Introduction

The Band Plays On

By remaining an independent chip design house, NVIDIA's mind share is enormous - practically any computer store you enter has multiple NVIDIA-based products from the likes of Creative, ELSA, and Hercules. A quick glance at the hardware section of our site backs this up clearly: in just over a week we've already reviewed two products powered by NVIDIA graphics chips!

Today we're here to review a third, the ABIT Siluro GF2 MX.

As we discussed in our Siluro 256 GTS review, ABIT is expanding beyond the motherboard market. This is a trend that ABIT has jumped on for a number of reasons. First, with increased competition from ASUS, MSI, and Soyo (to name a few), they've had a more difficult time differentiating their products -- ABIT is no longer the only company with jumperless motherboards that are easy to overclock. Slimmer profit margins have also made the situation worse for the entire motherboard industry.

As a result, ABIT has decided to enter new ground with their Siluro graphics card lineup and is even expanding to the realm of PC audio with their 5.1 speakers and HomeTheatre sound card.

So what happens when you fuse the 3D capabilities of NVIDIA's GeForce2 MX with ABIT's proven track record with motherboards? We were expecting one high-performing, yet low-cost 3D gaming solution. In the end, the ABIT card delivered in many areas, but left us a little disappointed in others.

We'll be discussing all this in greater detail throughout the review. Of course, we'll also run the card through our standard suite of tests, as well overclock the core and memory. We haven't dabbled with GeForce2 MX overclocking since our Hercules 3D Prophet II MX review, so we wanted to give it another shot on the GF2 MX.