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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.

Hardware Specifications:-

nVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 chipset running at 270mhz.
64MB 4ns DDR memory running at 400mhz.
nVIDIA nVIEW TM Display Technology provides flexibility an control for using multiple displays
Lightspeed Memory TM Architecture (LMA) II increases memory bandwidth.
Accuview TM Antialiasing delivers unbeatable visual quality and frames rates.
Video Processing Engine (VPE) enables the highest-quality HDTV and DVD output.
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.

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.

Video-out support (NTSC/PAL). It can providing TV-out functionality upto 1024x768 resolutions.

EXPERTool TM Performance Tuning Utility

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.

API SUPPORT

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

OS SUPPORT

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

REFRESH RATE TABLE

256 Color 16 Bit Color 32 Bit Color
640x480 60-240Hz 60-240Hz 60-240Hz
800x600 60-240Hz 60-240Hz 60-240Hz
1024x768 60-240Hz 60-240Hz 60-200Hz
1152x864 60-200Hz 60-200Hz 60-170Hz
1280x960 60-170Hz 60-170Hz 60-150Hz
1280x1024 60-170Hz 60-170Hz 60-150Hz
1600x900 60-150Hz 60-150Hz 60-120Hz
1600x1200 60-120Hz 60-120Hz 60-100Hz
1920x1080 60-100Hz 60-100Hz 60-85Hz
1920x1200 60-100Hz 60-100Hz 60-85Hz
1920x1440 60-85Hz 60-85Hz 60-75Hz
2048x1536 60-75Hz 60-75Hz 60Hz

NAME	CODENAME	TECHNOLOGY	GPU SPEED	MEM SPEED	BANDWIDTH
GeForce4 MX460	NV170	0.15 micron	300Mhz	550MHz DDR	8.8GB/s
GeForce4 MX440	NV171	0.15 micron	275Mhz	400MHz DDR	6.4GB/s
GeForce4 MX420	NV172	0.15 micron	225Mhz	166MHz SDR	2.7GB/s

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

VIDEO CARD	GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440
	PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX 32MB AGP
	VIDEOLOGIC VIVID XS KYRO 2
NVIDIA DRIVER	DETONATOR v28.32
POWERVR DRIVER	v1.04.14.0028
PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON 1.3 GHZ
MOTHERBOARD	JETWAY 663AS PRO
MEMORY	256MB SAMSUNG PC133 SDRAM
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS 98 SE
DIRECTX VERSION	v8.1

MAX PAYNE

640x480

	93
	62
	63

800x600

	91
	46
	62

1024x768

	80
	30
	62

2xFSAA

	82
	36
	62

4xFSAA

	55
	22
	47

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Exploding Truck Demo
Normal Quality Setting
Trilinear Filtering
Fogging Enabled
Sounds Enabled
Task Switching Disabled
Triple Screen Buffers Enabled

COMMENT - "This time none of the video cards reach 100fps, however the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 is performing really well and at 640x480 is 30fps faster than the other two video cards. At 1024x768 this has dropped to a 23fps lead over the Videologic VividXS Kyro2, the Palit GeForce2 MX is struggling to get 30fps which IMO is barely playable. With FSAA (full scene anti-aliasing) enabled things are much closer between the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 and the Gainward GeForce4 MX440, the Palit GeForce2 MX offers poor performance with FSAA enabled."

MAX PAYNE

SOFTWARE T&L ENABLED

640x480

	93
	67
	63

800x600

	91
	67
	62

1024x768

	80
	67
	57

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Exploding Truck Demo
Normal Quality Setting
Trilinear Filtering
Fogging Enabled
Sounds Enabled
Task Switching Disabled
Triple Screen Buffers Enabled

COMMENT - "Even using software t&l the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 was able to outperform the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 which also uses software t&l. I think this benchmark proves atleast as far as Max Payne is concerned that hardware t&l gives a large performance increase, without it the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 was badly CPU limited."

SERIOUS SAM

640x480

	98
	75
	83

800x600

	94
	47
	80

1024x768

	80
	29
	76

2xFSAA

	97
	35
	84

4xFSAA

	56
	21
	68

GAINWARD GEFORCE4 MX440 PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Normal Setting
UHSS Timedemo
Huge Texture Size
Detailed Textures Enabled
Huge Shadowmap Size
Standard Lens Flare
No Wait Vertical Retrace
Wide Screen Disabled

COMMENT - "This is more like it, some serious competition for the Gainward GeForce MX440 with Serious Sam. For a video card with such limited specs (175mhz core and SDR memory) the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 almost beats the Gainward GeForce4 MX440. It has been said many times that Serious Sam uses lower image quality settings when used with the Videologic VividXS Kyro2. Maybe that would explain the Videologic VividXS Kyro2 keeping up with the Gainward GeForce4 MX440, however after taking many screenshots the image quality between the Videologic VividXS Kyro2 and the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 was almost identical. The Videologic VividXS Kyro2 even managed to pull off a victory beating the Gainward GeForce4 MX440 when using 4x FSAA. Regarding the Palit GeForce2 MX's performance in Serious Sam, I think it fair to call it rubbish."

CONCLUSION - "The Gainward GeForce4 MX440 is a great video card, it worked perfectly right from installation and even when overclocked didn't crash once. For current games it's performance is excellent for a sub £100 video card, however for future games the lack of pixel and vertex shaders could limit it's performance when those features are used more widely. The FSAA performance was good and I was especially impressed with the performance of Quincunx FSAA. High resolution performance was very good aided by the ample 64MB of DDR memory and the video card ran flawlessly.
GOOD POINTS
• Amazing budget price approx £76 ($81) on www.pricewatch.com
• Very overclockable, can hit 300mhz/450mhz without extra cooling
• Solid stability with reliable performance
• Good 2D, 3D and TV output image quality
• Quincunx FSAA gives you FSAA without a huge performance hit
• Excellent driver support
BAD POINTS
• Lack of pixel and vertex shaders could limit future gaming performance"

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