GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 REVIEW

"Gainward Geforce4 MX440 tested against the Palit Daytona Geforce2 MX and the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2. Software used during testing was:- Quake 3 Arena, Max Payne and Serious Sam."

The Gainward GeForce4 video cards offer the most advanced 3D technology. Featuring Gainward's High-performance/Wide-Bandwidth TM hardware design specially developed to take the most advantage of the ultra fast memory. Another important key feature of Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack! Pro series are its High-Definition Video Processor, which enables a variety of crystal-clear HDTV solutions when combined with a mainstream CPU and a low-cost DTV receiver.

Integrated Dual 350MHz DACs and Dual Channel TMDS Transmitters. Driving dual independent displays with crisp and clear image quality at 2048x1536 resolution at 75MHz and enabling two independent Digital Flat Panels (DFP) displays at resolutions up to 1280x1024.

Include Gainward's ExperTool TM utility for customized performance enhancements and efficient desktop management. Performance enhanced ,accelerated software drivers for all major operation systems and APIs.

EXPERTool TM 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.

QUAKE III ARENA FASTEST 142 123 115 NORMAL 133 103 107 HIGH QUALITY 129 70 100 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2 COMMENT - "I think this benchmark pretty much speaks for itself, all of the video cards except for the Palit Geforce2 MX were able to deliver atleast 100fps using all 3 of the tests." BENCHMARK SETTINGS Default GLdriver GL Extensions on Fullscreen on Demo001 Benchmark FASTEST QUALITY 512x384 Video Mode 16Bit Colour Depth 16Bit Texture Quality Vertex Lighting Geometic Detail Low Texture Detail 50% Bilinear Texture Filtering NORMAL QUALITY 640x480 Video Mode 16Bit Colour Depth 16Bit Texture Quality Lightmap Lighting Geometic Detail Medium Texture Detail 75% Bilinear Texture Filtering HIGH QUALITY 800x600 Video Mode 32Bit Colour Depth 32Bit Texture Quality Lightmap Lighting High Geometic Detail Full Texture Detail Trilinear Texture Filtering

QUAKE III ARENA 640x480 116 95 107 800x600 116 70 100 1024x768 112 45 71 2xFSAA 115 48 95 4xFSAA 97 31 50 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2 BENCHMARK SETTINGS Default GLdriver GL Extensions on Fullscreen on Four.dm68 Benchmark HIGH QUALITY 32Bit Colour Depth 32Bit Texture Quality Lightmap Lighting High Geometic Detail Full Texture Detail Trilinear Texture Filtering COMMENT - "This benchmark shows the true performance of the Gainward Geforce4 MX440, you will see that in only one of the benchmarks does it's performance drop below 100fps. What surprised me the most was the Gainward Geforce4 MX440 getting an advantage of 47fps over the Videologic VividXS Kyro2 at 4x FSAA. The Gainward Geforce4 MX440 also performed well at 1024x768 getting 112fps, if you look at the benchmark above you will see that both the Palit Geforce2 MX and Videologic VividXS Kyro2 didn't even get 112fps at 640x480. With this benchmark we see the advantages of DDR memory, hardware texture and lighting and the Lightspeed Memory Architecture of the Gainward Geforce MX440."

QUAKE III ARENA BILINEAR 131 68 119 TRILINEAR 131 67 100 ANISOTROPIC 129 67 41 GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2 COMMENT - "The performance hit when using the various texture filtering methods is small with the Palit Geforce2 MX and the Gainward Geforce4 MX440. However as shown in an earlier review the Videologic VividXS Kyro2 takes a large performance hit when using trilinear filtering and then a huge performance hit using anisotropic filtering. Whether this is a side effect of tile based rendering or a driver issue is unknown. However there are ways around the sudden performance loss when using trilinear filtering and the Videologic VividXS Kyro2, you just enable texture compression. The Videologic VividXS Kyro2 will then use a much faster form of texture filtering which is sometimes called fast trilinear. However there is no such thing as free performance and the texture quality is reduced to bilinear standard filtering." BENCHMARK SETTINGS Default GLdriver GL Extensions on Fullscreen on Four.dm68 Benchmark HIGH QUALITY 800x600 Video Mode 32Bit Colour Depth 32Bit Texture Quality Lightmap Lighting High Geometic Detail Full Texture Detail