eVGA's eGeforce2 MX400, a proven winner
Written: Feb 17 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Value, performance, reliability, compatibility, brand name.
Cons: Certainly not a fast card in terms of today's AGP offerings.
The Bottom Line: If you need a dependable and cool-running graphics card, this product is for you. If you demand a high-performance card, check out some of the newer Nvidia offerings.
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| compuwhiz's Full Review: eVGA e-GeForce2 MX400, (32 MB) AGP Video Card |
I picked this AGP video card up at a local computer wholesale company for $32. It offers some decent specs for so little money, including a 4X AGP bus connection, 32mb of DDR ram, a 350mhz Ramdac, and full-screen antialiasing. It makes a great card for DVD and video playback (my primary use), but it can also run some of the prior-generation games exceedingly well.
Since this card uses the Nvidia Geforce 2 chipset, you can be sure that almost every game will be compatible. Nvidia uses a "unified driver architecture" which means that every TNT & Geforce card, all the way up to the Geforce FX5950, uses the same driver set. The drivers provided with the card were the Detonator 34.90 version, but a quick visit to Nvidia's web site can get you the newest version (53.04 at time of writing).
As far as DVD and video are concerned, I have run my monitor at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions, and both give crisp, stutter-free playback. The card supports up to 2048x1536 in a 2D environment and 1920x1200 in a 3D environment. For lower-resolution video files, the card has a built in scaler for full screen pixel interpolation.
I'm not much of a gamer myself, but I have run several games with this card with great results. Half-Life/CounterStrike, Quake 2/3, Unreal Tournament, Diablo II, Need for Speed 3/4/5, Age of Empires 2, Midtown Madness 2, and Worms Armageddon all ran with smooth frames/sec at 1024x768 resolution.
The card itself seems to be solidly constructed, with a medium-sized heatsink covering the GPU. It does not come with a fan, but it has a 2-pin connector if you wish to add one. The memory is DDR as I mentioned and is dispersed through 4 8mb chips. There is only one DB15 analog video output, so if you have a DVI LCD screen you will need a converter. This particular card does not allow for overclocking with the default drivers.
eVGA includes a utility on the installation CD that detects whether your system has the proper AGP chipset drivers installed or not. For me, I use an ECS K7S5A motherboard and had the default AGP drivers installed.
In all, this is a sufficient card for a secondary computer or one that will not be used for hardcore gaming. It should also do fine in a HTPC, although the card does not have any video input capabilities. The Geforce line of graphics cards has established a great reputation and the Geforce 2 MX400 is no exception.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 32
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Epinions.com ID:
compuwhiz
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Member: Jeremy Gillow
Location: Melbourne, Florida, USA
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
System administrator and computer information systems graduate student.
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