Review: Maxi Gamer Xentor

Manufacturers Website:
Guillemot

Review: Maxi Gamer Xentor 7.21.99
By: Jarret Griffis

Graphics have become one of the most powerful components of a computer in the past few years. Taking a tremendous load off of the CPU, graphics accelerators have become so capable of generating 3D environments, in some cases they rival reality. Another bonus, or downside, depending on how you look at it, is that each generation surpasses the previous by an exponential margin (the leap in performance usually occurs every six months to one year), leaving owners without the means to upgrade in the dark.

That said, it’s not suprising that everyone is jumping on the nVidia bandwagon; the TNT2 brings some pretty awesome speed and image quality to the table. You'll be hard pressed to find anything faster or better looking in its price range.

Diamond, Creative Labs, Guillemot, and several others have all slapped together their best TNT2 offerings in hopes that you'll spend your hard-earned money on their product. The only problem is that each company has a different configuration, as well as price range to choose from. With all of those different types of RAM, clock speeds and memory settings, trying to find a TNT2 that best suits your needs can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Luckily, the good people over at Guillemot have donated a Maxi Gamer Xentor for review, so we just might be able to narrow your search a bit.

The Xentor is of the standard TNT2 fair. However, the CPU speed is clocked at a healthy 135 MHz – a full 10 MHz faster than the TNT2 reference design – and the memory timings are set at 166 MHz, compared to the more common 150 MHz setting. The only area where the Xentor could have improved would have been in the amount of memory included: 16 megabytes is all you get. That's enough to satisfy casual gamers, but the hard-core crowd will probably opt for a card with more memory. And last, but not least, you'll find a heat-sink resting directly on top of the main chip; unfortunately, no fan is included, which may make overclocking more difficult.

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