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Contents
Introduction Just to put a common misconception to rest straight a way the Geforce 4 MX is not a cut down Geforce 4 Ti. Unlike what they did with the Geforce 2 and the Geforce 2 MX. Strange as it is, its true. A marketing plot maybe? Using the Geforce 4 name to sell a few more products. Well looking at the chip names of the cards tells a little more of the story. Below is a picture of the GPU's off a Ti 4400 and a Ti 4600.
Notice the Code under the Nvidia Logo, NV25. The Geforce 4MX series is based on NV17 technology. The Geforce 4 Ti and MX share many of the same features, however the speed difference in this case is very high. For an example The Geforce 3 original was NV20 technology. I'm sure you can see where this is going. If I had to put the cards speed anywhere in the chain it may be around the Geforce 2 ultra mark. There was 3 cards in the MX range just like there was in the Ti range. These cards are the MX 420 MX 440 and the MX 460 (spot the pattern with the Ti's there).
The card from the MX range that doesn't seem to belong there is the MX 420. The 420 really is a budget card and I believe its going to be released to OEMs to bundle in with ready built systems. SDR memory I thought was a thing of the past with new products but it seems not. Chipset Details of the Geforce 4 MX
Nview technology is the most flexible twin monitor technology available. It allows you to run a mixture of display types. In any combination between digital flat displays, CRT monitors and TV sets. The diagram below best describes the available options.
Lightspeed Memory Architecture II Lightspeed Memory Architecture is the part of the graphics card that Nvidia designed in order to better utilise the available memory bandwidth. Recently over the past couple of years, the memory bandwidth has been the limitation of many of the graphics cards. Since then graphics card companies have been tirelessly looking for ways to better use whats available. Nvidia describe their Lightspeed technologies on this page. This is a new full scene anti-aliasing technique from Nvidia. The idea is to bring FSAA quality with such a big performance hit. After browsing round the net on this topic its seems that it does improve the performance as well as looking better than 4x mode. However its still not possible to say that you can have a FSAA mode without a noticeable performance hit. Still the best option out at the moment though. Again for a more technical look at this feature please follow this link The reference design is provided by Nvidia to the 3rd party manufacturers. Then these companies such as Creative, Hercules, Sparkle, Abit, ASUS and more will adapt it to there own design and take and leave which features of the card they like. They will then create their own Drivers and extra utilities, this is what makes the difference between the manufacturers. Its best to go for a company who gives good after purchase support with drivers and knowledge bases etc. Otherwise you want to hunt out the card with the features you want for the best price. For example some manufacturers leave out things such as TV-Out to save a bit of money on the design and then can pass the saving to you. Others will include games bundles to justify the cost of their card. It wise to have a look round.
Bit of an odd card to describe really. Its sort of a step backwards from what they have been creating. However this may be exactly what you want. The casual gamer may find this a very good buy. Plus If you are looking to utilise NView technology this is the cheapest way of getting it. If you currently own something like a Geforce 2 MX and that served you well for what you wanted then this is probably the ideal upgrade from that. I would certainly be looking at the 440 or the 460 though. In my humble opinion the 420 just isn't worth a look. SDR video cards can really hamper performance nowadays. 64Mb of onboard RAM is still more than adequate though I don't believe you need 128Mb if you are a casual user. If you can get this card at the right price then maybe it is for you. If you can spare those extra few pounds though you might want to consider looking at the Geforce 3 Ti 200 if they can be found.
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