NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 400 64MB

Conclusion

Although it is clear that NVIDIA needed to address the workstation market competition coming from both ATI and Matrox, it is a bit vague why NVIDIA choose to update the standard GeForce2 MX. The GeForce2 MX 200 was necessary to bring NVIDIA's dual display solution down to the price that the Radeon VE and Matrox G450 cards are at, however NVIDIA's TwinView support remains the poorest performing of all three as far as dual display functionality goes. The reason for the GeForce2 MX 400's higher clock speed is rather puzzling. To top it all off, there is no question that the "new" GeForce2 MX line will cause some confusion, especially as retailers try to get rid of their original GeForce2 MX stash.

If we had heard 10 months ago that NVIDIA would be upping the core clock speed of the GeForce2 MX without changing the memory bus at all, we could have predicted that essentially no performance would be gained. We showed in our Overclocking the GeForce2 MX guide that even a 50 MHz increase in the GeForce2 MX clock speed resulted in only performance gains in the tenths of a frame. As it turns out, the GeForce2 MX 400 lives up to this prediction. The conclusion is simple: the GeForce2 MX is far too memory bandwidth limited to benefit from any increase in core clock.

Our suggestion for GeForce2 MX 400 cards? Get them only after all GeForce2 MX cards are gone. Prices of the original GeForce2 MX based cards should be dropping as venders try to make room for GeForce2 MX 400 and GeForce2 MX 200 based cards. If you can find a good deal on an original GeForce2 MX, by all means go for it. After some time, the GeForce2 MX 400 should replace the GeForce2 MX for good. At that time, just think of the GeForce2 MX 400 as the original GeForce2 MX because judging by its performance, the two are the same.

We would like to thank http://www.newegg.com for providing us with the Leadtek GeForce2 SH Max board, which is available now for $125.00.