guys i am trying to build a new computer for my bro and mom which they will take it to Pakistan i need to know what is a good video card..
They will be using the computer for Video conf gaming and other stuff i don’t expect them to use very heavy graphics.
Looking for video card under 120 $ …
GeForce4 MX chip was designed by nVIDIA for the low-end market, under $120. This doesn’t mean the card isn’t good for anything, it only means that it is designed for… let’s say normal gamers. When I say normal I mean those that do not spend a ton of money on a computer that will be used just for playing games, but instead choose the best value for the money. This is where GF4 MX comes in, and especially the MX440. Being the middle in the GF4 MX series, between the very low-end MX420 and the better MX460, the MX440 has a very well balanced performance/price ratio. Now GeForce4 MX440 cards with 64MB DDR RAM sell for $90 or less, which is great because everybody can now afford to have a decent performing card in their PC. Some might say that the GeForce4 MX series is not very good for games because the performance is not very high compared to the GeForce4 Ti series.
But a mid-range GeForce4 Ti4400 card costs at least three times as much as a MX440 and, you’ll see, it does not perform 3 times as fast. Plus, I have had GeForce4 MX440 in my computer, a value PC based on KT266A and Athlon XP 1600+, for quite some time now and I can play all games at 1024x768x32bit with all eye candy to the max and the framerate never gets under 60FPS, no matter what game I play (OK, Comanche 4 is an exception).
Also, the GeForce4 MX may not have Pixel Shader and has limited support for Vertex Shader, but ask yourself how many games actually use the capabilities. Very few if any, so what is the reason for buying a card that has something you won’t use anyway? Until games with real support for Pixel and Vertex shaders will come I bet value models of NV30 (GeForce5??) and ATi R300 (Radeon 9700??) will be selling for $250 or less, and those cards aren’t going to be launched until late autumn 2002. Anyway, for you guys that crave technical details, here’s the list of specifications:
Hardware Specifications
nVIDIA GeForce4 MX GPU, 256-bit 2D & 3D graphics architecture
Support AGP 2X/4X
Memory size up to 128MB DDR SDRAM
Support high resolution up to 2048x1536@75Hz
Build-in 350MHz RAMDAC with gamma correction
Built-in NTSC / PAL TV-Out with flicker filter
TV-Out resolution up to 1024x768
Support Composite & S-Video TV-Out
DirectX and S3CT texture compression
Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
HRAA-high-resolution antialiasing
AccuView antialiasing
Quincunx antialiasing
Integrated hardware transform engine
Integrated hardware lighting engine
Cube environment-mapping capability
Hardware accelerated real-time shadows
High-quality HDTV / DVD playback
VPE Video Processing Engine
nView Multi-Display Capability
High-definition video processor (HDVP) for full-screen, full-frame video playback of HDTV and DVD content
Independent hardware color controls for video overlay
Hardware color-space conversion (YUV 4:2:2 and 4:2:0)
Per-pixel color keying
Multiple video windows supported for CSC and filtering
DVD sub-picture alpha-blended compositing
Operating systems
Windows 2000 / NT (all) / 9x / ME / XP
Linux, BeOS and MacOS
API support
OpenGL 1.3 and lower
DirectX 8.X
Compatibility
NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture
Fully-compliant professional OpenGL 1.3 support for all Windows operating systems
WHQL-certified for Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 9x, Windows ME
But now back to the card at hand, the very nice Albatron GeForce4 MX440. Though, as I said before, Albatron isn’t a name in the IT industry, this card made a very good impression, at least to me. Quality in design and manufacturing process is very important, and let see if this card has all that. I will begin by presenting the box:
Pretty shiny, but not very colored. Like it matters. The size of the box is standard for this type of card and can house in all the necessary accessories the average user needs, plus the card itself 
What I found very lacking were the details on the box, I mean they were almost non-existent. A box should be printed with lots of details about the product inside, including a list of accessories and if possible even pictures of those accessories. Not that I like colored boxes, but the buyer should know what he’s paying for before he actually does that. And the list with the content of the box is printed in very small fonts of the edge of the box, I had to actually look for them in order to find them. Otherwise, the box is pretty solid, made of thick cardboard, and protects the card very well. Speaking of the card, I got a picture of it from Albatron’s site:
Unfortunately this does not correspond to the card I reviewed, which uses a green PCB and has no DVI connector. But otherwise the layout and design are identical. Here is the card I tested:
That’s how it looks from the above and the back looks something like this:
What stroked me about this board is the cooler, which looks very “chick”, all silver and with the Albatron sticker on it.
And as far as I tested, this HSF cools as good as it looks because even when in my room was almost 35C, the back of the GF4 MX440 chip didn’t get very hot. This is due to good cooling, both the HSF and the paste that sits between it and the GPU, but also because the GF4 MX does not heat up much anyway. The card ships with 64MB DDR RAM made by Samsung and rated 5ns, that is 200MHz DDR or 400MHz effective, exactly as they are clocked.
But there are some manufacturers that use 4ns RAM chips on their MX440 cards just for overlocking, and this is where Albatron lags. I was able to get the GPU chip up to 305MHz with stock cooling, from the 270MHz default, that is a 45MHz overclock, but the RAM couldn’t take more than 460MHz, only 60MHz above the 400MHz default.
Of course, I could run both the RAM and chip above those figures, but I got lockups and visual artifacts in 3DMark and Q3. 305/460 MHz is not a very good overclock for an MX440, especially for the RAM, which can go above 550MHz on certain cards designed for overclocking. Anyway, overclocking is not the most important reason for buying a GeForce4 MX card. But the bundled stuff is, and the Albatron card does not lack anything here. It has two full games bundled with the card, Serious Sam:
and Motocross Mania, a very nice game:
This game is very funny, not because you can win motocross races and or anything, but because it is very hard to play, at least for me, and whenever you have an accident, the rider on the bike falls very artistically and that looks very very painful. For about an hour or so you will find that very funny, you should see him fall head forward in a tree, or even worse, taking a tree between his legs (OUCH!). Also, Albatron bundled a software DVD player, the popular WinDVD, but not the latest version 4.x.
Still, it’s not shareware so you can update it to the latest version. And the most important of the disks that come with the card is the one that has all the drivers on it.
This CD contains Detonator 28.32 for all versions of Windows, the manual of the card and a few more programs, such as DirectX 8.1.
That’s what you see when you insert this disk in the drive, a very easy to navigate interface from where you can install everything you need to get the card running properly. I didn’t mention this before, but just like any GeForce4 MX card, the Albatron MX440 has TV-Out incorporated in the GPU, and, of course, the proper connector.
You can see here the D-Sub 15 pin VGA connector and the S-Vid TV-Out connector. In case you don’t have the right cables, Albatron included a S-Vid to RCA converter:
Also, in the pack you will find a RCA, but I have no picture of this one, sorry. But what I did not find in the box is a manual, and I have searched for it. I have no use for the manual, but less experienced users might need it,and Albatron should have considered that. Now let’s get to the benches, but first the test system:
AMD Athlon XP 1600+@2000+ (12.5x133 MHz)
EpoX 8K3A+ KT333 motherboard with BIOS 2619
256MB PC2700 Crucial RAM working at CAS 2, 4-bank, 5-2-2, 1T
Prolink PixelView GeForce3 Ti200 (default clock speeds of 175/400 MHz core/memory)
Albatron GeForce4 MX440 (default clock speeds 270/400 core/memory)
Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack! Ultra/750 XP GS (safe mode settings)
Maxtor D740X 40GB UDMA133 HDD
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with all updates
VIA 4in1 4.40P3
Detonator 29.42
VSync was turned off in all tests. And here’s the list of benches used:
3Dmark 2001SE
Quake3 Arena 1.30
VillageMark 1.1
Return to Castle Wolfenstein MP Test
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter public demo
VillageMark first, because it shows how good the HSR (Hidden Surface Remover) is.
Here the GF4 MX 440 performs very good for a low-end video card priced under $100. Of course, the GF4 Ti4600 performs much better, but it also costs much more, about 3 times more. Now everybody's favorite, 3DMark 2001SE.
3DMark 2001 is a synthetic benchmark that uses DirectX 8 as the primary API. Although the GeForce4 MX doesn’t have any pixel shader or vertex shader support or even Environment Bump mapping support, I still tested with 3DMark 2001 just to get an idea of the Direct3D performance of the new MX440. The performance is not great, but it is not bad either considering the price. The darkest shade is 1024x768, the middle shade is 1280x1024 and the lightest one is 1600x1200, and all are in 32-bit.
Quake3, even though an old game now, has a very good engine that uses OpenGL as API. This engine is the base for a lot of new games that were launched recently (Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor and Jedi Knight 2), so that is why I have chosen it for the main OpenGL test. Of course, I only tested high quality settings because with a high end system such as the one I used for all the tests there is no need to cut down on the details just to make the game run smoother.
Being able to play Q3 with all eye-candy at 1024x768x32bit and over 160FPS is not bad, not bad at all. Not to mention that at 1600x1200 you over 80FPS, and now we're talking quality. The same colors as in 3DMark test applies here. Based on a modified Quake3 engine, Return to Castle Wolfenstein is one of the hit games from last year, but still very popular and this is why I included it in this review.
We see here the same situation as in the Q3 test, which is normal. The Ti4600 takes the lead but the MX440 still renders enough FPS for playing the game very smooth. Last but not least, I tested Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.
This is the test where the difference between the GeForce4 Ti4600 and the GeForce4 MX440 is most significant. The Ti4600 scores almost three times as much as the MX440, in all resolutions, but in 1024x768x32bit, you can still play Serious Sam on a GeForce4 MX440 very well. As far as 2D quality is concerned, I think the GeForce4 is slightly better then the previous nVIDIA cards, especially at high resolutions due to the improved RAMDAC. The Albatron GeForce4 MX440 doesn't impress with the layout or the PCB color, like other similar cards from other manufacturers, and it doesn't feature fast RAM chips for overclocking, but sure has a very good price and for users that don't want the fastest and the latest, price is important.
Pros
Looks very nice with that cooler
Full version DVD player
Bundled games
Low price
Cons
5ns RAM chips so it doesn't OC that well
No DVI
No manual
A low end card, the MX440 can still perform very good in today's games, but lacks the support for some features that will be required in tomorrow's games.
i can get Geforce Ti4200 for 117 $…is that good price its brand new card…
MX version r ghatia tareen never get those