GeForce2MX Madness

[msxyz]

I'm upgrading a PC for a friend. This guys has a XP2600+ but, save for the MB and processor, he has told me to upgrade all the rest leaving me free choice but within a certain budget.

Now his PC lies open on my desk. Since yesterday I had a few spare hours, I digged out of the closed my old and faithful GeForce2MX (God knows how I loved that card) to run a few tests with modern games. (crazy)

What impressed me most was Doom 3 performance. I've installed the demo and made a quick run through the three levels available At 640x480, low or even medium detail -with no shadows- it's perfectly playable! :kar:

True, my old faithful card was no ordinary MX. It's a ASUS v7100Pro, with core upped to 200MHZ (no big deal) but with 4.5nS RAM chips which work up to 250MHz (and I flashed the card to 225 MHZ which was well within their specs)

I wish I could spill some numbers but it seems that there are no timedemos included with the Doom 3 demo (I don't have the full version)

Well, it was fun to see the good ol' GeForce2MX in action, time to put it back to rest ;)

[Marcos]

3dmark 2k1 that **** bro

[msxyz]

Ok, I borrowed from a friend of mine his copy of Doom 3 to make a few tests before reformatting and re-assembling the PC :D

Demo1 : 640x480 medium detail, no shadows, no specular: 23.5 fps avg.

I also recorded the intro as a demo because this sequence also seems to be very demanding (at least as graphics are concerned):

Intro : 640x480 medium detail, no shadows, no specular 24.3 fps avg.

I'm really impressed. Oh, BTW 3DMark2001 score at default settings is 3940.

[ragejg]

3940 on a GF2mx? WOW!!

That infringes on GF2GTS territory... that card's a heck of a lot more usable than a regular GF2mx, which would normally get 2000-2800 in '01...

[msxyz]

Back in '01, in my old rig, it never scored more than 2900 3dMarks. I guess this result is mainly due to 3dMark processor dependency. Not to mention that at 3.6Gb/sec of bandwidth, compared to 2.7 of other retail MXs, this card was really an outsider.

[mikkl]

What drivers are you using with that card? I'm currently using 53.03 on one machine and 56.64 on another and am looking for recommendations. sounds like you may have hit a sweet spot.

mikkl

[msxyz]

I was using 65.73 WHQL for the test.

[ragejg]

GF2MX's score the same in '01 in an Athlon 1000 as they do on an AMD64, fyi...

I think your card has a 128 bit memory interface, allowing it to scale with cpu clock speed... unlike other MX's...

[msxyz]

Yep, Rivatuner report it has a 128bit interface. I had for a short time also a Creative 3DBlaster GeForce2MX, one of the very few NV11 retail parts (to my knowledge) with DDR RAM. It used 7nS chips at 143MHz (286 equivalent) but only with a 64 bit bus. I sold it when I purchased this Asus which had better performance.

I once saw a review of the later V7100Pro with MX400 chip at NVitalia.com They overclocked to an incredible 270MHz both on the core and the memories and obtained a nearly GeForce2GTS score.

[champdave]

You've inspired me to go borrow a friends doom 3 so I can play it on our computer before it gets upgraded!

It runs the Sims 2 and Max Payne 2 fine here too!

[msxyz]

Keep in mind that I was testing the card on a Athlon XP 2600+ with 512MB of RAM.

Oh, BTW here's a picture of the little queen... :hug: