NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX440 Roundup!

NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440 Round-up
Abit, Chaintech, eVGA, Gainward, Leadtek,
 Visiontek and X-Micro Do Battle!

By - Marco Chiappetta
April 25, 2002

MadOnion's 3D Mark 2001 SE is a DirectX 8 benchmark that makes use of advanced pixel and vertex shaders, as well as some other modern rendering features like Environmental Bump Mapping.

DirectX 8 Benchmarks with 3D Mark 2001 SE Synthetic Goodness

3D Mark 2001 SE is comprised of a number of tests that focus on a particular video feature.  Not having any hardware pixel or vertex shaders limits the number of tests that can be run in 3D Mark 2001 SE, which in turn hinders the performance rating.  While a score of just under 6000 3D Marks is not terrible, we're getting accustomed to 9000+ scores with Radeons and GeForce 4 Tis...

We lost about 1500 points across the board when we upped the resolution to 1280x1024.  We're of the opinion that 1024x768 is the gaming "sweet spot" on a GeForce 4 MX 440.   While it was able to burn through Quake 3 Arena just fine at resolutions higher than 1024, you have to remember Quake 3 is almost four years old.  If a card can't run Quake 3 well at this point, you shouldn't even be looking in it's direction!

More DirectX 8 Benchmarks with 3D Mark 2001 SE and 2X AA Fallin' Off

With 2x AA enabled, we saw about a 22% drop in performance at 1024x768.  Things aren't shaping up too well so far, I wonder what's going to happen if we bump the resolution up another notch?

You guessed it, another drop in performance, but this time to the tune of about 47%!  Further backing up my statement that 1024x768 is the "sweet spot" on these cards.

Even More DirectX 8 Benchmarks with 3D Mark 2001 SE and 4X AA Ouch.

Obviously, enabling 4X AA dragged our GeForce 4 MX 440s further into the dark abyss of low framerates!  If you're not someone who rushes out to buy the latest and greatest games, but rather pick up last season's hits from the bargain bin, you may be able to enjoy antialiasing on the GeForce 4 MX 440.  However, if you're camped out in front of your local Software Etc. waiting for Doom 3 or Unreal 2, you'd better not have one of these puppies in your rig when you get home.

Serious Sam: TSE and Some Final Words...