And you thought you couldn’t afford a new video card. Review

And you thought you couldn’t afford a new video card.

Fact: Speaking solely in terms of system resources, games are becoming

more and more demanding. Fact: Meeting the raised system requirements

for these demanding games is more expensive than it has ever been. And chances

are a lot of you are still using your old Voodoo 2 boards. What’s a young

(or old) shallow pocketed gamer suppose to do?

It certainly doesn’t help that GeForce 2s are still pretty expensive, costing

approximately $200 at most retailers. Young lemonade stand entrepreneurs and

SOHO car washers everwhere will need to put in some serious overtime to meet

that goal. Is there an easy and inexpensive alternative waiting in the following

paragraphs? Read on.

Allow me to introduce the 3Dpower/Absolute Nemesis GeForce 2 MX-400 (manufactured

by 3DPower/Published by Absolute Multimedia). Hopefully you’ll remember our

coverage of the ASUS V7100 GF2 MX board. Well, since

then Nvidia has greatly improved upon our favorite budget 3D accelerator with

an extra 32 MB of SDRAM (totalling 64MB). And like its GTS,

Pro, and Ultra

siblings, the MX-400 comes with a burly fan to cool down those heated

gaming sessions and prevent lock-ups and crashes attributed to overheating.

Smart move.

The installation is, as always, short and sweet. Out comes the Gladiac

920 (*sob*) and in pops the Nemesis MX-400. Boot up my machine, install

the software from the provided CD and it’s a done deal.

Tweaking the Nemesis‘ features is a very simple and familiar experience

thanks to 3DPower’s adherence to Nvidia’s own Detonator drivers. Direct 3D,

OpenGL and anti-aliasing adjustments are just a mouse click away. (Note: You’ll

want to download the most recent version of these drivers from the Nvidia website.

These utilities are really comprehensive.)

And that fan I mentioned earlier enables gamers to turn up the juice, as features

like anisotropic filtering and bump mapping with 2X anti-aliasing are no longer

held at arm’s length due to heat issues. Now you can crank up those graphical

extras with much less framerate loss than the original MX boards.

2X anti-aliasing was enough realism for me – thank the tech gods for that,

because I experienced some serious slowdown and crashes when I switched on the

full 4X anti-aliasing. Also, the Nemesis was never able to run one of

the tests in our 3Dmark 2001 benchmarking software. While one failed test isn’t

enough to mar the card’s reputation as an impressive budget buy, it is enough

for 3DMark 2001 to not give an overall score (not enough test runs). So I ran

a few tests at 1024×768 with no anti-aliasing and stood it next to the Gladiac

920 and other cards so you can see the differences. Numbers don’t lie, unless

of course you’re a bookie named Back-Alley Brutus. In any case, click here

for your geeky benchmark fix.

Click to Enlarge

Indeed, the Nemesis performs very well. The MX-400 series of

boards just totally smokes the competition. You’ll notice how our last budget

card, the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500,

is left in the dust by a sizeable margin. It even sports a more attractive price

tag (4500 = $150 / Nemesis = $119), making your decision a little easier.

Plus, games look damn good with this board.

Like the recent crop of hardware coming out of Hercules, the Nemesis

is absent of any included game bundle. But unlike Hercules, 3DPower gives the

consumer the option to choose 1 free game from a list of titles including MDK

2, Icewind Dale, Soldier

of Fortune, Vampires, Half-Life,

Heretic 2 and more. Not a bad choice,

though it’s a bummer having to order a free game, then sit and wait a few days

for it to show up. A software DVD decoder and DirectX 8 complete the software

bundle.

Here’s a hint for you 3D accelerator manufactures out there: If you want to

get in our good graces, throw in a TV-Out option to allow some lovely big screen

action. 3DPower has taken the hint and delivered. Plus, the quality isn’t bad

at all. As usual, text is a bit distorted and hard to read but the 3D image

quality is great.

Frankly, if you’re looking for incredible speed and power, then look

somewhere else. But if efficiency, a little extra functionality and keeping

pace with current technology without surpassing it is what you seek, then your

search is over. The Nemesis GeForce 2 MX-400 is the supreme budget buy

for the lightweight gamer – or the penny conscious hardcore gamer looking to

save a few hundred bucks.