Other than having less pipelines than the GeForce2 GTS, the GeForce2 MX has essentially an unchanged 3D feature set. This is great news for gamers and means that new features like the second generation T&L (transform and lighting) engine, and NVIDIA's Shading Rasterizer (advanced pixel shading) are included. Due to the lower clock rate of the GeForce2 MX, its T&L engine can only handle 20 million triangle/sec. compared to the GeForce2 GTS' 25 million/sec. Basic GeForce features such as 32-bit rendering, AGP 4X/2X, texture compression and FSAA are also included with the GeForce2 MX.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, then the news of memory bandwidth issues with NVIDIA cards have certainly reached you. Their 3D chips are without a doubt the most powerful in the business, but the memory technology and bandwidth continue to hold their 3D chips from processing at peak levels. After all, the 3D video chip can only process data as fast as the card's memory and memory bus can provide it.

It is in the area of memory bandwidth that the GeForce2 MX design starts hit a few bumps. Since the MX is a value 3D solution, it was expected that certain corners would have to be made in order to achieve an attractive price point. The default speed of the GeForce2 MX memory is 166MHz, which is the same as the GeForce2 GTS' default speed. Unfortunately, NVIDIA has also designed the GeForce2 MX to only support standard SDR memory using the 128-bit memory bus, or SDR/DDR using a 64-bit memory bus. Although it is a faster video chip with a higher fillrate, this essentially places the GeForce2 MX in the same memory category as the original GeForce 256 SDR boards.

It is fully understandable that NVIDIA does not want to see 128-bit, DDR versions of the GeForce2 MX appearing on store shelves, thereby cutting into potential GeForce2 GTS and Ultra sales, but this might have been too deep a cut. The high-end GeForce2 cards are already suffering memory bandwidth issues, and NVIDIA has effectively cut this bandwidth in half for the MX. This should not hurt low resolution 3D gaming too much, but with higher resolution games and T&L and FSAA to boot, the GeForce2 MX may start hitting the figurative performance wall.