The
box full of goodies , cables , manuals , driver CD and 2 Games (
Dronez and Gunlok ) .
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NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 GPU
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Accuview Antialiasing™
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Lightspeed Memory ArchitectureT™ II
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34M triangles/sec through T&L and Set-up
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1.1 billion texels Fill Rate
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Default Clock speed 270/400(Core/Memory)
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64MB DDR Memory
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6.4 GB/sec Memory Bandwidth
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2 dual-rending pipelines
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4 texels per clock cycle
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cube environment mapping
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High-Definition Video Processor(HDTV)
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AGP 4X/2X and AGP Texturing Support
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High-quality HDTV/DVD playback
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Integrated TV Encoder Supporting 1024x768
resolution
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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
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