STANDOUT IN A DULL WORLD WHERE EVERYTHING WORKS
Written: Feb 17 '04 (Updated Feb 19 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap, impressive specs and add-ons
Cons: Fuzzy picture, freezes after 2 hours of work, fan starts to roar after 1 month.
The Bottom Line: Avoid red board version, MX440SE chip. Picture fuzzy, ghosts to right of lines, no "fastwrites". Green board displays nicely, MX440, but fan noisy, chip overheats.
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| aspushkin51's Full Review: Mad Dog Multimedia Predator GeForce4 MX440, (64 MB... |
There are two versions of this board. Stay away from the red-colored one. You can try your luck with an olive-colored one, if you find one. Here is my experience.
Got this card from Office Max on December 9, 2003. The price was right, the card had TV-out, two video-outs, one of which is analogue/digital, 64 MB very fast DDR memory and all niceties of GF MX440-8X chip, which is claimed to be faster than GF FX5200. MX440-8X does not support DirectX-9 in hardware, however. Nice picture at 120 Hz in 768X1024 resolution.
The card kept freezing, however, while the rest of the computer was still running (including Internet sharing, sound, printing). Sometimes after 2 minutes Windows could switch to VGA mode and give a diagnostics that there are problems with video adapter. It was happening after 2 hours of work and could be cured by re-starting the computer.
In February a terrible fan noise started. I went to Office Max and they were kind enough to exchange it for a new card, same model, sealed in plastic. Brought it home, tore the plastic and found a used board with dusty heatsink. Plugged it in and here is this loud sound from the fan bearing again (the serial # was different on the board, however)! Do not know if this one was freezing after 2 hours, though.
Conclusion: on cards with olive-colored PCB and golden-anodized sink watch for fan bearing logevity!
I brought the card back and Office Max gave me another one. Now it was with a silver heat sink and red PCB. You can see the picture of a 128 MB version with second VGA-out omitted here:
http://www.primetek.com.hk/vga_MX440%208X%20DDR.html
Plugged it in and after several re-starts with showing garbage on the screen it came alive. The fan is quiet this time. However, there are shades to the right of any vertical black, blue, red or yellow line or letter. I checked my monitor replacing this card with Permedia-2 PCI (Video Blaster Exxtreme), which is 8 years old: no shades at 100 Hz. This means that the monitor is fine. Put back the Mad Dog, re-installed the recent NVidia drivers - shades again! Hooked the DVI output via a DVI-to-VGA adaptor: no improvement. The chip is identified by SiSoft Sandra as "Geforce4 MX 440SE with AGP8X".
Replaced it with another red-colored board (these, in contrast to olive-colored, have a different picture layout on the packaging: a bar graph, not a table, comparing performance, and the box does not say "DVI-to-VGA adapter" included, which is true). Same fuzzy text, dark picture. It crashes, if "fast writes" are enabled in the BIOS of VIA KT400 motherboard from Biostar (M7VIT Pro).
Finally found in another Office Max the right box without the dreadful bar graph and bought it! The text is razor sharp at 120 Hz, and I have a 21-inch HP P1100 ($120 + tax, after-lease on a computer show, can't beat it). "Fast writes" are enabled without problem. The chip is identified by SiSoft Sandra as "Geforce4 MX 440 with AGP8X", not "Geforce4 MX 440SE with AGP8X".
Now typing this review looking at it.
I am under the impression now that in case of this "budget" card version (red board, 4 Samsung-343 memory chips, 4 memory positions vacant, silver "Primetek" heat sink, no label "Made in Taiwan, smaller in length, BIOS from January 2003), Mad Dog, and effectively Primetek/Hongkong is collecting a non-standard grade of microchip run from NVidia, identified as "Geforce4 MX 440SE with AGP8X", while better testing chips identified as "Geforce4 MX 440 with AGP8X" are sold elsewhere.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 34 after reb
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Epinions.com ID:
aspushkin51
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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