Great for games and movies
Written: Feb 12 '03 (Updated Feb 17 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: play games (some games require a better video card)
Cons: not much!
The Bottom Line: Good enough for the average jane like myself!
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| pinkskittle's Full Review: Pine XFX GeForce4 MX 440 Graphics card |
I bought this video card specifically for one game. This game required me to have a good video card so I bought this one. It was cheap (on sale) so I went for it! I guess it's a lot of expense for one game, but I didn't realize I needed a new video card until I tried playing it (it wouldn't start).
I really have no clue about video cards. My fiance said this was a good one though!
system requirements
-Pentium 4/III/II/Celeron, AMD K6/Athlon.
-AGP 4X Universal Slot (see my "how do I know if I have AGP" section below)
-64MB memory
-CD-Rom to install software and drivers.
-DVD drive if you want to play DVDs
-Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/NT 4.0/XP
How do I know if I have an AGP slot?
I had some problems with this one. I had no clue. I actually initially bought the PCI video card first thinking I probably had PCI.
Anyway, I asked my fiance (he's so smart!) and he got me to open up my computer. If you have AGP, it's a smaller brown slot. Mine has 2 brown ones, one is smaller than the first. I thought it would be the smallest, but it's not.
Specifications
Graphics Core: 256 bit
Fill Rate (texels/sec): 1.1 Billion
Triangles/sec: 34 million
RAMDACs (Mhz): 350
Engine clock (Mhz): 275
Now I have no idea what any of that means. I just compared it to the specifications of other cards to see that it must be pretty good. I may not be informative, but at least I'm honest!
surprise!
I didn't realize that this card had an S-video TV Out! This means you can plug your TV into your computer using an S-Cable and watch your computer on your tv! If you have a DVD player on your computer, you can play them from your computer and watch them on TV (instead of your tiny monitor).
stuff from the box
Technology
-nView display technology allows 2 simultaneous displays for every GPU.
-nVidia Lightspeed Memory Architecture II boosts effective memory bandwidth up to 300%
-nVidia Accuview Antialiasing Engine
-nVidia Video Processing Engine (VPE) enables the highest-quality, full-frame rate, full screen HDTV and DVD.
At a glance
-2 dual-rendering pipelines
-nVidia Shading Rasterizer
-4 texture-mapped, filtered, lit texels/cycle
-32-bit color, Z/stencil buffering
-Advanced per-pixel lighting
-Cube environment mapping
-Microsoft DirectX Optimization and support.
Again, I have no idea what any of that means. But readers of this article may (hopefully!).
software it comes with
-DirectX 8.1, which you can download for free anyway from Microsoft's website.
-TV capture driver (I'm thinking this means that you can record stuff from your tv onto your computer, but you still need to get the software, correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't been able to find much information about the use of this driver online).
-Bundled Software: PowerDirector Pro VE (make DVDs, capture and edit video). PowerDVD XP Trial (a 30-day trial, it helps you make the DVDs you watch look and sound better). PowerVCR II Trial (the software to record TV programs).
the installation
no problems! If you've installed memory to your computer, then you're fine. If you're not too sure of what to do, here's a http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/how-to-guides/1168_1.html. If you're still worried about doing it yourself, I'm sure the store you buy it from will install it for you for a price.
Once it's installed you have to take your cord that plugs your monitor into your computer and plug it into the new card. It doesn't say that in the manual.
What I think of it
I'm running a 1.7Mhz pentium 4 with around 300 MB of RAM.
For normal computer use, I don't see a difference. The first and only game I've tried on it is Sim City 4. At first it ran really well. Now at the start it's really choppy and using a ton of memory, but I think I just had to reboot because I had my computer running for a few days and now it's fine after a reboot. As for movies, I've only watched a few MPEGs, no DVDs because I don't have a DVD player, I definitely notice that they are a lot less choppy and that they look a lot better. The tv-out function probably wont get used till i get a newer tv that you can plug an s-cable into, but I'm really excited to try it out!
anything I don't like?
Just that they didn't say in the manual that you had to plug your monitor into the new card.
I apologize for my lack of knowledge on this topic, but I think what I know about the video card isn't as important as what I thought of it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 66 (on sale)
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Epinions.com ID:
pinkskittle
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Member: jenn
Reviews written: 44
Trusted by: 3 members
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