GeForce 3 Ti200 vs GeForce4 MX440, which is better?

[Jon Brittan]

A client has asked me to use one of these two chipset based cards in a machine I'm building for him, but all the information on nVidias site about them is a little ambiguous, using different measures for the same statistic between the cards.

Any advice would be gratefully recieved.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Its possible that it depends on its use.

The MX is likely to have twinview capabailities (depending on what brand you go for) and conatins all of NVIDIA's new DVD decoding hardware. However, the MX is a DX7 3D card, whereas the ti200 is a DX8 GFX card - I'd say the 3D performance is likely to swing in the favour of the Ti200 95% of the time (4 pipes @ 175Mhz as opposed to 2 @ 275Mhz), but there may be time the AA performance will swing towards the MX.

Personally I'd favour the Ti200, but thats dues to its DX8 capabilities - which may or may not be an important consideration for your client.

 

[Dave B(TotalVR)]

A more difficult question would be whats better a Gf2 Mx or GF4MX.

The GF4 MX sux, in places it is a third the speed of its uncastrated older brother.

The Ti-200 may not have the features, or quite the TnL unit, but it *does* have the memory.

Ok maybe im exhaggerating a bit but definately the ti-200 IMO.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1583&p=10

look at the whole article in fact, the ti-200 reams the GF4 MX pretty much, especially considering their generations.

Dave

 

[Mark N]

A more difficult question would be whats better a Gf2 Mx or GF4MX. The GF4 MX sux, in places it is a third the speed of its uncastrated older brother. The Ti-200 may not have the features, or quite the TnL unit, but it *does* have the memory.

Oh, but you are so very wrong. The GF4 MX440 crushes the GF2 MX400 in every conceivable area. Compare it to the GF3 Ti 200 and it's not quite as cut-and-dried as you might suspect. They both have a 128-bit interface and 200mhz DDR memory, and the Ti has the first version of Lightspeed while the 440 has the MX version of the second. Pretty clear that the Ti version is better, based on benchmark analysis. But at least some of the 440 boards are getting faster-spec memory than that, probably because the MX460 looks to be still-born at this point.

I'm not sure that the T&L engine makes much difference, but the quad-pipelined 175mhz core of the Ti is better than the dual-pipelined 275mhz core of the 440. Of course the absence of the 460 means cores with more overclocking capability will be on the market.

The only way I'd recommend an MX over a TI 200 is if there is a desire for hardware video decoding, dual monitor support, etc. But the difference in DX7 performance in today's games isn't so great that there isn't any question about which card is better. If you can overclock a 440 (275/200) to beyond 460-spec (300/270), it may be faster overall.

 

[Pete]

Maybe he meant GF2Ti vs GF4MX, in which case the latter still gets the nod for its DualHead, Accuview, and iDCT.