Abit Siluro Mx400 Drivers

Is there any Abit's Siluro T400 / 64MB MX400 Drivers for Windows XP? I am having trouble with this hardware running on my Windows XP. My DirectX seems.

By - Many people know as a popular manufacturer of motherboards. What a lot of people may not know is that ABIT also makes other products, among them a line of graphics cards. The MX400 is based on NVidia's low-end GeForce2 MX400 chipset, intended to replace its previous low-end chipset, the GeForce2 MX. But can it do the job? Last year, NVidia released the GeForce2 MX chipset, a low-end version of the powerful GeForce2 GTS.

The card was very successful because it combined current-generation features and power with a low-priced card. Instead of being stuck buying something like an older TNT2 Ultra or GeForce card, those users looking for decent-but-not-astounding 3D performance could just buy a GeForce2 with reduced performance. NVidia accomplished this by lowering the memory bandwidth and clock speed on the board and slicing the number of rendering pipelines in half, from four to two. These changes nearly crippled the chip -- it still performs well, just not to the level of the GeForce2 GTS or, now, the GeForce3. With the GeForce2 MX400, NVidia simply increased the clock speed of the GeForce2 MX from 175 to 200 to match the GeForce2 GTS. Yes, boys and girls, that's about it.

NVidia also added RAM -- from 32 to 64 megs, but that does not help at all, because where the chipset is really hurt is the lack of memory bandwidth. Documentation and software Unfortunately, the ABIT Siluro MX400 is lacking Linux documentation and software -- no information about Linux is provided in the manual, and no drivers are provided on the included CD. The included documentation is, however, well written, and does cover the basics of physically installing the card, although in most cases (and on all operating systems) installing the drivers is probably going to end up being the more difficult of the two tasks. Board design The board design is very much a reference design (that is, it is based on the basic board design used by NVidia and provided to OEMs).

In fact, the only real difference physically between the Siluro GF2MX and the MX400 is the lack of a TV out on the MX400 and the increased number of RAM chips, due to its extra 32MB of RAM. Also, the heatsink seems to be of a higher quality than that of the GF2MX, and is adhered better, because unlike my GF2MX board, the heatsink did not fall off (which is not much of an issue -- the GF2MX chipset could run quite well without a heatsink, and did so since October).

Performance System Specifications AMD Athlon-C 750MHz (100 MHz bus) 512 Megabytes Crucial PC133 CAS 2 SDRAM, provided by Western Digital 7200RPM 10.2 gig IDE Hard Drive 3Com 3c905TX-C PCI 10/100 NIC 300 Watt AMD-Approved ATX Power Supply XFree 4.0.3 with 1251 drivers from Quake 3 1.27f Beta QuakeIII timedemos Quake III timedemos are done by going into Quake III, entering the console (~) and enabling the timedemo function (by typing timedemo 1. Optionally (and this was done for these tests, because I'm testing the video board and not the system) you may disable the sound by typing s_initsound 0 followed by snd_restart. Metalworker variable speed lathe manual machine. Once you have done all this, type demo four.dm_66 to run the demo. Timedemos reflect 3D gaming performance, and in no way reflect professional 3D performance.

Quake III results (frames per second) Resolution GF2 MX400 GF2MX 800 * 600 60.3 58.5 1024 * 768 56.0 53.9 1280 * 1024 41.1 39.9 1600 * 1200 31.1 30.2 As you can see, the difference between the GF2MX and the GF2 MX400 is negligible -- because the only change is increased memory and clock speed, and neither of those were actually bottlenecks, the GF2MX400 has almost no advantage over the GF2MX. Conclusions So, if there is no performance difference between the MX400 and the GF2MX, what advantage does it have? The answer is, none. However, it could drive the cost of cards such as the Siluro GeForce2MX down, which is helpful for those in the market for a low-end card. This is no fault of ABIT's -- the company made the best card it could with this chipset from NVidia. Once it drops in price to the $45 range where the GeForce2MX is right now, it will be quite a bargain, but for now, I would recommend a GeForce2MX-based card over an MX400-based one.

If for some odd reason you have your heart set on an MX400, however, the Abit Siluro MX400 is a decent card -- just held back by a lackluster chipset. Prices were not yet available for a Siluro MX400 on pricewatch, but other MX400-based boards can be had for $80 on. Category: • Unix.