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| Quality
and Installation Of The Abit Siluro MX |
| Come
on in... |
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Visual
inspection of the Siluro MX shows us some good
things. As is the case with most reputable
manufacturers such as Abit, all of the traces and
solder connections are very clean and in general
show good craftsmanship. The MX reference
design is fairly simple and there really is very
little to comment on. One
of the very obvious aspects worth mentioning is
the inclusion if a TV-Out connector. Most
cards in the price range where the Siluro MX falls
do not include any "bells and whistles"
and it is nice to see Abit including some of these
extra features. 
Another
thing that you will notice if you pay attention to
virtually all of the pictures in this review is
the heatsink that is mounted on the MX chip.
We're not 100% sure how to feel about this
heatsink though. On one hand, nVidia's
reference design does not call for any extra
cooling because the GeForce 2 MX runs very cool
and uses very little power, so Abit's decision to
install a heatsink is a plus. On the other
hand, this is Abit we're talking about!
Coming from a company so widely known for their
overclocking prowess it is disappointing that this
card, targeted squarely at the budget market (who,
incidentally is the largest overclocking crowd),
doesn't offer a better cooling solution. The
kicker is the heatsink is mounted with thermal
compound. If you've read any of my other
video card reviews, you know how strongly we frown
upon the use of thermal compound. The
bundle that comes with the Siluro MX is fairly
respectable. Most users shouldn't be
disappointed when they first open the box. 
Included
with the Siluro MX is an S-Video cable, a REAL
users manual, a diver CD which also contains
Intervideo's WinDVD 2000 and 2 full version games,
Test Drive 5 and Shogo: Mobile Armor
Division. Granted the games aren't cutting
edge but something is always better than
nothing! The
drivers that came included on Abit's CD were
relatively old, so we won't be going to in-depth
into them. The testing of the card was done
was with nVidia's 6.31 reference drivers.
Should you opt to use Abit's drivers, they do come
with a proprietary overclocking utility called
"Graphic Max". 
The
board we received was a decent overclocker.
We were able to get the core up from it's default
175MHz. clockspeed to 195Mhz and the memory up
from 166MHz. to 190Mhz. Overclocking was
done with the card in it's stock configuration,
with some creative cooling solutions, your luck
will probably be better. Well,
we've given you enough background on the Abit
Siluro MX let's jump right into some benchmarks
shall we!
Overclocking
and Gaming Performance |
