Geforce2 Ti or Geforce4 mx440?

Kali

Right at the mo, I have a PIII-600e, 128mb ram and a crappy tnt2.
And after a quick look at komplett.ie there the other day reckoned a new graphics card is in order.. and being a stingy bastard i've limited myself to €150.. so the two choices are basically:

1) Creative AGP 3D Blas.GeForce2 Ti 64MB
2) Gainward AGP GeForce4 MX440 64MB 5,0ns

both have tv-out, both are DDR.. both are pretty much the same price (the geforce2 being cheaper by €13).. so which would be better for my pc? (256mb ram is on its way as well btw)

i've heard that the geforce4 relies more on the main processor than the geforce2.. which wouldn't be the best.. any truth in that?

Cheers,
Ken

astrofool

the gef4mx440 is better, faster ram, and better memory management, higher clockspeed as well, the gef3 ti's are a better card to get than it as they have a vertex shader (alot better performance in future games), a geforce 4 ti 4200 is probably the best card price/performance wise, if you can lay your hands on one.

sceptre

If you're flogging the tnt2 after (and if it supports agp 1.0 (1x or 2x) drop me a line - may be interested at the right price)

Quigs Snr

Theres not much in it. In truth though, the Geforce 4 is probably the better bet. In terms of raw power theres not a real difference, however the geforce 4 does support some newer features on board which will probably offer more benefit to you in forthcoming games. Although for a game of half life there would be f-all in the difference.

JustHalf

The GeForce 2 Ti is actually faster, at least with on-the-box specs.

GeForce 2 GTS: 1.6 billion texels a second
GeForce 4MX440: 1.1 billion texels a second

koneko

GF 4 MX cards are a complete waste of money. If you have to get either of those two, get the Ti, otherwise, get the TI 4200, or even GF3 Ti200. Anything but the MX cards.

Scruff

its all well and good saying the geforce4 Ti 4200 is the best card to get but there no where at this point in time you'll get one for the €150 that the limit on what he's going to spend. ( i'd be delighted if someone could prove me wrong here)

ifs €150 is all u can spend then the geforce4 mx is the better option, imho. the 440 does give much better frame rates: comparison

the cheapest geforce3 ti 200 i've seen is €165.83(£104.58) form
microdirect uk

Geforce4 Ti 4200 are €250+

astrofool

in most benchmarks the 440 will be ahead because it has much better memory management..

Like all geforce 2's, the Ti isn't able to use the full potential of the chip due to inefficient memory setup.

The 440 has a higher fill rate too, so I don't know where you got your figures from.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=geforce2pro

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=geforce4mx

the gef4mx is basically a gef2 with better memory management and faster ram options, the chip is also clocked higher than the gef2's (a gef4mx440 has 4 tmu's, not the 2 of the old MX)

[edit]texel = a two pass pixel, i.e. 1 million texels/s = 2 million pixel/s, which is how they used to be marketed, 1.6 BILLION sounded fookin rapih[/edit]

Kali

Originally posted by koneko
GF 4 MX cards are a complete waste of money. If you have to get either of those two, get the Ti, otherwise, get the TI 4200, or even GF3 Ti200. Anything but the MX cards.

thank you for your enlightened input. perhaps next time you might want to read the initial post fully.


astrofool & scruff thanks for your comments/links.. after checking them out i reckon ill probably go ahead with the 440..

JustHalf

Originally posted by astrofool
The 440 has a higher fill rate too, so I don't know where you got your figures from.

I got them from the place I said I got them, the box.

Originally posted by astrofool
[edit]texel = a two pass pixel, i.e. 1 million texels/s = 2 million pixel/s, which is how they used to be marketed, 1.6 BILLION sounded fookin rapih[/edit]

A texel is a textured pixel.

My point still stands. Odd (but nice) that the MX440 is faster.

Quigs Snr

Exactley scruff. I know graphics cards inside out. The GF4 MX is a card I wouldn't dream of touching myself, in fact anything with MX, MX basically means that the memory transfer has been chopped in half in most cases, this is a very big deal for a graphics card.

However, raw numbers on the box are only an indication. I had a Geforce2 Ti (about 70stg from Ebuyer) and it was a great card, it really was (I now have GF4 Ti4600). However, I was recently asked to advise on GF4 ti or GF4 Mx. I went with the MX although it was a very very close call. On paper the Ti looks a little better, however in reality, thats not the case. I got a loan of an inno3d mx440 and tried it out. It scored a little better (5-10%) on 3d mark (machine specs the same in both cases, Det's 28.32's used)
I only swapped the cards and found that the MX440 scored better in 3Dmark 2001 and 3d mark 2000, it also scored a tiny bit better in Quake 3, but more importantly, was about 7.5% faster in Wolfenstein 3d benchmarks.

Overall though, I'd say theres nothing in it. Might be easier to sell on a 'GF4' even if it is a jumped up GF2 Mx at heart. Might want to think of that.

Scruff

Originally posted by Quigs Snr

However, I was recently asked to advise on GF4 ti or GF4 Mx. I went with the MX although it was a very very close call.

i take it thats a typo in there and its a GF2 ti and a GF4 MX ye compared. surely you're not referring to your GF 4 Ti 4600 :eek:

Gerry

"I know graphics cards inside out. "

Thats quite the ego you have there. Might want to keep that in mind.

TacT

the mx400 line of cards are ridden with problems and have serious issues.

the ti200 is the way to go.

PPC

I've heard the MX's are terrible and full of bugs and the Ti's sweap the floor so a Ti is probaly a good bet

Quigs Snr

Yup scruff that was a Typo, that should be GF2 Ti.

As for the Ti200 (which is a geforce 3, yes that is the way to go if you want a good price/performance comprimise right now today), however, this is beyond the initial budget of the person who asked the question.

Yes also Ti is better than MX. However in the case of the GF2 Ti, it is not better (in general, there are scenario's wherby the GF2 will come out on top of the GF4 MX440, but for your average gamesplayer, no). I know this from owning a GF2 Ti for 6 months, and installing another 3 in machines I have been working on. That said there is very little in it and I would not really mind either way which I got.

I did spend a few days playing with the Geforce4 MX440 also, I did not find any bugs as such with it. I did notice problems with sound in direct3d games such as op flashpoint and max payne(but not opengL games like quake 3). This was using the 23.11 drivers for windows 9.x. However switching to 28.32 fixed all that up. Thats my experience of the lot. If you use the most recent drivers you should be alright, certainley no worse off than with any other NVIDIA card. But please, avoid the Geforce2 MX cards.

Dunno what your problem is Gerry, but thanks for the advice all the same. Ego doesn't come into it. I do happen to know quite a bit about graphics cards because for quite a while this sort of thing was what I did for a living, I've moved onto bigger and better things since then but for the past few years it's still been a hobby (which makes me a little cash part time, putting together gaming machines for friends of friends etc....), its a fact that there aren't too many graphics cards that come out on the market that don't pass through my hands. I don't know 100% of everything, but if only through sheer volumes and variety I generally do know which cards make medal of honor run faster on various machines. Which given that the guy is buying a card it's a fair assumption thats what he wants to know.
Anyone can read the specs from the web and anecdotal comments, I am trying to offer the guy my experience of these cards, from there he can take it onboard, or ignore it, either way I have tried to answer the question as best I can. This is what people come to the boards for, anyone can crunch the numbers, people want to hear other people experiences.

On that basis I find your comment very odd Gerry and not really befitting of someone who's supposed to be a moderator of the forum.

Gerry

That post sounds much more reasonable than your previous statement. I build machines for extra cash also, used to be my main source of income, but I don't go harping on that I know stuff "inside out" all the time.

Quigs Snr

Fair enough Gerry, I generally don't harp on about how much I know as there is always someone out there who know more. and I don't like getting into arguing about nothing on forums. The initial post was poorly worded, I guess I was trying to take a short cut in qualifying where I was coming from.

koneko

thank you for your enlightened input. perhaps next time you might want to read the initial post fully.

Ooh, take a chill pill. I'm allowed give my opinion. I don't think either are very good. I also gave you my opinion (on-topic!) as to which of the two I prefer. The Ti card.

I'm still sticking to the Ti. I've used both, I really didn't like the MX card, but in theory (technically) it may be a smidgen faster. It's a close call though.

[edit]Sorry if that sounded off. Just didn't see why you had to react like that. Was just giving my opinion...?[/edit]

astrofool

The MX actually only has two pipelines, so nvidia must base their ratings on real world applications. the MX440 is the better card but not by much, it has a faster clock speed, same memory clock, but only two rendering pipelines as opposed to the 4 on the gf2 Ti, it does however have alot more efficient handling of memory than the gf2 Ti, which in turn leads to better performance.

All nvidia chips are basically memory bandwidth limited, the more bandwidth they have the better they perform, the original gef2's suffered from this, as the memory bandwidth was nowhere near enough to keep the 4 pipelines busy, which is why the gef4 mx is able to outperform the old gef2's(alot better memory management).

Taking a card out and putting another in can be quite deceptive, by default the gef4 mx driver's enable a few things that make things prettier, but will reduce their performance in benchmarks, if you had the two cards on a clean boot with the same settings the 440 would win (the MX420 would be a long way behind due to sdr memory) the 460 would be well in the lead due to 550mhz memory (400mhz on the Ti and 440).

Kali

Originally posted by koneko


Ooh, take a chill pill. I'm allowed give my opinion. I don't think either are very good. I also gave you my opinion (on-topic!) as to which of the two I prefer. The Ti card.

I'm still sticking to the Ti. I've used both, I really didn't like the MX card, but in theory (technically) it may be a smidgen faster. It's a close call though.

[edit]Sorry if that sounded off. Just didn't see why you had to react like that. Was just giving my opinion...?[/edit]

see your second paragraph there would have been much better rather than your original post.. its always better to actually explain your reasonings rather than making general comments with absolutely no basis.

(see also: Gerrys reaction to Quigs Snrs first paragraph/post)

We just prefer those opinons that can be backed up with experience and facts on this board.. otherwise its a case of <ignore>