Great Overall Budget Card but with reservations
Written: Sep 27 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent performance for price range... even beats out some more expensive cards
Cons: drivers are still a little shaky, no Twinview support, not much else in box like software, card is able to support DDR ram which would speed it up considerably!
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| yusakugo's Full Review: Hercules 3D Prophet II MX |
I've been looking through several "budget" video cards to update my parent's computer at home. Running at a decent 450 MHz Pentium II chip and a TNT video card (the first one!), it could use a few updates. Now finding a good video card that can run games for a decent price was fairly difficult until NVIDIA's new NV-11 chip came out...
We all know this chip to be the GeForce 2 MX chip.
It is meant for the budget user but can give performance to satisify the casual up to semi-serious gamers. However, since NVIDIA only makes the graphics chip, other companies create the rest of the video card... many using the reference design by NVIDIA.
Guillemot has created their lowest end version of the card the 3D Prophet II MX. It is based on the base reference design of the GeForce 2 MX board from NVIDIA with very few differences. It has a reasonable cost and give good performance. Certainly several notches above what is considered "budget" cards!
As per the Guillemot box, your basic requirements for the system are
- Pentium® II and higher or compatible
- Available AGP slot, AGP 2.0 compliant
- 32MB RAM
- 10MB hard disk space
- CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
- Microsoft Windows® 95 OSR2, Windows 98 and 2000
Sample Specs
MAIN
Product Name 3D Prophet 2 MX
Chipset GeForce 2 MX
RAMDAC (MHz) 350
Speed of core (MHz) [ Guillemot ] 175
Flavours Available AGP Only
Supported API(s) OpenGL & Direct3D
MEMORY
Amount of RAM (MB) 32
Type of RAM SDR
Speed of RAM (Mhz) [ Guillemot ] 183
Speed of RAM (ns) [ Guillemot ] 5.5
The chip is based on a semi-butchered version of the GeForce 2 GTS chipset. The chip is a 2nd generation Transform and Lighting capable chipset. The Transform and Lighting functions can be handled by the card if the program is optimized to do so resulting in better graphics and gameplay (supposedly). So far, very few programs released as of Sept. 27, 2000, are optimized to use the Transform and Lighting (T&L) engine of the chip. Regardless of that, the chipset performs a quite a bit better than a GeForce 1 chip with SDR and at times a little worse than the GeForce 1 with DDR memory. SDR means single data rate memory (slower) and DDR means double data rate memory (faster than SDR). The memory type of the card also affects the price... SDR boards would definitely be cheaper than DDR boards.
What I don't like is that the MX chipset is capable of much more. The chip is able to handle other functions such as displaying to two monitors at the same time and if the card was fully equipped, would be able to display to 2 monitors, TV, and/or flat screen monitor (depending on how the card was equipped and how much more you are willing to pay). This was dubbed the Twinview feature, and it is available if you buy a higher end GeForce 2 MX card. Most cards will be equipped with 32 megs of SDR memory... if the memory were DDR, there would be a boost in the card output and speed. At least Guillemot used 5.5 ns memory instead of 6 ns memory like many manufacturers did.
It seems that the GeForce 2 MX chip was originally for notebook computer use. I did read that the chipset was supposed to be a graphics chipset for notebooks but that it drained too much power for notebook use.
I myself returned this card... I stayed with the e-GeForce 2 TwinView Plus card from eVGA. I paid the same price and got TV output and Twinview with the other card features... It is almost the same card except that the memory has a speed of 6 ns and does have some decrease in 3D performance.
My Verdict
Overall, the graphics are superb for such a low cost graphics card. It is technically capable of graphics up to 2048x1536 although that resolution isn't very practical or fast for that matter. Other than the few gripes above, the only things that take away from this card and worth consideration are the following:
- there are a lot of companies making GeForce 2 MX cards and most based
on the reference boards.
- Many of these companies are a bit cheaper than Guillemot although not
not by much.
- The first generation GeForce DDR cards are dirt cheap now! They still
give good performance and at times still beat out the GeForce 2
MX chipset. The Original GeForce cards have reached their end
of their product life and are for the most part on firesales...
The GeForce 2 GTS looks like it will take the GeForce 1 card in
that part of the graphics market.
- If you get TwinView capable cards, the Twinview feature is very
disjointed and not as useful as it should be compared to a
similar feature on Matrox boards (DualHead technology).
- I'm unsure if the TwinView problem is based on the hardware or software
at this time... I'm hoping it is mostly a driver problem.
- NVIDIA's drivers are very good but still need major work to allow the
GeForce 2 MX chipset to function to its capacity.
As for chipset concerns, the GeForce 2 MX is the best bang for your buck. Guillemot does make reliable graphic boards as I haven't had any problem with their older offerings from NVIDIA and older 3dfx boards... My first Guillemot board is the Voodoo 2 card and that is still running after nearly 7-8 years. (Although truthfully, how can you rate the survivability of a video card in today's market)
I will recommend the card for light gamers and budget users... Power graphic users and serious or power gamers need not apply. I don't know what to recommend to Power graphic users but power gamers should look at other cards if they are willing to spend at least $300 or more on it. In the $300-$400 range, you can get the GeForce 2 GTS which has a much faster output and speed. Some may consider the Voodoo 5500 card. For those who have lots of money to burn (the $450+ group), the GeForce 2 Ultra or Voodoo 6000 card is for you. I'm more of a NVIDIA supporter but that doesn't mean the current video cards out in the market aren't good. You can sample Voodoo level graphics in many Gateway Countries since it is in some many of their computers (as of the last time I checked.)
A little away from the subject...
Again, look at my home page or my savings page to get extra coupons and stuff to help lower the cost of goods you but on the internet...
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 135
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Epinions.com ID:
yusakugo
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Member: Rich Go
Location: Somewhere in the NorthEast
Reviews written: 399
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Losing Sleep and Lacking Time... sigh...
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