Category : Video Cards Manufacturer : Creative Labs
Posted by: Ben on 2002-02-28
Introduction
Introduction
The original GeForce was something of a technical revolution when released. It was the first card to offer hardware T&L and offered blistering frame rates in supported titles, with a superb increase in others. The GeForce 2 built on this card’s ideas, and whilst offering some technical advances, was evolution rather than revolution. With its programmable vertex and pixel shaders coupled to nVIDIA’s new light speed memory architecture, the GeForce 3 again rewrote the rules in the graphics card arena. Not one to sit idly by, ATi snatched the lead from nVIDIA a few months ago with its devastatingly fast 8500 cards.
Since the Ti-500 failed to snatch the lead back from ATi convincingly, nVIDIA has decided to conspicuously reduce the number available to the market and release their new GeForce 4 chipset. Like the GeForce 2 lines there are now two variants, the MXs for the budget market and the Titaniums for the performance user. The Ti-200 GeForce 3 was also aimed at the budget conscious buyer, but was physically identical to both the Ti-500 and the original GF3 in all but clock speeds.
Today we will be looking at the GeForce 4 MX 440 solution from Creative, who will lead the field in the European market. Priced at £119 ($165) including tax, this card is very affordable, yet maintains blistering performance thanks to 64MB of DDR ram running at 200MHz (400MHz DDR) and core clock of 270MHz (remember that’s 20MHz quicker than the GeForce 3 Ti-500). The GeForce 4MX is based on a chip that nVIDIA codenamed the NV17 and was originally planned to be part of their GeForce 3 line-up. Some might feel that calling this card a GeForce 4 at all is rather misleading, since it offers none of the Direct X 8.1 compatibility that even the previous generation of cards had. Missing the pixel and vertex shaders from the GeForce 3 cards, in some ways the MX is more similar to a GeForce 2!
The Creative comes with a stylish Crystal-ORB inspired CPU cooler, and 4x16MB Samsung DDR Ram modules. Notice the fan header to the left of the cooler, which will make the addition of a 3rd party solution that much easier.
As you can see from the screen shot below, the Creative comes without the second monitor output that allow many of the nView features on dual monitors to be realised. Other versions of the card to be released will have this feature. TV-OUT is included however, and the splitter lead is shown below. As well as the hardware, Creative have included an excellent software bundle including a driver disk, numerous technical demos, and two full-version games: E-Racer and Incoming Forces. Nice!
