Geforce 2's

strat

Ok with all the various flavours of geforce 2's im gonna upgrade meh rusty aul TNT2 for a nice gf2's gf3's seem too expensive atm

the geforces's go like this powerwise (or am i wrong)
Geforce2 MX
Geforce2 GTS
Geforce2 PRO
Geforce2 ULTRA


Im not reallly interested in an MX so wots a good price for the others ?
Is IEP£171 inc vat (ex delevery) good for a GF2 PRO 64meg ? (here btw)

JustHalf

Yep, it's fairly good. If you want to get it from Ireland, you can get it from here for £215.35: (best retail price I've seen so far in Ireland for a Pro)

http://www.itdirect.ie/category.asp?cat=video_cards

Not exactly the same card (not same manufacturer, but they should be identical), but you can pick them up same day if they have them in stock (I think I saw some in the window two days ago as I went into work).

The memory is rated for 5.5ns, which to tell you the truth isn't great (next to no overhead for overclocking). I don't know about the Creative, but I think it's 5ns - did a 10 min search - (still not great, but gives more head room). Check with ITDirect before you buy.

And your tax doesn't go to their annoying government. It goes to *OUR* annoying government!

Superman

hold your horses a second you can get it much cheaper on ebay i got a

geforce 2 pro 64MB for DM310.

from my experience its best to look into german

Koopa

whatever you do, dont buy an MX, better off getting a geforce 1 SDR (seriously)

astrofool

thats wrong the mx is better than the gef1 sdr but not as good as the gef1 DDR, memory bandwidth the same on both, but the mx is a better chip.

Whatever you do, NEVER GET AN MX 200!!

these have half the bandwidth of the MX and MX 400, and are really only meant as a business users card (no 3d), or used in laptops, avoid em like the plague (they're more expensive than the standard MX in some places, despite being a whole lot sh!tter)

Koopa

nope, a 333mhz ddr chip is not twice as fast as a 166mhz SDR chip, DDR has a loss in performance usually 10-15%.. so the 166mhz 128bit sdr memory on geforce 1 sdr is faster than the 64 bit 333mhz memory on the geforce 2 MX

anyway, i didnt mean better outright, i said "better off getting", as in, you will pay much less, for the same thing

astrofool

ah, but most gef2 MX's come in the SDR flavour (bar the creative one). Performance loss is in slightly higher latency, but the creative usually performed within 5% of an sdr board.

The gef1's chip runs alot slower, and it takes alot more work doing multitexturing (4 x 1 rather than 2 x 2 in the MX). And the MX SDR can be had for around 60 quid if you look around (hell GTS were going for 90 a while ago).

Best readily available is probably the pro by far, almost an ultra (can be overclocked to it's level easily), but without the price premium.

Koopa

an SDR MX would be ****e, since MX is 64 bit, an MX running 166mhz sdr memory would have half the memory bandwidth of a geforce 1 sdr, in fact it would be worse than a tnt2

most mx's ive seen are ddr 333mhz or so, which is why they perform about same as a geforce 1 sdr, despite having the faster core speed

the whole point of an MX is that its much cheaper for nvidia to produce DDR 64bit cards than a 128bit system, they did the same with tnt2 m64's, its basically a big ripoff, and everyones falling for it thinking theyre getting a good card with their new pc, not realising that the thing theyre getting is actually about half as good.

tnt2 m64's were SLOWER than tnt1's, and geforce MX's were slower than geforce 1 sdr when they came out (new ones have higher speeds)

tnt2 had a much better core than tnt1, but it made no difference, same with geforce MX vs geforce 1

[This message has been edited by Koopa (edited 31-08-2001).]

JustHalf

The SDR MX has a memory bus width of 128bits, while the DDR MX has a memory bus width of 64bits; making the bandwidth of the two seperate cards equivalent.

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">From AnandTech
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1453&p=2
The second thorn NVIDIA lodged in the GeForce2 MX's side was the use of a 128-bit SDR or 64-bit DDR memory bus. Unlike the GeForce2 GTS, which uses a 128-bit DDR memory, the GeForce2 MX is left with half the memory bandwidth of the GeForce2 GTS.</font>

In all cross comparisons I've seen, an SDR MX performs either very slightly faster or very slightly slower than a GeForce 256 DDR. The MX puts out less heat than a GeForce 256 chip, and less than a GTS (core is less complex, and because of this it performs less operations per second than the GTS). MX based cards also have more headroom in terms of overclocking, as far as I can remember... and have beaten stock GTS cards in some benchmarks (they were 16-bit).

I do however agree with you with regards to the purchase of an MX. If you're only going to be playing CS on a Celeron 500, go right ahead. If you want a decent 3D graphics card, get a GTS at the minimum, edging towards the GeForce2 Pro or Radeon DDR, and with an eye on the GeForce3.

astrofool

as said above, the MX-200 however either uses a 64bit SDR or a 32bit DDR bus, making it half of that again

strat

ok lads i recon ill go for a GTS 2 PRO alright - i see a few nice ones for about $120ish on e-bay - anyone got anything to say good or bad about ebay ?

JustHalf

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by astrofool:
as said above, the MX-200 however either uses a 64bit SDR or a 32bit DDR bus, making it half of that again</font>

That's funny. nVidia don't reckon they make a 32bit DDR MX part, nor does Patrick Schmid (Tom's Hardware Guide) or xBit Labs.

http://www.nvidia.com/ie/cp-geforce2mx.htm
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q2/010502/mx400-01.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/video/mx400/

astrofool

they mightn't make a 32bit sdr part, but they do make a 64bit sdr part (the MX-200), which is basically the same thing, from your page: http://www.nvidia.com/ie/cp-geforce2mx.htm

and the other two are of the MX 400 which is the same as the MX with a 200mhz core clock, and 64mb ram support (allowed to ship that way, MX could always support 64mb)

GeForce2 MX 200

Memory Interface:
64-bit SDR
Texels per Second:
700 Million
Memory Bandwidth:
1.3GB/s

which is why I say to avoid it

astrofool

I was thinking of a review I read somewhere of the geforce2 go series:

http://www.nvidia.com/ie/cp-geforce2go.htm

one of which is 32bit ddr, and as everybody knows, the Go is basically a lower clocked MX

BArra

i got a gf2 GTS 32mb DDR (Creative) on the for sale board for £130

JustHalf

Hopefully with that last post you realised that I was right!