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Gainward GeForce4 Pro/450 TV


Date
: 08/5/02 – 09:56:44 PM

Author
:

Category
: Video Cards

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: Gainward
Price : around $75

Introduction

Today we're going to have a closer look at one of the budget GeForce4 cards on the market, the GeForce4 MX420 card from Gainward. As you probably still know from our previous GeForce4 MX review a videocard based on a GeForce4 MX420 GPU comes with normal SDRAM instead of the DDR RAM we see on all others cards in the GeForce4 line-up. But Gainward wouldn't be Gainward if they didn't do something most other manufacturers never thought of doing …

They coupled their GF4 MX420 card with DDR memory as well. Now the main question in today's review is : "Will the GF4 MX420 with DDR RAM perform any better than the ones with plain SDRAM?" Actually, we have little doubt that the Gainward PowerPack! MX/450 TV (that's how they call their GF4 MX420) will perform better than a similar card with SDRAM, but the question remains … how much better?

Although this is the lowest performing and cheapest GF4 card of the entire GF4 pack, it should be capable of delivering more than average 3D performance at a low price, doesn't it? Let's find out if the MX/450 TV is worth the fuzz and the $$$!

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

And again we present you a copy/paste from the manufacturer's website with all the specifications of the card :

Product Specifications

- Integrated nVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 series high performance GPU.
- Supporting 64MB high-speed 64/128bit DDR RAM memory.
- nVIEWTM Display Technology provides flexibility an control for using multiple displays.
- Lightspeed MemoryTM Architecture (LMA) II increases memory bandwidth efficiency for unmatched performance.
- AccuviewTM Antialiasing delivers unbeatable visual quality and frames rates.
- Video Processing Engine (VPE) enables the highest-quality, full-frame rate, full-screen HDTV and DVD without requiring a high-performance CPU.
- Integrated hardware transform and lighting engine.
- Integrated 32-bit color and 32-bit Z/Stencil Buffer.
- Integrated Cube environment mapping, and true reflective bump mapping.
- Multibuffering (double, triple, quadruple) for smooth animation and video playback.
- AGP 2X/4X supporting and Execute Mode ,Easy Plug- and-Play AUTORUN installation from CD-ROM include.
- Integrated Dual 350MHz DACs and Dual Channel TMDS Transmitters. Driving dual independent displays with crisp and clear image quality at 2048×1536 resolution at 75Hz and enabling two independent Digital Flat Panels (DFP) displays at resolutions up to 1280×1024.
- Include Gainward's EXPERToolTM utility for customized performance enhancements and efficient desktop management. Performance enhanced ,accelerated software drivers for all major operation systems and APIs.
- Video-out support (NTSC/PAL) TV system. It can providing best-of-class TV-out functionality at high resolutions.

API SUPPORT

DirectDraw(R),Direct3D,DirectVideo(R)
DirectX 8.1
Open GL ICD for Windows 95/98/2000/XP/NT

OS SUPPORT

Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/NT

EXPERTool Performance Tuning Utility

EXPERTool is Gainward's performance tuning utility that allows the user to easily adjust the engine clock and memory clock of any Gainward product from nVIDIA's recommended default settings to even higher settings. Gainward offers the end user the choice to either run the board in "Safe Mode Setting" or at "Enhanced Setting" ("Golden Sample" products only, featuring a more stable design with faster memory) which offer enhanced real-world 3D performance for higher resolution. Performance turning is the most commonly used method among the ultimate power gamers to extract the utmost performance out of a high quality 3D graphics card.

The Specs In Detail

Here's a list of things you will find inside the box :

- The GF4 MX420 card
- A Quick Start Guide
- The Driver CD
- Converter cable

The peeps from Gainward were kind enough to send us the retail package of their GF4 MX420 solution. The package comes in a solid cardboard box with no extras whatsoever. That's exactly what we expected to find inside a low-budget pack like this.

Here's a list of the core and memory speeds of the GeForce4 MX line-up according to nVidia :

-
GeForce4 MX420 : 250MHz Core / 166MHz (SDR) Memory

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

The card itself comes with a small red PCB. The NV17S GPU has to be cooled down by nothing more than a small black heatsink (without a fan). We don't see any RAM sinks on the memory either. These few issues seriously limit the overclocking potential of this card, but hey … it's a budget card so we understand ;)

Gainward always tries to do something special with their videocards like increasing the default core/memory speed. On this card they coupled the GF4 MX420 with 64MB of 5ns Samsung DDR RAM instead of the SDRAM you'd expect on a GF4 MX420. A second improvement on this card compared to other MX420s is the memory speed which on this card runs at 200MHz (400MHz DDR) whereas most other MX420s only feature 166MHz SDRAM memory. A default core clock of 250MHz and DDR memory running at 400MHz … doesn't this smell a lot like a GF4 MX440 instead of an MX420? Well, if you look at nothing but the core/memory speeds, then you should say YES. But there's more … we shouldn't forget that a GeForce4 MX420 has a memory interface of 64bit whereas the other GF4 MXs feature a 128bit memory interface! Please keep this in mind when you're looking at the benchmarks later on in the review …

Furthermore, the backside of the card has a 15pin Sub-D VGA connector and an S-Video TV-Out connector. Just like on our other GF4 MXs, the onboard TV-out feature of this Gainward card has a maximum resolution of 1024×768 and a good & clear image quality. It'll do just fine for most users!

That's really all there is to say about the specifications of this small red budget card. Despite the lack of good cooling on the GPU and the memory, we wouldn't call ourselves "Overclockers Online" if we didn't try to push this card to its max! Check it all out on the next page …

Page 3 : Overclocking

Overclocking

Before we start an overclocking adventure, we first have to make the necessary preparations. You need to enable the overclocking stuff in the nVidia driver tab by doing the Coolbits registry hack
or
as a second option, you can also grab and install a videocard overclocking application like the EXPERTool Performance Tuning Utility which Gainward supplies in its videocard packages. You need one of these to be able to change the core clock and the memory speed of a videocard.

Like I already said like a dozen times before, it is extremely important that the hardware you're about the overclock gets enough cooling. And that's the big problem with our Gainward GF4 MX420 card. It only has passive cooling on the GPU and doesnt feature RAM sinks on the memory chips :( Well, we'll see what we can squeeze out of the poor thing …

Cranking up the core speed by 20MHz to match the default MX440 core clock (270MHz) was a piece of cake. After that, I was able to push it another 15MHz higher to a final core clock of 285MHz. Any higher would make the card go crazy during the benchmark loops! The next step was to overclock the 5ns DDR memory of the card. After a couple of annoying lockups, I found the memory to be stable at 500MHz DDR. This 100MHz (DDR) overclock makes this card run at even faster speeds than a GF4 MX440 at stock speeds! Not a bad overclock for a card without active cooling and RAM sinks ;)

Now, let's see how the card performs in our benchmarks …

Page 4 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Test System :

- Intel P4 1.6A @ 2.1GHz (133MHz FSB)
- EPoX 4SDA+ (SiS645) Mainboard
- 256MB Samsung PC2700 DDR RAM
- Gainward GF4 MX420 videocard
- 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 5 : Conclusion

Conclusion

Good

- Red PCB (I like that :D)
- TV-Out
- Price/performance ratio is acceptable

Bad

- No full DirectX 8.1 support
- Not fast enough for high resolution gaming
- Better/faster alternatives available

I said it before and I'll say it again … A GeForce4 MX420 is nothing more than a faster 'evolutionary' GeForce2 MX400! The GF4 MXs do have some improvements over a GF2 MX like a higher core clock speed and memory speed and furthermore the addition of new GeForce4 features like nView, Accuview Anti Aliasing and a simple version of the Light Speed Memory Architecture II.

The Gainward PowerPack Pro/450 TV is aimed towards the people with older systems like an old sub-1GHz P3 or Athlon rig. Why would these folks need to spend lots of $$ to get a fast GeForce4 Ti that'll eventually be considered "old" by the time they get a new rig?

Despite the presence of DDR RAM instead of normal SDRAM and the higher memory speed, this GF4 MX420 remains nothing more than a GF4 MX420. Yes, it performs slightly faster than an average SDRAM-based MX420, but is that enough to satisfy your needs? In most cases … I really don't think so! But then again, that's something every person has to decided for himself.