Inno3D Geforce 4 MX440 AGP X8 and Inno3D Geforce 4 Ti4200 AGP X8 Review

By InnI

  

 Introduction 

Graphics cards are becoming more and more powerful every few months with new models and speeds being released by numerous companies around the globe.

Today I will be looking at 2 cards from Inno3D, the Geforce 4 MX440 and the Geforce 4 Ti4200 cards, both have AGP X8 support.

Now these cards may not be the most powerful or the fastest cards on the market but with performance and price the main demand for most pc users these cards will more than give gaming pleasure for at least a few years before the need to change to a more speedier card, say a Radeon 9700 or maybe even the new Geforce FX cards that will be released next year.

For this review I will be comparing these 2 cards to see how much of a difference there is between the 2 cards and only the benchmarks will tell us that.

 Specs

Taken from the InnoVision Website 

Graphics Controller :

• NVIDIA® GeForce 4 MX 440 AGP 8X

 Memory Controller :

• 64MB or 128MB DDR SDRAM in Tornado GeForce 4 MX 440 AGP 8X

 Product Overview :

• Powered by nVidia GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8X GPU
• Industry's only top-to-bottom family of GPUs and core logic products
• Robust products deliver increased graphics performance
• AGP 8X - watershed event for PC Industry
• 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 2048x1536 resolution at 75Hz refresh
• TV-Output support 1024x768 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 / 8X 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

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Graphics Controller :

• NVIDIA® GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8X

Memory Configuration :

• 128MB DDR SDRAM in Tornado GeForce 4 Ti 4200 AGP 8X

Product Overview :

• Powered by nVidia® GeForce4 Ti 4200 AGP 8X GPU
• Industry's only top-to-bottom family of GPUs and core logic products
• Robust products deliver increased graphics performance
• AGP 8X - watershed event for PC Industry
• Lightspeed Memory Architecture™ (LMA) II Technology
• NVIDIA® nfiniteFX™ II Engine
• 128MB 128-bit DDR Frame Buffer Memory supported
• Dual Programmable Vertex Shaders Engine
• nView™ Display Technology, provides unprecedented flexibility and control for using multiple displays
• Dual 350MHz RAMDACs with crisp and clear image quality at 2048x1536 resolution at 75Hz refresh
• Optional TV-Output support 1024x768 / 800 x 600 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
• AGP 2X / 4X / 8X 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® 8.X Optimizations and support
• Complete OpenGL® 1.3 and OpenGL® support

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Packaging and included software 

WinDVD™ - Software DVD Player from InterVideo

PowerDirector™ SE - Video Editing Software from CyberLink

Game Bundle - Ballistic - "Formula one of the future"

 

InnoVision have managed to pack some decent software with the card which should please the buyer of the card.

They include a software DVD player, in the name of WinDVD 2000, PowerDirector which allows you to do video editing and also manage to include a game called Ballistic. 

 

It’s good to see software in bundles but the only bad point about this is that if you are to include software, then you should at least try to give more upto date software rather then old software.

PowerDVD 2000 is rather old seeing that WinDVD 4 is out and giving a game like Ballistic isn’t going to give gaming pleasure to many of us, maybe something like a first person shooter in the name of HalfLife/Return to Castle Wolfenstein would be better to test out the potential of the card.

Overall I am pleased with the bundle that InnoVision have provided.

As well as all these software goodies you also get the leads that most manufacturers provide with their cards – TV-Out leads etc.

Also they manage to throw in a mouse pad which may not be very useful if you already have one.

  

InnoVision Geforce 4 Ti4200 AGP X8

  

 InnoVision Geforce 4 MX440 AGP X8

Features of the cards

 Now both these cards come with some impressive features and will give gaming pleasure for dedicated pc gamers.

Firstly, they both have AGP X8 which will give a greater gaming advantage over the old AGP X4.

The MX440 is clocked at 275mhz CORE, with the memory clocked at 500mhz.

These 2 features are the only difference over the older MX440 card that InnoVision released before.

Now with more aggressive memory and a higher clock speed this card, the MX440 AGP X8 has great overclocking potential which I discovered in my testing.

The same could be said of the Ti4200 AGP X8 where I also had the chance to overclock the card to get some extra juice out of the card.

A good feature of the Geforce 4 cards is Nvidia’s Accuview Antialiasing (AA) Technology.

These delivers a more crisper and sharper image quality which softens the edges of text/bit-mapped graphics within games.

There is a choice of how crisp you want the edges to appear with either X2, X4, X8 and also Nvidia’s Quincunx mode.

Of course to really get the most of this feature you will need a hefty processor for this to get the best benefit.

Both cards have support for twin monitor use through Nvidia Nview Display Technology.

The Geforce 4 Ti4200 AGP X8 boast some impressive 3D features for that extra gaming edge.

The Nvidia NfiniteFX II engine has dual Vertex Shaders, Faster Pixel Phaders and 3D Textures.

Here is a more detailed explanation of what all these terms mean.

Taken from the InnoVision website

The most powerful 3D features:
The nDIVIA nfiniteFX II engine incorporates dual programmable Vertex Shaders, faster Pixel Shaders and 3D textures.

Dual Vertex Shaders :
The awesome power of the nfiniteFX II's Dual Vertex Shaders are used to breathe life and personality into complete characters and environments. By driving more than 100 million processed verticals per second, dual Vertex Shaders make massively populated scenes and detail finally possible.

Advanced Pixel Shaders:

Part of the nfiniteFX II engine, the GeForce4 Ti's enhanced Pixel Shaders alter lighting and surface effects that replace artificial, computerized looks with materials and surfaces that mimic reality. Technical advancements deliver substantial performance improvement in all areas especially 3- and 4- texture performance.

3D Textures

An integral part of the nfiniteFX II engine, 3D textures make hollow objects solid with true three-dimensional material properties such as wood grain or marbling.

Shadow Buffers

Also An integral part of the nfiniteFX II engine, Shadow Buffers create realistic shadow effects in real time. Shadow Buffers enable self-shadowing for characters and objects, and soften the edges of shadows for realistic effects, adding depth to scenes, and highlighting spatial relationships between objects.

Z-Correct Bump Mapping

The nfiniteFX II engine is capable of making intersecting bump-mapped polygons look realistic and accurate. This is especially important in scenes where water and land interact with each other 

Aside from all this technical phrases, the cards feature TV-Out if you wish to use the card for DVD playback through connecting to a huge TV.

I have to mention that DVD playback with both cards have great potential as it was very smooth and jerk free to watch a movie through both cards.

The Geforce 4 Ti4200 has 128mb of memory with the MX440 has 64mb of memory.

Cards will start to have more memory put on to them but is it necessary???

At present there aren’t many games that require this amount of memory to run a decent game but as more graphics intensive games come out – Doom 3 for example, then I’m sure the demand will be needed and faster memory will be required. 

 Benchmarks 

Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz)

Memory: 256MB DDR
Video Card: Geforce 4 MX440 and Geforce 4 Ti4200 AGP X8
Hard Disk: IBM - Deskstar 60GXP ATA100 7200 RPM
OS: Windows XP

 Software Used: Quake 3 Arena, 3DMark2001 SE, Commanche 4

Quake 3 

 

3D Mark 2001SE 

 

Commanche 4 

 

As you can see, between the 2 cards the scores are fairly apart which shows us just how much more power the Ti 4200 card has over the MX440 version.

 Conclusion

I had some great hopes for both these cards prior to me testing them out and they didn’t disappoint me one bit. Both cards are winners in their own right as they both have different specs and features.

From the benchmarks you can see how much of a difference there is between the 2 cards. Of course the Geforce 4 Ti4200 is a more powerful card then the MX440 but it is aimed more at the mid range market, where as the MX440 is aimed at the budget market of gamers.

Both cards overclocked very well which is always a benefit for the power hungry gamer as it will give that extra FPS/performance that most of the new games being released monthly require to run smoothly.

I feel that the Ti4200 will be able to cope with the games that will be released next year as long as you have a powerful cpu where as the MX440 will struggle to cope with the graphical demands of the future of pc gaming.

DVD playback was very encouraging with no stutter or graphical glitches during the movies being played so if you are into watching movies through your pc then these 2 cards will not disappoint you.

Overall, both these cards deserve to be recommended to the pc gamer who wants power and performance out of a graphics card while keeping towards a budget which the InnoVision Geforce MX440 AGP X8 and the Geforce 4 Ti4200 AGP X8 will provide.

 Pros

Good performance.

Value for money.

Well bundled package.

Overclocks well.

 Cons 

Software provided could be more appealing and up to date.

MX440 maybe out of commission by next year due to power hungry games being released ie Doom 3. 

 

Product rating for the Geforce 4 Ti4200 AGP X8 

XtremePcCentral's Product Rating
1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

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 Product rating for the Geforce 4 MX440 AGP X8 

XtremePcCentral's Product Rating
1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 

If you wish to get further information of the Geforce 4 Ti4200 AGP X8, or the MX440 AGP X8 or any other product from InnoVision, then please visit their site at www.ivmm.com 

Many thanks to Stanley Wong at InnoVision for providing me the samples for this review.