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.......MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

                                

Leadtek : Winfast A170 DDR T GF4mx

This review was kindly made possible by:

March 22-2002

SPONSORS

The box full of goodies , cables , manuals , driver CD and 2 Games ( Dronez and Gunlok ) . 

 

  • NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 GPU

  • Accuview Antialiasing™

  • Lightspeed Memory ArchitectureT™ II

  • 34M triangles/sec through T&L and Set-up

  • 1.1 billion texels Fill Rate

  • Default Clock speed 270/400(Core/Memory)

  • 64MB DDR Memory

  • 6.4 GB/sec Memory Bandwidth

  • 2 dual-rending pipelines

  • 4 texels per clock cycle

  • cube environment mapping

  • High-Definition Video Processor(HDTV)

  • AGP 4X/2X and AGP Texturing Support

  • High-quality HDTV/DVD playback

  • Integrated TV Encoder Supporting 1024x768 resolution

  • Microsoft® DirectX® 8.X and OpenGL® 1.3 Optimizations and Support

 

First Look:

The card came well packaged , in a well made and set up box . The GPU heatsink fan unit is trick to say the least , and the card slipped into my AGP  slot with the greatest of ease . Installing the software was equally simple , just put the driver CD in your CD-rom drive and click on driver install , its that easy . Playing Quake and Return to Castle Wolfenstein  , there was a small but noticeable increase in the Quality of the graphics , more noticeable in RTCW than quake .

Performance:

A few reviewers seem to be unhappy with the performance of this card , perhaps having being spoiled by the GF3 ti500 performance levels . Im not sure , but my guess is that this card is more of a step up for GF2 owners than anything else .

Being a GF2titanium owner my self , Ive wanted to test this chipset for some time , just to see what performance gains can be expected , esp since the price on both cards is almost exactly the same . So onto Quake , first my GF2ti results.

System specs : Asus A7v133c ( 1008 bios ) with AMD xp1700+ @ 1.53ghz . Default drivers ( supplied with CD ) for the GF4mx.

My GF2 titanium. Quake results.

Test

Normal

High

Max

800x600

172.40Fps

154.57Fps

151.83Fps

960x720

162.63Fps

128.70Fps

126.67Fps

1024x768

156.57Fps

117.93Fps

115.87Fps

1280x1024

114.93Fps

76.20Fps

75.20Fps

 

Winfast GF4mx. Quake results.

Test

Normal

High

Max

800x600

169.60Fps

164.10Fps

160.43Fps

960x720

155.77Fps

152.70Fps

149.67Fps

1024x768

151.77Fps

137.60Fps

135.49Fps

1280x1024

113Fps

100.17Fps

98.67Fps

Interesting to say the least , but as you can see , the Gf4mx clearly pulls ahead as graphics detail is increased  , and the screen resolution is increased . Lets see how the GF4mx does with 3Dmark2001 .

5050 3Dmarks

Now thats not to bad , my GF2 titanium does just under 4400 3Dmarks . Owners of DDR motherboards should see higher benchmarks .

Overclocking:

I only pushed this card lightly , thanks to Winfox , the tweaking software , overclocking this card is a breeze . You have 3 zones , green , yellow , and red , yellow being a mild warning , red being a serious warning that you may do harm to your graphics card . So keeping in mind that this card was a loaner I stayed in the green , overclocking the card to 300mhz Core and 430mhz Mem . This mild overclock took the 3Dmark2001 score to 5250 3Dmarks .

Conclusion:

This card is usually priced at or under $250 ( MSY list price $230 in the last Computer Trader ) , which is right around the price of the top of the line GF2 cards , PRO , ULTRA and Titanium . So the question begs , why buy a GF2 when for the same money you can have an entry level GF4 card . A good question in deed I think , and the answer has to come from those looking to upgrade . The GF4mx kicks the GF2 titanium's butt , esp at higher graphics and screen res settings , and isnt that what most people are looking for these days , more bang for your buck . The Winfast GF4mx delivers just that , plus TVout , and two games in  the one deal . This is a value for money package , that is nicely placed between the Hot GF2 cards and the more expensive GF3 range of cards . So when it comes time to chose where your money goes , the GF4mx should makes a lot more sense than a Hot GF2 , especially taking the low price of the Winfast GF4mx card into consideration  ( not forgetting the two games included in the package ), as well as the excellent Winfox software package , that does so much more than Ive had time to cover here . Its almost the witching hour now and time for bed , it would have been nice to have a little more time with this card , play around with the bios settings etc , over all this is a very good value for money graphics card that looks like it will respond well to overclocking , and I can recommend it to anyone looking to upgrade from a GF2mx or lower performance card .

I would like to thank Andrew Shiau at MSY for making this review possible .

Matt Korhonen