Mainstream Runners: 5 Allround Graphic Cards with nVIDIA's GeForce2 MX

Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 MX DH Pro

Leadtek sent us their GeForce2 MX board supporting TwinView, which carries quite a long name: WinFast GeForce2 MX DH Pro. The huge box contains the graphics board, a driver disc, a DVD player software called DVD Magic, one S-video and one composite video cable and a splitter cable which is required for the TV out. The manual does not lose any word about the hardware but only describes the software installation.

Leadtek includes slightly modified nVIDIA reference drivers (6.27), which give you the option of overclocking and hardware monitoring. Unfortunately, those functions do not work under Windows 2000. Also the dual monitor mode could not be enabled using this operating system.

A heat sink and a fan are used to successfully cool the chip. Noise sensitive users will not have any reason to worry, as the fan is very gentle on your ear. After closing the computer case you should not hear anything from the graphics card any more.

TwinView worked properly using Windows 98. A short test with Windows ME did not cause any problem, either. Unfortunately you have to restart your computer every time you activate or deactivate the second output. Thus one should try to avoid switching it on and off regularly. It seems as if some part of the drivers are disabled as soon as TwinView is activated, since we could not get Quake III running then.