PCI Graphic Cards are "Old as Sin", Throw Me a Bone!
Written: Sep 07 '06 (Updated Oct 06 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Works well, easy setup, good support, inexpensive way to upgrade.
Cons: PCI Graphic Cards are a bit "Old School"
The Bottom Line: This Graphic Card is a great way for older computers to upgrade inexpensively.
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| DeRango's Full Review: PNY Verto® GeForce®2 MX400,, (64 MB) PCI... |
Yeah, I know this particular product I’m reviewing is nearly 6 years old, but as my rusty computer skills nearly cease to exist, I struggle to regain my confidence in writing about some of my favorite products in the computer industry. Although this particular card is an PCI, it had performed well for over half a decade in gaming, movies, music, and daily routines. The PNY Verto Geforce 2 MX400, 64MB PCI Graphic Card has outlasted 2 hard drives, several network cards, a motherboard, and a power supply. Along with durability the software was very easy to use & installation of the hardware between the several computers I have used it in was a breeze. The card has produced no conflicts, issues, or problems with any of the computers I have used it on.
Who you calling Old School?
Not all of us have the luxury of having an AGP(Advanced Graphics Port) for those of you with older computers, looking to upgrade, this particular card works well with older operating systems and gives you that boost of power to play the newer games. PNY is a name I have trusted in purchase of many different processing products from RAM, to CD-R’s, to processors, and my graphics cards.
Background on Graphics Cards
Similar to the motherboard of a computer, the graphics card is a circuit board that contains RAM & a processor. The graphics card also has an input/output system BIOS chip, which stores the video cards settings & runs diagnostics on the memory. A (GPU) or graphics processing unit, is closely related to a computers CPU, however a GPU is specifically designed for complex geometric & mathematical calculations that are used for graphics rendering. As a byproduct of these calculations the GPU produces a large quantity of heat, which is why you’ll find heat sinks & fans on most all graphics cards. The CPU work in conjunction with software applications, by sending information to the image of the graphics card. Deciding how to decipher this information the graphics card then creates the image on your monitor through your connecting cable.
AGP?
The speed of the port can be easily changed without affecting the PCI bus, and specific video enhancements can be added without affecting PCI compatibility. AGP is also significantly faster than PCI. AGP has multiple data transfer per clock cycle 1x, 2x, 4x, along with higher peak bandwidth several times faster than PCI through pipelining, sideband & addressing. AGP also uses high speed access to system memory instead of forcing the graphics card to pre-load the texture into local memory on the graphics board, which means that texture maps are directly executed from the system memory. Along with this AGP frees up the PCI bus by removing the traffic from the PCI, thus reducing contention on the PCI buses.The purpose of AGP is to create a faster channel of communication between the graphics controller and the CPU and memory.The net result of the faster communication is better graphics performance for the user and less PCI congestion. AGP is intended to compliment PCI, not replace it, so a system can have many PCI devices, but only one AGP video card. The most prevalent difference between AGP and PCI is that AGP is a port, not a bus.
***Many of the Features & Facts can be found directly off the box(Yeah I still have it Amazingly), and @ the PNY website.***
KEY FEATURES
-Digital Vibrance Control
-Second Generation Integrated Transform and Lighting (T&L) Engines
-NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
-High-Definition
-32-bit Z/stencil Buffer
-Microsoft DirectX and OpenGL Optimizations and Support
-Unified Driver Support
Minimum System Requirements
-200 Watt Power Supply
-Intel Pentium, AMD-K6-2 class processor or higher
-IBM® PC or 100% Compatible
-One available PCI slot
-64MB RAM
-20MB available disk space
-Windows® 95 OSR2, 98 or higher, ME, 2000, NT with service pack 5 or 6, Linux OS
INTERACTIVE 3D Software
-Optimized Direct3D and OpenGL acceleration
-256-bit graphics engine
-4 texture-mapped, filtered, lit texels per clock cycle
-Single-pass multitexturing
-32-bit colors, Z/stencil buffer
-High quality texture filtering
-Advanced per-pixel lighting, texturing, and shading
-Complete DirectX support
256-BIT 2D Acceleration
-Optimized for multiple color depths including 32, 24, 16, 15, and 8 -bits per pixel
-True-color hardware cursor
-Multibuffering (double, triple, quad) for smooth animation and video playback
WHQL Compatibility Standards
-Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0 display drivers
-DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectVideo, and ActiveX drivers
-OpenGL ICD for Windows 95, 98, 2000 and NT
-Complete Linux display and OpenGL drivers
-Fully PC00, PC99 and PC99a compliant
Performance Features
-400 million pixels/sec fill rate
-800 million texels/sec fill rate
-25M triangles/sec setup
-64MB high speed SDRAM memory
-2.7 GB/second memory bandwidth
-350MHz RAMDAC
-Maximum 2D/3D resolution of 2048 x 1536 @ 75Hz
Geforce2 MX400 GPU Features
-256-bit 2D 3D graphics accelerator
-350MHz RAMDAC
-128-bit memory architecture
-2 Rendering Pipelines
-NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer
-Integrated second generation transform and lighting engines
-4 texels per clock
-32-bit color with 32-bit Z/stencil
-Digital Vibrance Control
-Cube environment mapping
- DirectX and S3 texture compression
Warranty
PNY Technologies offers a lifetime replacement warranty
Minor Issues
Around 3 months ago the fan over the heat sink started making the whirl of death, you know slowly dying (barley running). Well shortly thereafter the monitor started going fuzzy & blurry, well it was caused by the overheating of the graphics card, as soon as I replaced the fan my issues were resolved. Nothing to be ashamed of it had a good run, and the cost of repair was under five dollars so it did not bother me much. Once the fan was replaced my card performed as before, flawlessly and graphically clear.
Manufacture Support
I deal with manufactures on different products, and my experience with PNY was a good one, as my response time from my emails was 24-48 hours with the answers, links, and downloads I needed to get back on track. PNY does a good job of standing behind the claims of warranty & the products usability. Also I find the website layout is easy to navigate & follow for drivers, updates, downloads, and customer support.
Simplistic
To reiterate, the card is definitely a good value for older computers looking to get a decent boost of performance at an affordable cost to the consumer. Although I recommend you check your computer for an AGP slot as this would yield a higher performance, a PCI graphics card is nothing to be ashamed of. Some of the games I have played include specifications that required a higher 64 bit AGP card & the PCI card did well without lagging or choppy graphics.
Thanks for reading, and again I’m a bit rusty so if I’m missing something feel free to comment or email me.
--DeRango
Here are some of My Favorite Reviews on Computers.
300GB External USB/FireWire Segate Hard Drive
An Indepth Look at Segate Hard Drives
NetGear WG311T 802.11g/b Wireless Adapter
Essay On CD Burners
Lexmark PhotoJet Printer Information
Samsung SyncMaster 171v TFT Monitor
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100.00
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