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InnoVISION GeForce4 MX440


Date
: 05/24/02 – 10:20:48 PM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer: InnoVISION
Price: Less than $100

Introduction

A couple of months ago, nVidia announced their new generation GPUs … the GeForce4 was born. By now, every self-respecting videocard manufacturer in the world has one or more videocards in its line-up that is based on a GeForce4 GPU.

nVidia has tried to produce a GeForce4-based GPU for everyone's needs. That's the main reason why their new GeForce4 line of GPUs is so extensive. First, we have the MX line-up. This one includes the GF4 MX420, MX440 and MX460 chips and can be considered as the low-budget GeForce4 GPUs. Then, we have the high-end Ti (Titanium) line-up for power users who want and need nothing but the fastest nVidia-based card around. The GF4 Ti line-up consists of the Ti4200, Ti4400 and the Ti4600.

That makes a total of 6 new GeForce4 GPUs divided into 2 line-ups … 3 MX GPUs for mainstream customers and 3 Ti GPUs for customers who want raw performance.

If you're looking for an upgrade without having to spend your life savings, you'll definitely have your mind set on a GeForce4 MX card. And that just happened to be the card we're reviewing today … The InnoVISION (or Inno3D) GeForce4 MX based upon the GF4 MX440 GPU. What are the new features of this card? Are there visual improvements over a GeForce2 and GeForce3? How does the new kid perform compared to these older nVidia chipsets?

Let's find out …

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

First of all, let's have a look at the Inno3D Tornado GF4 MX440 specifications. Here's a copy/paste from the Inno3D website :

Product Overview

- Powered by nVidia GeForce4 MX 440 GPU
- Lightspeed Memory Architecture (LMA) II Technology
- 64MB 128-bit DDR Frame Buffer Memory supported
- nView Display Technology, provides unprecedented flexibility and control for using multiple displays
- Dual 350MHz RAMDAC with crisp and clear image quality at 2048×1536 resolution at 75Hz refresh
- TV-Output support 1024×768 resolution
- Accuview Antialiasing delivers unprecedented AA performance and quality to the mainstream market and enables high resolution, high frame rate, full-scene antialiasing for the first time ever in this market segment.
- Video Processing Engine (VPE) enables the highest quality, full-frame rate, full-screen HDTV and DVD without requiring a high performance CPU
- AGP 2X / 4X support with AGP Texturing and Fast Writes
- Fully accelerates Windows XP multimedia and user interfaces, making it the ideal Windows XP graphics solution
- Guarantees forward and backward compatibility with nVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
- Microsoft DirectX Optimizations and support
- Complete OpenGL 1.3 and OpenGL support

nView Display for Tornado GeForce4 MX440

- Single CRT Monitor: 15-pin VGA connector
- Single CRT Monitor + TV Output (S-Video or Composite) nView*
- 2 x CRT Monitors nView*
*Optional Configuration

Display support

- Register compatible with VGA
- BIOS compatible with VESA for super VGA
- DDC 1/2b/2b+ monitor support
- VESA Display Power Management Support
- Separate horizontal & vertical synchronization at TTL levels

Detailed Specs

So what has InnoVISION included in the box? :

- The Inno3D Tornado GF4 MX440 card
- A small user manual
- Universal driver CD
- MegaPack Bundle
- The bonus mouse pad
- TV-Out cables

Again, this GeForce4 package looks just like any other InnoVISION package. We have the videocard, a user manual, the MegaPack bundle with driver CD, TV-Out cables and a mouse pad. Just like we already mentioned in previous reviews of InnoVISION products, the user manual isn't going to provide you with lots of hours of reading fun, but it does contain the information you need to install the card and the drivers. Like you don't already know how to do that?! :) Although the universal driver CD that is included in the package contains a recent driver for the card, I would strongly advise you NOT to use this driver and I suggest that you go download the latest detonator driver from the nVidia website. It's always better to have the latest, most stable and fastest driver, isn't it? The mouse pad is a nice bonus, but I already have a dozen of these InnoVISION mouse pads by now. I believe it's time that they move onto a new bonus to put in their packages! The stripped down MegaPack software bundle hasn't changed much compared to the one we described last review. When we open it up, we see the universal driver CD, the software DVD-player WinDVD 2000 and a video editing application from CyberLink that goes by the name 'PowerDirector SE'. That's it … No game and no clipart CD in this edition … At least not in our retail sample!

The Inno3D Tornado GF4 MX440 card features a simple but efficient design on a sexy black (!!) PCB. If you take a look at the pictures of the card, you'll notice that the GF4 MX440 doesn't come with RAM sinks to cool down the memory chips like Inno3D's GeForce3 Ti200 did have. The cooler on top of the MX440 GPU is also rather small compared to the orb-shaped cooling on a GF3. Inno3D's MX440 comes with 4 x 16MB Samsung DDR RAM chips which results in a total of 64MB DDR RAM.

Our Tornado MX440 sample came with an optional TV-Out feature. Together with the nView display technology this is one of the most sophisticated onboard TV-Out features I've seen so far. It has a resolution up to 1024×768 and a good & clear image quality. Horizontal/Vertical desktop span, normal desktop span, desktop cloning … Anything is possible … I'm impressed!

So how about the core and memory speeds? Well, first of all, it is important to know that the GeForce4 MX GPU is NOT based on GeForce3 technologies but rather on the GeForce2 MX technology! Surprised? … The basic technologies inside the GF4 MX core are extracted from the good old budget GeForce2 MX core. Here's a list of the core and memory speeds of the GeForce4 MX line-up :

- GeForce4 MX420 : 250MHz Core / 333MHz Memory (only OEM!)
-
GeForce4 MX440 : 270MHz Core / 400MHz Memory

- GeForce4 MX460 : 300MHz Core / 550MHz Memory

Although the GF4 MX chips are based upon the GF2 MX core, the GF4 MXs do have some serious improvements over a GF2 MX. Fist improvement : They run at a higher core clock speed (270MHz for the GF4 MX440). Second improvement is the addition of new GeForce4 features like Accuview Anti Aliasing, a simple version of the Light Speed Memory Architecture II and nView. Hmmm … Please explain Light Speed Memory Architecture! Here's a quote I pulled out of our very first GeForce3 review which explains LMA very briefly :

All these improvements allow the GeForce4 MX to perform better than a GeForce2, but the question is : How much better? Better than a GeForce3? The answer to this last question is "NO"! Later on in this review, our benchmarks will prove that the budget GeForce4 MX isn't capable of matching the high-end performance of an older GeForce3 Ti200 GPU. Perhaps this is caused by the GF4's lack of some nfiniteFX features that we do see on GeForce3 & GeForce4 Ti GPUs. Just as the GF2 MX cards, this GF4 MX440 doesn't feature full DirectX 8.1 support which may explain the difference in performance between the GeForce generations.

Now, let's do some overclocking … can't wait no more …

Page 3 : Overclocking

Overclocking

We chose to overclock the GF4 by installing the Coolbits registry hack which allows you to adjust the core and memory speed from within the driver settings tab in your OS. Another way to crank up the core clock and memory speed is to install a videocard overclocking application such as Powerstrip.

Now we can start increasing our default core/memory speeds (270MHz/400MHz) in small increments. That's the easiest way to determine when a card reaches its limit. This also helps us to find out which part is causing crashes or lockups if you push the card to high …

Because the card lacks a big GPU cooler and RAM sinks, I didn't expect it to overclock all that much. But after a couple of hours of fooling around with the core/memory settings I finally got our sample stable at 305MHz core and 495MHz memory speed. That makes the core run at 35MHz higher than stock speed while the memory is almost 100MHz overclocked. The card even performed "pretty" stable at 310MHz/500MHz but it failed after a few 3DMark2k1 tests. When you add better cooling to the GPU and put some RAM sinks on the memory, I have little doubt that the card will also be stable at higher speeds. But with stock cooling and without RAM sinks on the memory … no way!

Now let's see have a look at how the Inno3D GeForce4 MX440 handles 3DMark2001 and Quake3 Arena …

Page 4 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Test System :

- AMD Athlon Tbird 1.4GHz
- EPoX 8KHA+ KT266A Mainboard
- Vantec CCK-6035 Heatsink
- 256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
- Inno3D GeForce3 Ti200 videocard
- Inno3D GF2 Ti videocard
- Inno3D GF4 MX440 videocard
- IBM 20GB UDMA100 7200rpm hard drive
- Win2k + SP2 + VIA 4in1 4.37

3DMARK2001

Quake 3 Arena v1.17 – Demo001

Quake 3 Arena v1.17 – Torture Demo

Page 5 : Conclusion

Conclusion

Good

- Good overall performance
- Price/performance ratio
- Black PCB
- Overclocks nicely
- Sweet dual-display features

Bad

- No full DirectX 8.1 support
- No RAM sinks
- Might not be good enough for hardcore gamers
- Dual-display shouldn't be optional

When we look at this card in terms of price and performance, we have no choice but to recommend it to everyone who needs a decent new budget videocard or everyone who wants to upgrade their GeForce 256 or GeForce2 MX card. I really like the dual-display stuff (nView) on these GeForce4s. But as I said earlier in this review, you shouldn't buy this a GF4 MX440 if you already own one of the GeForce3 (Ti) videocards because you will not gain any performance AND you will lose full DirectX 8.1 support. If you want to buy this GF4 MX card from InnoVISION 'JUST' to play games, I strongly suggest that you take a look at their GeForce3 Ti200 card instead of the GF4 MX. It performs better than the GF4 MX and it will not cost you that much more … Nevertheless, if you can't afford the GeForce3 or if you just don't want to spend that much on a videocard, be sure to give the Inno3D GeForce4 MX a run for its money …