16 Bit Performance

So far both this cards have been battling it out on several different resolutions. The MX400 keeps up with its younger brother on lower resolutions. As soon at the resolution is cranked up and/or FSAA is used, the MX400, with its limited bandwidth, begins to perform rather poorly. It may seem obvious: Get the MX400 and play at relatively low resolutions; or Get the Geforce2 Ti and play at higher resolutions. And avoiding the MX400 if FSAA is to be used ( at least, 4X that is ).

One way to "avoid" being bandwidth limited with the MX400 is to overclock the memory. But overclocking has its limits too, even with the impressive 17% memory overclock, the Inno3d MX400 is still in need of more bandwidth. Another way is to decrease the amount of information that the MX400 needs to handle. Switching from 32bit to 16bit, halves the amount of memory needed, making it ideal for the bandwidth starved MX400 ( specially on high resoultions ).

This, of course, introduces image quality issues. This shot was taking on Quake3, it is clear that 32bit looks much better than 16bit. The shots are jpeg compressed so some degradation has occured. The 32bit image shows the transparent bubble clearly, unlike the 16bit one. However, if the performance increase is large enough, then it may be worth switchin to 16 bit. Let's see...

Using the "Fastest" setting on Quake3, we see the MX400 delivering very impressive frame rates! Even at 1600x1200 it still runs like charm. From 640x480x16 to 1024x768x16 both cards suffer virtually no performance decrease. At 1280x1024 even if the MX400 drops 33% it still packs quite a punch! Up another notch to 1600x1200, the MX400 suffers yet another 31% drop, indicating that its becoming bandwidth limited once again. of course, averaging 52.3 frames per second at 1600x1200 is not bad at all!

The Geforce2 Ti averages over a hundred frames per second from 640x480x16 up to 1600x1200x16. Performing almost twice as fast as the MX400 at the highest resolution, The Geforce2 Ti simply overpowering the MX400.

Starting out this time at 1024x768, the Geforce2 Ti has a 25% lead on the MX400. Also at 1600x1200x16 The Geforce2 Ti performs 54% higher than the MX400.

The way both cards behave at Game 3 : Lobby is very similar to there first game on 3d Mark 2001. The MX400 is still around 49% slower than the Geforce2 Ti at 1600x1200x16.