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The first name you might think of when considering a new graphics card probably isn't PNY Technologies.
A French company more widely known for its memory-based products, such as Dimms, PNY has been producing graphics cards with nVidia chipsets since the Riva TNT.
Its latest product, the Verto GeForce4 MX440, is a mainstream graphics card using the same GeForce4 MX440 chipset as the Asus V8170DDR.
The 440 denomination refers to the clock speed of the memory as well as the core speed of the chip, which are 200MHz and 270MHz, respectively. As it's fitted with 64Mb of DDR SDRam, this is an effective speed of 400MHz.
The Verto GeForce4 MX440 has two pixel processing pipelines that provide a maximum fill rate of 540Megapixel/s, with the new architecture of nVidia's mainstream graphics chip offering advantages and disadvantages in equal measure.
The improved Video Processing Engine now includes dual 350MHz DACs and two TMDS signal emitters for configurations involving either digital or analogue displays, but PNY has chosen to implement only S-Video output alongside the card's standard 15-pin VGA port.
However, you'll still benefit from MPEG-2 decoding and motion compensation support for DVD-video playback on a PC.
The memory interface uses twin 64-bit controllers to provide more effective load-balanced use of this potential bottleneck, as well as auto-precharge and object and texture culling to avoid rendering objects that won't be visible in the final scene.
The most useful addition to the card's feature set is nVidia's multi-sampling anti-aliasing routine, which replaces processor intensive super-sampling. PNY's board also has active cooling, as well as a purple printed circuit board, which might appeal to enthusiasts.
However, be warned that the lack of programmable texel and pixel shaders could well put this board at a distinct disadvantage with future software. Despite this, it's still an attractive product for the price.
Price: £99.99 (ex. VAT)
Specifications:
Controller: nVidia GeForce4 MX440
Memory: 64Mb DDR SDRam
Core clock: 270MHz
Memory clock: 200MHz
RAMDAC: 350MHz
Connectors: VGA, S-Video
Contact: PNY Technologies 01256 338 609
www.pny.co.uk
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All Graphics Cards
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