's start with the MX200, the slowest and cheapest of the two new additions to the MX family. The MX200 has the exact same 175MHz core clock, 166MHz memory clock and fill rates as the original GF2 MX. The difference has to be found in the slower 64bit SDR memory data bus and the even more limited 1.35Gb/s memory bandwith. That's half the memory bandwith of the original GeForce2 MX (and the MX400 as we will see in a few secs). So far we've seen no improvement of the new MXs over the original one ... but then there's the MX400 ...
Yep, that's right folks, the MX400, on which the Inno3D Tornado GF2 MX400 is based, has some improvements over the original MX. Here they are ... First of all, the core clock has been increased from 175MHz to 200MHz. Secondly, the fill rates have been increased fromm 350 Mpixels/sec and 700 Mtexels/sec to 400 Mpixels/sec and 800 Mtexels/sec. Alright I agree, these changes are nothing to write home about, BUT you got to admit that they should increase overall performance of a videocard at least a little, don't they? Don't forget that the memory data bus and the memory bandwith remains unchanged compared to the original MX!
The Inno3D GF2 MX400 video card we're discussing right now, comes with 32MB SDRAM running a 128bit memory bus. As you can verify on the picture, Inno3D chose to install 5ns EliteMT memory chips on this MX400 card. Word goes that these EliteMT memory chips don't overclock as well as Hyundai for example. Is this true? We'll find out in the overclocking part of this review!
What's really nice about this card is the active cooling on top of the MX400 GPU. This should insure core stability because the temperature will be kept as low as possible. But will this active cooling enable us to cranck up the MX400 core clock to unseen heights? We will provide you with an answer to this question soon ...
The GeForce2 MX400 supports nVidia's Twinview architecture and TV-out features, but our sample didn't come with either one of this two features onboard so I wasn't capable of testing them :( InnoVISION has version of the GeForce2 MX400 card with this features if you really want them!
Enough blabbering about the specs, lets take a look at what's inside the box.