In the value range, Nvidia has also made some small changes to its successful GeForce2 MX cards, grouping them in two flavors: the 200 and 400. The GeForce2 MX 400 is basically a reworking of the standard GeForce2 MX to match up some of its paper specs with the upcoming $150 Kyro II, which Hercules will produce as the 3D Prophet 4500. The MX 400 bumps the core clock up from 175MHz to 200MHz and adds more memory of the same speed, giving it 64MB of 128-bit SDR running at 166MHz. It should also make TV-out a standard feature, and--unlike most Nvidia cards and like ATI's Radeon--the GeForce2 MX 400 can output simultaneously to both the monitor and TV display as a result of its TwinView feature.

Despite the paper improvements, our benchmarks show virtually no difference between test results for the GeForce2 MX and the new GeForce2 MX 400. This is actually not surprising, because the MX cards use conventional SDR memory instead of the double-data rate (DDR) memory found in the GeForce2 GTS and up. Even though the graphics chip's core speed has increased, this higher frequency doesn't translate into smoother frame rates if the chip is often idle, waiting on data to arrive from the card's memory.

Marketing pressures rather than technological developments are the primary driving force behind this division of the GeForce2 MX. It's letting Nvidia introduce a new lower-end card, the GeForce2 MX 200, aimed at replacing the TNT2, which PC makers still commonly use in mainstream systems intended for the nongaming public. The GeForce2 MX 200 uses only 64-bit SDR memory, resulting in only half of the memory bandwidth of the GeForce2 MX and cutting costs where it most affects 3D performance. The other main marketing concern for Nvidia is the upcoming Kyro II, which the GeForce2 MX 400 now matches or outpasses in the specs that used to primarily govern performance: graphics memory amount and core clock speed. However, the Kyro II uses a very different architecture to render 3D scenes more efficiently, and final Kyro II boards, now delayed past the expected April launch date, are expected to match up in terms of performance with the likes of the GeForce2 GTS and Radeon.

To sort out all of the graphics card options for this spring, we've compiled benchmark results for all current Nvidia cards, from the TNT2 M64 to the GeForce3, and for ATI's Radeon DDR 32MB and 64MB cards. We've tested the cards in our standard battery of 3D WinMark 2000 and Quake III benchmarks. The Nvidia cards were run on the official 11.01 reference drivers. Click on the links below for more specific information on each card.

GeForce2 Pro
GeForce2 MX 400
GeForce3 Creative GeForce2 Ultra
ELSA GeForce2 GTS 32MB
ELSA GeForce2 MX
Radeon 32MB DDR
Radeon 64MB DDR
TNT2 M64

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