The MX is not a good solution if:
- You are
interested in running at 32 bits colour depth where
the memory becomes the limiting factor. - You have invested in a high quality monitor that you intend
to keep when running at resoulutions at 1280x1024 with high refresh
rate or 1600x1200. This will be discussed at a later date.
1]Limited framerate at 32 bit resolution:
Before we get to the MX take a look at what you give up
relative to a real GeForce2 and the Ultra.
The Ultra used a 128 bits wide running DDR (2 chunks of
data for each clock ~=210 Mhz. See "2" factor below) for a bit rate of
128*"2"*210 bits/sec
The GeForce2 numbers are
128*"2"*166 bits/sec about 80% of the above number.
The only difference between the stock GeForce and Ultra is
the 210 number vs the 166.
Now for the MX, Nvidia has been confusing us with
DDR designations and also SDR designations. Guess what?
The SDR is actually faster than the DDR. Why?
MX DDR bit rate breaks down as follows:
64*"2"*166 bits/sec about 50% of the GeForce2 number.
MX SDR bit rate breaks down as follows:
128*"1"*166 bits/sec again about 50% of GeForce2 number.
So the numbers and performance should be the same, but SDR
benchmarks are shown to be a little faster (???). I guess
DDR has some inefficiency. So if buy MX, buy the SDR version.
On the recommendation of an
engineering friend, I followed up on
the Radeon and compared cards for about a month before I settled down on the 32 MB DDR Radeon. My son loves it.
128*"2"*183 bits/sec about 220% more memory BW than MX.
The December 2000 issue of Maximum PC compared them head to head
at 1024x768@32 in Quake III at the frame rate difference
was 56.5 fps(Radeon) vs 30.3 fps (for the MX). Note
at lower resolutions and colour depth, the difference would
be less as the memory bandwidth become less of a bottleneck.
Anandtech discusses this MX bus width issue
as well as Maximum PC.
Bottom line is that the MX is a solution that flies in the
face of "Ultra's" chief advantage and offering by
going to less memory bandwidth and trading it off less performance
high resolution and high colour depth performance.