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Maxi Gamer Xentor 32
Guillemot's Ultra-TNT2 card
 
Manufacturer: Guillemot
Base Chip: nVidia Ultra-TNT2
Clock/Memory: 175/183 Mhz
Memory On-board: 32 Mb 5.5ns SDRAM
AGP features: AGP 2X/AGP Texturing
TV-OUT/DVD-support: Yes
Retail Price: 9.995 Bef (302$)
System Req: PII, free AGP-slot, 16Mb Ram, 10Mb free HD, Cd/DVD-Drive, Win95 OSR2 / Win98
Date posted: 1 October '99
Written By: Bjorn
Introduction
Years ago, the french based hardware manufacturer, Guillemot released their new piece of 3D hardware accelerated card, the Maxi Gamer 3D. This card was equipped with the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics chip and it was pretty close to the same performance and quality range that the other Voodoo cards accomplished.
However, Guillemot managed to surprise us all by lowering their retail price very aggressively and competitive.
Later, they also released the Maxi Gamer 3D 2, a 3D-card that was based on the 3dfx Voodoo 2 chip. Again, great performance, great components and again the price of this card was aggressively lower then Guillemot's other competitors, namely Diamond and Creative Labs. People really got to know Guillemot's products because why buy a more expensive product if you can get the same quality and performance but still with a lower price tag!
Guillemot also released their 2D/3D Voodoo Banshee card, the Maxi Gamer Phoenix unfortunately this card wasn't really made for the hardcore gamer. However, this Banshee card was equipped with SGRAM instead of the standard SDRAM that was placed on this line of cards. A cheap card, a good performer for normal gamers with a lower price tag and faster Ram! What could a gamer want more?
Well, if you are a real Hardcore Gamer, there wasn't really something that was made for you. The Voodoo had it limits and when 3dfx no longer supplied chips to board vendors because of the 3dfx/STB deal, many board manufacturers like Guillemot, Creative Labs and others turned to nVidia to supply the chips for their next-generation cards. They decided to go with nVidia's upcoming chip set, the TNT2.
nVidia's TNT2 comes in 2 flavours, the plain Vanilla TNT2 and the higher clocked Ultra TNT2.
Guillemot decided to release 2 cards, the Xentor which was based on the Vanilla TNT2 and for hard core gamers, the Xentor 32, an Ultra-TNT2 card which was higher clocked in clock and memory than the regular TNT2.
We recieved Guillemot's Ultra TNT2 card, the Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 and we are ready to test this baby very in-depth.
What is in the Box?
The retail box of Guillemot's Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 is very eye-catchy. They have used very bright colors, mostly orange, blue and a 'Centaur' is also their front logo.
On the backside of the box, a lot of info is displayed about the cards features, the maximum 2d and 3d resolutions, something about DVD-acceleration and of course the usual marketing talk :).
When I opened the Xentor 32 box, the following parts were included:
- The Xentor 32 (2D/3D card)
- A 110 page multi-language Manual (Spanish, Italian, Dutch and English)
- An installation Cd-rom (v1.0) which includes drivers, online documentation in .pdf format, demo versions of several games and 3D animations from nVidia. The disc also had the sofware DVD program, Xing DVD Player (v2.01)
There was no S-VHS video to RCA adapter included with this retail box but when I contacted Guillemot they told me that the adapter is included with newer versions. A few days later, I recieved the adapter by mail from the folks over @ Guillemot.
Guillemot included 4 demo versions on this installation Cd-rom. All of them are from developer and publisher, Ubi Soft and this company is also a division of Guillemot International.
The disc contains the following demo versions:- Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation
- Speed Busters
- S.C.A.R.S.
- Tonic Trouble
I was a bit disappointed about the game bundle that was included with this card because all of them are demo versions. Perhaps it would have been better if some full retail versions were included in this package. But perhaps then the price tag wouldn't be that low anymore ... who knows.
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