Where there is a high end model there is a entry level one too. This fits the Geforce4 MX440 card from Visiontek perfectly. The aim of the game is to give the performance you'll want smile about but also to not rip a great big hole in your pocket. Everyone has grown used to Nvidia's budget orientated buyer approach with its MX series of Geforce chipsets. With the launch of the Geforce4 came the introduction of a new line-up of MX chipsets all over again. Visiontek has kindly given us an opportunity to evaluate its Geforce4 MX440 card. Great, moderate, okay or poor, read on and we'll give you the facts you'll want to know.

Used to green PCB's? I'm sure we all agree and the MX440 certainly doesn't wish to change this trend, not for now at least. Taking out the card from the box yields a surprise no frills look with only a passive heatsink installed directly over the GPU. No RAM sinks are included on the 64MB of Hynix DDR RAM and why should they when the RAM is marked 5ns, in other words 200MHz or 400MHz effective (due to it being DDR). So far that's in line with Nvidia reference design, the GPU on this card runs at 270MHz. One very notable inclusion on this card is the two HD-15 connectors meaning those with two monitors can see things double. Nvidia's Nview technology is obviously being put to use, and it's great to see this in a budget graphics card too.

The Visiontek MX440 isn't a card that's set to impress your friends too much (or enemies on whose got the best computer) as it's meant to run at stock standard speeds with no noise from it's passive only cooling. Any form of overclocking will require you to invest in an active cooling system and possibly RAM sinks too. The latter is rather questionable as 5ns RAM isn't an overclocker’s delight and so it's probably a safer bet to play with the GPU MHz speed instead. From what we can make out from the design it seems to us that Visiontek is making high hopes in marketing this card for OEM's. There it will undoubtedly fulfill its expectations well and impose some competition with Matrox's ageing G550 range.

Next Page