The Geforce2 MX 400 chip is not a totally new GPU at all. Rather it's
based off the original GeForce2 MX. So what's different in the MX400?
Well to our surprise the GeForce 2MX 400 chip differs from the GeForce
2MX only with regard to the core clock speed. The MX400 comes with
a default core speed of 200MHz while the GF2 MX comes with a core
speed of 175MHz. However the GeForce 2MX reference board used here
had no problems at all operating at 200MHz in all our tests. As for
the rest of the chip's architecture it's the same as the GeForce2
MX.
As you all must know the GeForce2MX chipset is a scaled down version
of the GeForce 2 GTS. nVidia offered the GF 2MX chipset by scaling
down on the GF2GTS core. Instead of the 4 rendering pipelines of the
GTS the GF 2MX has only two. What this means is that it leaves the
GF2 MX with only half the fill rate of the GF2 GTS.
There's no change in the memory bus either. The same 128-bit SDR
bus remains.
As you can see there's absolutely no change between the GF2 MX chip
and the GF2 MX 400 except for its clock speed. It would have been
a welcome feature if nVidia decided to increase the 128-bit memory
bus speed, which cripples the performance of these cards by half.
On the plus side of it is that now the GeForce 2 MX 400 comes at the
same clock speed as the GeForce 2 GTS.
I'm sure most of you are a bit confused right now as to what to expect
in real life with regard to this expanding GeForce2 MX range. Well
here's a table showing the competitive advantage of each. (taken from
nVidia Web site)
