Creative GeForce2MX

[Guest]

I notice that Creative seem to have one of these available at about £75 which seems too cheap to me.
The Asus I was planning to get is about £135.

There seems to be 2 Creative Geforce2 MX cards. The other one is called Ge-Force2MX DDR PCI
...which seems odd, does this mean the cheapest one DOESN'T use DDR?, do neither use AGP??
Do either have TV out?
Does anyone know anything about them??

 

[mpjesse]

I've never seen or even heard of a Geforce 2 MX PCI version, much less and DDR version. Sounds screwy to me. Blyme!

-MP Jesse

 

[mpjesse]

I just checked creative's product line for Europe and America (out of curiosity) and I did't find a GeForce 2 MX PCI or DDR version... hmmm....

-MP Jesse

 

[mpjesse]

Your right dude, i found it. But like you said only avail. in Europe. It appears that it runs on a AGP bus with DDR memory... cool. Wonder when someone is going to review it. I still did not find a PCI version though. Kudos.

for anyone who cares, here's the link: http://www.3dblaster.com/products/Anni2mx/

-MP Jesse

 

[Guest]

You'll find a comparison between a Creative GeForce 2mx/DDR/AGP and a Hercules GeForce 2mx/SDR/AGP there:
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/hardware/graphics/hercules3dprophmx/3dpromx_1.asp

I got it from Shogun on another thread of this board. As it is said on anandtech site DDR does not allways means better framerates.

 

[Guest]

Beware of the Creative offering,even though it runs DDR memory creative have crippled the memory bus to a lousy 64- bit bandwidth instead of the norm 128-bit bandwidth on other SDR mx's so performance takes a hit.Looks like Creative are trying to jump on the ddr bandwagon and catch out the unway punter.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, i read this somewhere too, the expensive DDR memory on this card isn´t as fast as it should be. I´d personally go for a regular SDR version. If you really need PCI, there is a TNT2 based card from creative, the TNT2 Vanta. It went pretty fly on my old K6-2 400 system. It isn't as fast as the TNT2 Ultra, but since you're stuck with PCI, there isn´t much choice i guess. Perhaps you could consider a mobo upgrade?
There are some VooDoo based PCI cards out there too.

I am wondering... Is AGP much faster than PCI?

 

[Guest]

I wouldn't blame Creative for crippling the bus (but I would blame them for not being totally honest with their advertising though). All the reviews I've read about the GeForce 2mx said that NVidia deliberetly crippled the DDR capacity to 64bits to avoid too much competition between their own chips.

As for AGP speed you may found a part of the answer right there:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q1/000214/index.html
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Lee_T on 11/28/00 08:46 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[mpjesse]

AGP is not so much about speed as it is bandwidth. As textures get bigger and bigger and resolutions go higher, a high bandwidth bus is need to move that data quickly. PCI is still "fast" but doesn't have a great deal of bandwidth.

I remember when AGP first came out and everyone whined how it didn't seem to increase performance at all. Well, the idea behind AGP was not to make graphics cards faster (when first it came out) but more to give graphics cards a higher bandwidth. And back then, chipsets weren't designed with AGP in mind; now they are. Now, I don't think we <could> live without AGP. It's all about time folks.

-MP Jesse

 

[Guest]

Just like to add that it seems the Creative card at £73 IS AGP, the slightly more expensive price of the one with PCI is because of the limited demand for PCI these days.

And they both have DDR.

I think I will go for it since I can't see any reason why the Asus at £130 should be any faster whatsoever.