Difference between GeForce cards

[JugsteR]

What is the difference between the
GeForce 256,
GeForce2 MX and
GeForce2 GTS cards?

can someone please explain this briefly or give me some pointers on where to find information?

thanks in advance,
Henrik Nilsson

 

[The Wildcard]

Well i am not an expert since I only own a TNT 2 Ultra, but the Geforce 256 is just the Geforce 1. The Geforce 2 GTS, however, is much more powerful than the Geforce 1 and has alot more advanced features. I believe the T&L onboard the Geforce 2 looks better and the Anti-Aliasing is better as well. Not to mention the Geforce 2 runs at a faster clock speed and has a higher fill rate so more fps. Finally the Geforce 2 mx is just a cheaper/slower version of the Geforce 2 but is still better than a Geforce 1 ( i think at least ).

There's a more technical explanation with pipeplines and how many pixels are produced per pipeline but i won't get into that. Other people will respond and clarify it better than i did.

 

[jpprod]

GeForce256: The original GeForce chip. Boards are equipped with either SDRAM or DDR SDRAM memory. DDR GeForce is still a high-end gaming card, it really isn't that much slower (20-30% or less in most cases, outside Quake III that is) than even GeForce2 GTS. Chip key features:
- Clock rate of 120MHz
- manufactured on .22 micron process
- 150MHz (300MHz effective) memory clock in DDR version, 166MHz memory clock in SDR version. Respective memory bandwidths are 2.6Gb/s and 4.8Gb/s.
- Transformation and Lighting engine capable of outputting 10 million polygons per second.
- Four pixel pipelines, texturing performace of 480 Megapixels per second.
- misc features: 8-tap Anisotropic filtering, DOT3 per-pixel lighting/shading/bump mapping, DXTC/S3TC texture compression support, Fullscene AntiAliasing support (2 to 16 sample in D3D, 2.25-4 sample in OpenGL), DVD/MPEG2 hardware motion compensation support, full AGP4X (including Direct Memory Execute, sidebanding, Fast Writes) support.

GeForce2 GTS: This is the second generation GeForce architecture chip. It adds single-pass dual texturing support on all four pixel pipelines, more clock rate and slightly faster memory to the original. GeForce2 GTS is a very powerful chip but being seriously limited by memory bandwidth currently available, it isn't dramatically faster than GeForce DDR in real-world situations.
- Clock rate of 200MHz
- manufactured on .18 micron process (runs cooler, needs less power than GeForce256)
- 166MHz (333MHz effective) DDR memory clock. Memory bandwidth 5.3Gb/s.
- 2nd generation Transformation and Lighting engine capable of outputting 25 million polygons per second. Does geometry clipping on hardware according to Nvidia, unlike GeForce256.
- Four dual-texturing pixel pipelines, dual-textured texturing performace of 800 Megapixels per second (Nvidia touts the textel number, 1.6 Gigatextels per second).
- No new 3D-features compared to GeForce256.

GeForce2 MX: This is the budget version of GeForce2 GTS chip. It only has two pixel pipelines, which like in GeForce2 GTS are dual-texturing. GeForce2 MX is a more powerful chip than GeForce256 thanks to it's second-generation T&L engine and higher clockspeed, but it's performance falls behind GeForce DDR because it only comes in SDRAM configurations. Differences to GeForce256:
- Clock rate of 175MHz
- manufactured on .18 micron process (runs very cool, doesn't even need a fan)
- 166MHz SDRAM memory clock. Memory bandwidth 2.6Gb/s. (There's also 64-bit DDR SDRAM variation, but you should avoid it)
- 2nd generation Transformation and Lighting engine capable of outputting 21 million polygons per second.
- Two dual-texturing pixel pipelines, dual-textured texturing performace of 350 Megapixels per second (Nvidia touts the textel number, 700 Megatextels per second).
- TwinView technology, allows two simultaneous display devices.

All GeForce family chips can use the same drivers.