Geforce 256 vs MX

[Guest]

Does anyone know if there is much difference between Geforce 256 and MX?

I know Tom has written about the 256 card earlier, but I have not been able to find an article on MX.

As far as I know both cards are using SDRAM, which might indicate that they are rather slow att shuffling data. What I don't recall is the bus bandwith and clock rate of the two cards. On nVidia's site, the company claims that Geforce2 MX uses an enhanced GPU. Is there any real effect on performance or does this GPU just provide some additional "fancy" features which only enhances the picture quality and not the frame rate?

The reason for question is that I'm buying an IBM NetVista 40i which comes with an Athlon 1GHz CPU and a Geforce 256 and with the relatively low price of the MX card, it seems like a good purchase (addition) if the performance difference between 256 and MX is large enough (at least 30 % performance increase, that is).

Does the 256 card provide enough "power" or will the system suffer overal 3D performance just because of the old GFX card?

(I seem to recall an article on this site showing that Athlon equipped computers being unable to provide enough "juice" to take full advantage of the Geforce 2 cards when the processor passes the 1 - 1.2 GHz range, due to bus / memory bandwidh)

 

[Take_Out]

Keep the GeForce 256, you won't see any speed differences that you can notice. Look in the Graphics Guide Column in toms main page, there are plenty of articles about MX and GFs.Good Luck, Take-Out. PS: Memory is the key in performance nowadays.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Take_Out on 12/24/00 02:33 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the pointer.
I looked at some of the reviews of the Geforce cards and the the latest review comparing the three interesting cards: Geforce 2 GTS, Geforce 2 MX and Geforce 256 DDR, I was able to find was from June 29, 2000.
Here is the reference URL: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q2/000629/index.html

By the result Tom came up with I concluded that Geforce 256 DDR is actually a better card than MX.

I wrote down all the frame rate results from all the tests (excluding 3DMark 2K, since those result doesn't reflect real world situations) in the resolutions I am interested of (1024x768 and 640x480), using the Geforce 2 GTS as reference card and came up with the following performance difference.
(The list shows how many percentages slower each card is compared to Geforce 2 GTS)


16 Bit color (Avg 640x480 and 1024x768) *
Geforce MX: 14,4%
Geforce 256 DDR: 13,5%

32 Bit color (Avg 640x480 and 1024x768) *
Geforce MX: 22,2%
Geforce 256 DDR: 13,8%

Res: 640x480 (Avg. of 16 Bit and 32 Bit color)
Geforce MX: 10.0%
Geforce 256 DDR: 7.9%

Res: 1024x768 (Avg. of 16 Bit and 32 Bit color)
Geforce MX: 24.9%
Geforce 256 DDR: 13.5%

Total (all test results)
Geforce MX: 17.5%
Geforce 256 DDR: 10.7%

* The tests of Quake 3 was removed from the count, since no specification wether the test was performed in 16 or 32 Bit color mode.

Personally I think the small performance difference between even the GTS card and the cheaper or older card does not weigh up to the tiny performance increase, so I think I'll just stick with the 256 card delivered with IBM NetVista.

 

[Take_Out]

You're Welcome. How very scientific of you to compute the differences, I am considering upgrading to the GeForce DDR from the TNT2 Ultra (Guillemot) myself and your results confirm what I have believed that the DDR 256 GeForce is the best bang for the buck right now. I can get one for $132 + ship and tax from a good rated source on resellerratings.com. Maybe some after-christmas shopping for me to do later this week or month if the price comes down any lower.

I noticed that the Creative Labs GF 256 DDR has come down to $100 or so on three places at Price Watch. But the one I'm a wontun' has the BIG heatsink and fan assembly on it from the factory, the Leadteck Rev. B GF 256 DDR model. Oh well, I do ramble,

Good Luck, Take-Out. Merry Christmas and Happy New Millenium.

 

[mpjesse]

Yeah, not a big difference in performance (between the MX and DDR). I'd personally go for the MX because it overclocks well and has 2nd generation T&L. But, the performance of the two is about equal.

-MP Jesse