Specs/First Impressions

The List

0.18 micron manufacturing process
175MHz core clock
166MHz memory clock
2 pixels per clock cycle
350 Mpixels/s fill rate
4 texels per clock cycle
700 Mtexels/s fill rate
2.7 GB/s memory bandwidth
20 million triangles/sec
8-64MB frame buffer
128-bit Single Data Rate (SDR) or 64-bit Double Data Rate (DDR) memory
TwinView architecture
Digital Vibrance control
Integrated Dual-Link TMDS transmitters
NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
High-Definition Video Processor (HDVP)
AGP 4X with Fast Writes
32-bit color
32-bit Z/stencil buffer
Cube environment mapping
DirectX and S3 texture compression
350MHz RAMDAC

First Impressions

ABIT's Siluro GF2 MX follows NVIDIA's reference design closer than any other card we've seen. Just like our reference board, a full-size printed-circuit board (PCB) is used. In contrast, boards from Hercules and ELSA sport smaller PCB's to cut costs.

Siluro MX front

Siluro MX back

Thankfully, ABIT did add a heatsink to help keep the core cool. We haven't noticed any heat issues with our reference board, but its always nice to keep your components as cool as possible. As most overclockers know, heat is one of the major culprits that can prevent a successful overclock.

Our particular Siluro GF2 MX board shipped with 6ns modules manufactured by Hyundai. With 6ns memory rated to run at 166MHz, the Siluro GF2 MX matches NVIDIA's specs perfectly, but may disappoint some overclockers. In comparison, our Hercules MX board shipped with 5.5ns modules also manufactured by Hyundai. While 6ns modules are rated for 166MHz, 5.5ns modules are rated for at least 183MHz.

Hyundai 6ns memory

TwinView?

Although ABIT's marketing mentions TwinView support, our sample shipped with one VGA output and an S-Video out. We're unaware of any plans to add this support in the future but feels it's a great feature that many consumers would certainly take advantage of. In our opinion, we certainly would have received more benefit out of a second VGA connector than we did from the included TV-out.