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AOpen GeForce4 MX420 & MX460


Date
: 07/1/02 – 01:19:26 PM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: AOpen
Price GF4 MX420 : $70
Price GF4 MX460 : $150

Introduction

As you probably already know from our first GeForce4 MX review, the latest nVidia GPUs come in six different flavors. We have the low-budget MX line-up which includes the GF4 MX420, MX440 and MX460 chips and then there are the high-end and more expensive Titanium GPUs like the Ti4200, Ti4400 and the Ti4600.

In our previous videocard review, we looked at a GeForce4 MX440-based videocard which actually performed quite well (even at high resolutions) for a card that is labeled as "low-budget". That's what makes the GF4 MX line so interesting for those who want solid 3D performance at a low price.

Today we're about to check out not one but
two
of the brandnew AOpen videocards based on a GeForce4 GPU. In the left corner we have the weakest GF4 MX card aka the GF4 MX420 and in the right corner we see the fastest one of the pack aka the GF4 MX460. If you're curious about the features of these cards, how they overclock and how they perform in some serious 3D benchmarking, then I know you'll have a good time here at O² for the next couple of minutes (or hours depending on reading skills) ;)

Sit back, relax and as soon as you're ready, we'll kick off with some specifications on both cards …

Page 2 : MX420 Specs

Specifications

AOpen GF4MX420-V64

Our first contender … the MX420 from AOpen. Here's a copy/paste from the manufacturer's website :

nVidia Geforce 4 MX 420 Graphics Processing Unit(GPU):

- Second Generation Transform and Lighting Engines
- NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
- Hypertexel pipeline for 3D texture & rendering
- High-Performance Hardware Anti-Aliasing
- 32-bit ARGB rendering with destination alpha
- 32-bit Z/Stencil Buffer
- Support for AGP 4X/2X, AGP Texturing and Fast Writes
- Support Dual, Independent Digital Vibrance Engines
- Support 31 Million Triangles/sec (T&L) and 1.0 Billion Texels/sec
- High-Definition Video Processor

Absolutely Blazing 256-bit 2D Performance:

- Optimized color depth : 32, 16 and 8-bits per pixel
- Support 2048×1536 resolution @ 75hz
- True-color hardware cursor

Valuable Friendly Software Package:

- AOpen VGA utility User-friendly interface to control VGA settings
- Live update Wizard Driver/BIOS auto-detect & update wizard
- AOpen Installation Wizard Auto driver installation wizard

Revolutionary 3D Accelerator Features:

- Optimized DirectX and OpenGL acceleration
- Single pass multi-texturing
- Video Acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and Indeo®
- Back-end Hardware video scaling for video conferencing, 3D games and playback

Connectors:

- 15Pin D-Sub VGA connector (VESA DDC2B+)
- TV-Out

The Specs In Detail

The AOpen GF4MX420-V6 box contains :

- The GF4 MX420 card
- A small user manual
- The installation disk (with drivers)

The retail package we got from AOpen is actually pretty small so I wasn't expecting to find much inside the cardboard box besides the video card. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing! Not at all, because a GF4 MX420 package HAS TO BE as low-budget as possible! Inside the box I found the videocard, a manual and the driver CD. Nothing more, nothing less. AOpen hasn't included any extras that would only make the price of the package go up. One little item I did expect to find in the box was a TV-Out cable, but even after turning the box upside down several times, I couldn't find such a cable :(

Now that you know how the package looks like on the inside and outside, I think the time is right to have a closer look at the MX420 card.

As you can clearly see on the pics, the MX420 from AOpen is a very small card with kewl black PCB. The backside of the card has a 15pin Sub-D VGA connector and an S-Video TV-Out connector. That's right, a TV-out connector on a budget card! Every manufacturer can now put a TV-out feature on their GF4 cards without much extra costs because the GF4 GPU has two identical RAMDACs. Previous nVidia GPUs only had one single RAMDAC in the GPU core and needed an external TV-out chip to be able to provide the TV-out feature. The onboard TV-out feature has a maximum resolution of 1024×768 and a good & clear image quality. As you might remember from our GF4 MX440 article, almost anything is possible with nView : Horizontal/Vertical desktop span, normal desktop span, desktop cloning …

On top of the GF4 MX420 GPU (codenamed NV17S and assumed to be the low-quality NV17 chips with a different label), the peeps from AOpen have mounted nothing but a low-profile silver heatsink. This passive cooling solution should be sufficient to cool down a MX420 GPU running at 250MHz, but I doubt we'll be getting good overclocking results on this one. The card has 64MB of 128bit ADATA SDR RAM divided into 4 x 16MB of 6ns chips running at 166MHz which corresponds to the specs. That's really all there is to say about the PCB.

It is important to know that NONE of the GeForce4 MX GPUs are based on GeForce3 technologies but rather on the GeForce2 MX technology! I already explained this in our GF4 MX440 review, but I'll say it once more : The basic technologies inside the GF4 MX core are extracted from the 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 / 166MHz (SDR) Memory

- GeForce4 MX440 : 270MHz Core / 400MHz (DDR) Memory
- GeForce4 MX460 : 300MHz Core / 550MHz (DDR) Memory

The GF4 MXs do have some serious improvements over a GF2 MX. First improvement : They run at a higher core clock speed. 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. Huh? What? Well, here's a quote I pulled out of our first GeForce3 review which explains LMA in short :

Page 3 : MX460 Specs

AOpen GF4MX460-DVC64

The second card we'll be discussing today is the AOpen GF4 MX460. Again, I did a small copy/paste from the AOpen website to make your life a bit easier :

nVidia Geforce 4 MX 460 Graphics Processing Unit(GPU):

- Second Generation Transform and Lighting Engines
- NVIDIA Shading Rasterizer (NSR)
- Hypertexel pipeline for 3D texture & rendering
- High-Performance Hardware Anti-Aliasing
- 32-bit ARGB rendering with destination alpha
- 32-bit Z/Stencil Buffer
- Support for AGP 4X/2X, AGP Texturing and Fast Writes
- High-Definition Video Processor
- Support Dual, Independent Digital Vibrance Engines
- Support 38 Million Triangles/sec (T&L) and 1.2 Billion Texels/sec

Absolutely Blazing 256-bit 2D Performance:

- Optimized color depth : 32, 16 and 8-bits per pixel
- Support 2048×1536 resolution @ 75hz
- True-color hardware cursor

Valuable Friendly Software Package:

- AOpen VGA utility User-friendly interface to control VGA settings
- Live update Wizard Driver/BIOS auto-detect & update wizard
- AOpen Installation Wizard Auto driver installation wizard
- Full Version WinDVD 2002
- WinDVR or PowerVCR

Revolutionary 3D Accelerator Features:

- Optimized DirectX and OpenGL acceleration
- Single pass multi-texturing
- Video Acceleration for DirectShow, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and Indeo®
- Back-end Hardware video scaling for video conferencing, 3D games and playback

Connectors

- 15Pin D-Sub VGA connector (VESA DDC2B+)
- DVI connector
- TV-Out, Video-In Both S-Video and Compose
- Audio Out, Audio In

The Specs In Detail

The MX460 package includes :

- The GF4 MX460 card
- Installation disk + guide (manual)
- Video-Out/In cables
- PowerVCR II software
- WinDVD software

Although the GF4 MX460 is a member of the MX 'budget' family, you actually feel that it's more than just a budget card. For example, if you look at the way it is packed in a much more solid box than the MX420 we looked at earlier. Inside the cardboard box, the stuff is packed again in a plastic box.

The manual is much bigger compared to the one in the MX420 box and we also have the video cables this time ;) As a bonus, AOpen has included the WinDVD software and Cyberlink PowerVCR II bundle that you will need to take full advantage of the video-in/out capabilities of this card.

As a matter of fact, just like the MX420 we discussied earlier, this MX460 GPU is based upon the same GeForce2 MX technologies … so we're not going to talk about these again. Let's bring up the list with core and memory speeds of the GeForce4 MX line-up once more :

- GeForce4 MX420 : 250MHz Core / 166MHz (SDR) Memory
- GeForce4 MX440 : 270MHz Core / 400MHz (DDR) Memory
-
GeForce4 MX460 : 300MHz Core / 550MHz (DDR) Memory

The GF4 MX460 core runs at 300MHz which is 50MHz faster than the weakest GF4 MX420 and still 30MHz faster compared to a GF4 MX440. But the memory speeds have far more influence on the 3D performance of a videocard than the core speed of the GPU. Talking about memory speeds … the MX460 has a total of 64MB of Samsung 3.6ns DDR memory running at
550MHz
(DDR). If you look at the pictures a little closer, you'll see that the memory chips come in a new BGA package. This is a form-factor that should provide a more efficient cooling of the memory chips.

Many GeForce4 cards have a strange (read unusual) looking cooler that may seem kind of noisy if you happen to have a quiet system. You won't hear it over an extreme CPU cooler, but you will might just find the noise a bit annoying if you use a quiet stock cooler to cool down your CPU. Just take a look at the pics and you will see what I'm talking about.

On the backside of the card, AOpen have chosen to install a 15pin Sub-D VGA output, a DVI output and a video-in and video-out connector. Well, at least you can't blame AOpen for not having enough onboard features. A VGA out, a DVI out AND a TV-out … VIVO all the way baby ;) The GF4 core takes care of the Sub-D VGA output and the DVI signal while an external Philips 7108 decoder handles the TV-out capabilities. One drawback about the onboard TV decoder chips is that it can only provide a resolution of 800×600 while GF4 GPU itself can squeeze out 1024×768!

Although the AOpen MX460 card doesn't have RAM sinks on the memory chips, it has everything to perform well in our overclocking tests!
Let's check it out …

Page 4 : Overclocking

Overclocking

Before you start overclocking, you first need to enable the overclocking option in the nVidia driver tab by doing the Coolbits registry hack or by installing some videocard overclocking software like the well-known Powerstrip. Without one of these two options installed, you won't be getting far in your overclocking adventure! After all, you need to be able to adjust the core and memory speeds of a videocard and you can't do that without the proper tools.

Always keep in mind that it is extremely important that the hardware you're about the overclock gets enough cooling. If it doesn't, you won't be able to crank the speed up very much without the card becoming unstable! Heat is still and will always be an overclocker's worst enemy!

AOpen GF4MX420-V64

There are many reasons why one shouldn't expect to achieve a wild overclock with the MX420 from AOpen :
- no active cooling (heatsink+fan)
- no cooling on the memory chips
- only 6ns memory which corresponds to 166MHz (default clock on an MX420)
- it's meant to be extreme budget card
Nevertheless, we tried to push the last bit of juice out of this card because we were eager to find out how high it would clock. So I started to up the core and memory speed bit by bit … and a couple of 3DMark2k1 loops and Q3A torture demos later I "finally" reached the limit of our GF4 MX420. I got the sample (default core/mem : 250/333) to work stable at 275MHz core speed and 365MHz (157MHz SDR) memory speed. That's not really an overclock to be proud of, BUT understandable considering the poor cooling.

AOpen GF4MX460-DVC64

While the MX420 was doomed to overclock very poorly, the MX460 card has the potential to do a lot better. With a default core clock of 300MHz and a memory speed of 550MHz, the GF4 MX460 already has to be a fast card. But it has good active cooling on the core and the BGA form-factor 3.6ns memory chips should also be capable of running faster than stock speed! And of course, we couldn't leave the room without pushing to card to its limit …
I managed to overclock the core of our AOpen MX460 to 325MHz. That's 25MHz higher than the stock speed. BUT the real surprise happened to be the memory. I was stunned to see it hit 690MHz while it has a stock speed of 'only'550MHz … that's a 140MHz overclock! I'd like to note that both the core (heatsink on the core) and the memory were extremely HOT after a few loops of a 3D benchmark. I mean like really hot … I could barely touch them.

Overclocking a card is nice! It makes you feel good and the card becomes runs at higher speeds? But does that also improve overall 3D performance? Let's have a look at how the AOpen GF4 videocard handle 3DMark2001 and Quake3 Arena …

Page 5 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Test System :

- Intel P4 1.6A @ 2.1GHz (133MHz FSB)
- EPoX 4SDA+ (SiS645) Mainboard
- 256MB Samsung PC2700 DDR RAM
- Hercules GeForce3 Ti200 videocard
- AOpen GF4 MX420 videocard
- AOpen GF4 MX460 videocard
- Maxtor 60GB ATA133 7200rpm hard drive
- WinXP + latest drivers
- Detonator 29.42

3DMARK2001 SE

Quake 3 Arena v1.17 – Demo001

Quake 3 Arena v1.17 – Torture Demo

Page 6 : Conclusion

Conclusion

AOpen GF4MX420-V64

Good

- Performs within expectations
- Price/performance ratio is good
- Black PCB
- TV-out

Bad

- Not fast enough for high resolution gaming
- No full DirectX 8.1 support
- Doesn't overclock much

AOpen GF4MX460-DVC64

Good

- Sweet performance
- Black PCB
- Good cooling
- Overclocks nicely
- VGA-out, DVI-out and TV-out/in

Bad

- No full DirectX 8.1 support
- Could be (too) expensive for some

Now let's summarize a couple of important things to conclude this review, shall we? The MX420 from AOpen does exactly what is has to do : it's a good replacement to the GeForce2 MX400. You can't expect much more from a card that is clocked at 250/166MHz and comes without DDR RAM. I believe it's safe to say that the GeForce4 MX420 is nothing more than a faster evolutionary GeForce2 MX400!

The AOpen GF4 MX460 on the other hand has a much higher memory speed (550MHz DDR) and is capable of pumping out a very nice score in our benchmarks. Don't forget that the card is also a good overclocker, so there's enough juice left over to push out some more FPS in your favorite Quake3 clone game. On top of all these high memory speeds and great 3D performance comes a set of sweet VIVO features!

If you plan on buying a new videocard based on a GeForce4 MX solution, I would go for an MX440 or an MX460 like the AOpen GF4MX460-DVC64 rather than an MX420. And if you want a top-end gaming card to play a game on a resolution of 1280×1024, 4X AA enabled and every detail setting maxed out … a GeForce4 Titanium would be the better choice for you to make ;)