Sparkle GeForce4 MX440

Not a bad deal for those on a budget.

Price: £89.99

Manufacturer: Sparkle

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Verdict

Pros

Low price; reasonable performance; MPEG-2 support.
Cons Not really a GeForce4 chip; lacks several key new features.

Laurence Grayson, PC Magazine 12 Apr 2002

Of the two new chipsets just released by nVidia, Sparkle Technology has chosen the more immediately available GeForce4 MX for its first GeForce4 graphics card. As such, the chip architecture and feature set has more in common with the GeForce2 range of graphics processors than that of the GeForce4 Ti series, but it does introduce some new features at a price point that's appropriate for the mainstream market.

As the name suggests, it's a GeForce4 MX440 product, meaning the chip itself is clocked at 270MHz, with a maximum 64MB RAM, made up of DDR SDRAM clocked at 200MHz. This is an effective clock speed of 400MHz and gives the card a peak bandwidth of 6.4GB/s, which isn't bad for a mainstream product.

The GeForce4 chipset is a 0.15-micron part and has only two pixel processing pipelines (the GeForce3 and GeForce4 Ti chips have four), giving it a theoretical maximum fill rate of 540Mpixels/s. It also lacks the programmable pixel and vertex shader engines first seen in the GeForce3, although it can still process two texels per pixel for multi-texturing effects (like the GeForce2) and has the same nVidia shading rasteriser (NSR) unit.

What the GeForce4 MX440 offers over previous GeForce2 MX products is better memory architecture, a new video processing engine and a new anti-aliasing process for improved image quality.

The video processor includes dual 350MHz DACs and TMDS emitters to allow dual-display setups that include both digital and analogue monitors, but the MX440 doesn't take advantage of this, offering only a single VGA port at the rear of the card. But there's support for MPEG-2 decoding (iDCT) and motion compensation, which will be a bonus for anyone wanting to playback DVD-Videos.

The final new feature, the Accuview anti-aliasing engine, helps speed up this typically processor-intensive technique. As well as supporting the more common super-sampling technique, which simply renders the scene at a higher resolution before reducing and filtering, cards like this one can process 'virtual pixels' thanks to the wider pixel paths of the GeForce4 MX processor. This technique, known as 'multi-sampling', means you can reduce the jagged appearance of the final scene without reducing the frame rate to an unusable crawl.

Some of you may have been expecting a bit more from a product with the GeForce4 name attached, in which case it might be a better idea to wait for the GeForce4 Ti-based cards, the first of which will be reviewed in IT Week soon.Contact
Sparkle Technology Team Valley Business Centre, Earlsway, Gateshead NE11 0RQ. Tel: 0191 042 0166. www.sparkle-technology.co.uk

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