Maxi Gamer Xentor Features

The core of the issue

The core speed is 175MHz straight out of the factory (!), which equals the fast core speeds that we've only seen from Hercules so far. Covering the actual TNT2 chip itself is a heatsink and fan. The heatsink and fan are secured using these rubber pushpin-things, which hold the heatsink and fan on securely enough, but are moderately easy enough to remove should you want to install an aftermarket fan. In addition, there is a 2 pin fan header for easy connection.

The RAMDAC

The Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 has a fast RAMDAC, for those of you worried about 2D performance. The TNT2 has been a criticized chipset for its 2D images quality, but the Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 looked sharp to us. This is due in part to the 300MHz RAMDAC that the card comes with. The RAMDAC is the digital-to-analog converter, which changes digital signals into analog ones that can be used by your monitor (unless you are pimp and running a digital flat panel).

Give me games!

The current retail (boxed) version of the Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 is shipping with two game demos that look promising. The first is UbiSoft's Speed Busters: American Highways. Speed Busters, as you can guess, is a racing game of sorts. The other game is none other than Xatrix's Kingpin: Life of Crime, which was a highly anticipated game. This game is a first-person shooter which puts you in a mob-like environment with plenty of thugs and hoodlums running around. This is a well-rounded game combo, and they would be quite fun to play on the Maxi Gamer Xentor 32.

The TV-out

The Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 comes with a TV-out, for your viewing pleasure. An easy inspection of the card reveals that the TV-out is controlled by the ever-familiar Brooktree 869 chip. This is the same chip that we have seen on many different manufacturers' cards, and seems to be the most common TV-out controller. It is in an S-video connection.

Software DVD

The Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 also comes with a software DVD player. The particular software DVD that they use is the Xing DVD player, which is a good one. The Xing player has hardware subpicture blending, which basically means that you get the nice menus and subtitles. Should DVD software be your thing, you're taken care of in this case.

The drivers

The Guillemot drivers that we got were essentially reference nVidia drivers, but they were rather dated. We checked Guillemot's site to see if there was a newer release, but the only Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 drivers they have on their site are the old ones that we got. As an example of how drivers can affect the performance of a your card, we ran full suites of both the Guillemot drivers and the newest TNT2 1.88 Detonator reference drivers. You'll see the difference in performance later, in the benchmarks. Some of the performance differences can be quite large.

AGP 4x?

The Maxi Gamer Xentor supports AGP 1x and 2x, but not 4x. Some may see this as a hindrance. Of course, this is a currently moot point because we don't have motherboard support for AGP 4x yet. Come mid-fall however, consumers who want AGP 4x may be wary about the Maxi Gamer Xentor 32. However, it depends on when the next upgrade is planned. As we are also expecting to see new video chipsets possibly as early as 4Q of this year, people who are quick to upgrade may not find lack of AGP 4x support an important concern.