Overclocking the GeForce2 MX

Overclocking the Core

Simply pushing the core of the GeForce2 MX from its default 175MHz clock to the furthest the 'Coolbits' overclocking slider would go at 225MHz didn't yield much of a performance improvement at all. At 1024 x 768 x 16 all the way up to 1600 x 1200 the 29% increase in core clock speed only resulted in about a 3 - 4% increase in frame rate. And in order to reach 225MHz we had to use a heatsink on the actual GeForce2 MX chip itself. Obviously not worth the effort there, and another indication that the GeForce2 MX is clearly memory bandwidth limited and not fill rate limited.

The performance improvement gained from increasing the core clock of the GeForce2 MX when dealing with 32-bit color solutions is nonexistent. If you're lucky you may gain an extra tenth of a frame, the move to 32-bit color puts the strain on the GeForce2 MX's 166MHz SDR SDRAM and renders the increase in fill rate you gain by overclocking the core useless.