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Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 MX DH Pro TV Review
By: Mike Chambers - December 12, 2000
Before checking out the performance of these two cards, let's first take a look at the extensive feature set offered by TwinView. Both the AGP and PCI models of the WinFast GeForce2 MX DH Pro TV have two independent display pipelines which offer a variety of display options. Although Windows 2000 offers a richer set of TwinView features, I used the first edition of Windows 98.
Further information on TwinView can be found in the NVIDIA Drivers Release 6 for Windows - Features & Enhancements (3.9MB - Adobe Acrobat Reader required).
Dual Display and TV-Out
I began testing TwinView with NVIDIA's Detonator drivers and was finally able to get both the clone and extended modes working with version 6.34. Other official and beta drivers offered a mixed bag of results. During the course of working on this review, the 6.49 beta drivers had been leaked. After finding out that quite a few fixes to TwinView had been made, I installed them and they came through with flying colors.
With TwinView clone mode, two output devices will show exactly the same output which can be useful for comparing image quality between two monitors. Clone mode can also be used for presentations as the presenter can be using a small monitor while a projector or presentation quality display shows the larger image to the audience.
Or maybe you just want to show off your Quake skills to an audience.
Clone Mode: AGP
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Clone Mode: PCI
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The above pictures show TwinView clone mode in action under OpenGL using Quake 3. Both the AGP and PCI version of the Leadtek GeForce2 MX cards were tested using clone mode. Both monitors were using a resolution of 800x600.
The picture below shows an example of the virtual desktop feature of clone mode. A virtual desktop is automatically enabled when the resolution of the secondary display is less than that of the primary display.
Virtual Desktop
You can lock the display position of the secondary dislay be enabling Viewport lock. This is done by checking the Disable auto-panning on the clone device check box in the TwinView panel.
Maybe you want to try your hand at Quake 3 on a big screen TV. No problem. Leadtek furnishes the cables (S-video, AV, and Y cables) to work with your TV.
Once the proper connections between the graphics card and the TV have been mode, left click on the second display icon in the TwinView properties and choose Select Output Device...
Set the proper TV connection format (NTSC or PAL):
Then configure the resolution and you're done. It's that simple. You can leave the video output format to auto select (although you can choose s-video or composite video out).
Well, it's not quite a big screen TV since this is our secondary television. But you get the picture.
And finally, you can control the position of the image on the TV and fine tune the picture quality.
Running a 3D game such as Quake 3 in clone mode does cause a decrease in performance. The following table shows the results of running the AGP GeForce2 MX under a single monitor compared to running with dual displays. The results are based on Quake 3's normal mode settings using 32-bit color.
Clone Mode Performance - Quake 3 Demo001
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Single Monitor |
Clone Mode |
| 640x480 |
117.6 |
114.2 |
| 800x600 |
91.0 |
84.2 |
| 1024x768 |
56.9 |
52.2 |
That was fun. But wait, there's more...
Next Page: TwinView Extended Mode
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