NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420: Weak Link in GeForce4 MX Team?

by FastSite
05/13/2002 | 12:00 AM

This review is devoted to G4MX420-T (MS 8860) graphics card from MSI based on NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 chip and equipped with SDRAM memory. GeForce4 MX chips from NVIDIA have already proven to be much slower and less functional than GeForce4 Ti chips (see our NVIDIA GeForce4 MX460/MX440 Reference Graphics Cards Review and NVIDIA GeForce4 GPU Review). Of course, the absence of Pixel Shaders support and some other technologies of GeForce4 Ti chips in the GeForce4 MX family is pretty upsetting, but the performance of the fastest NVIDIA GeForce4 MX - MX460 and MX440, allows them to replace the retiring NVIDIA GeForce2 Ti and even GeForce3 Ti200.

The slowest solution in NVIDIA GeForce4 MX family is GeForce4 MX420. It is equipped with SDRAM and is called to replace the cards based on GeForce2 MX400.

With the help of MSI G4MX420-T (MS 8860) graphics card we will try to find out what GeForce4 MX420 is worth and will compare its performance with that of graphics cards from the same price group.

Closer Look

We were lucky to receive a retail version of MSI G4MX420-T packed into a beautiful box with a terrible long-tongued monster, which was most likely intended to scare away all the competitors with its awesome looks. And at the same time it definitely had to convince the customer that the graphics card inside the box would undoubtedly prove so awesomely fast :)

Inside the box I found a graphics card, of course, a user's manual, CD-disks with drivers and utilities, a special converter from the combined TV-Out located on the card to RCA+S-Video and an S-Video cable:

Among the unlisted items are an elastic band for the CD-disks and MSI's traditional sticker saying: "Geared by MSI". By the way, I would like to stress one very pleasing fact: the CD-disks come not in paper envelopes, but in nice-looking plastic slim-boxes. As soon as you install the graphics card and the software, you can tie these boxes with the enclosed elastic band and put somewhere far away knowing that nothing gets lost this way :)

The graphics card follows accurately NVIDIA reference design and besides the VGA Out of pretty unusual shape it also features a combined 7-pin TV-Out:

 

The card is built on NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 chip. The remarkable thing about it is the absence of the metallic lid improving the heat dissipation from the core to the heatsink. The heating of GeForce4 MX420 is most likely to have turned quite low, which allowed NVIDIA engineers to give up using this lid for MX420 solutions:

The chip working frequency also corresponds to NVIDIA's recommendations and equals 250MHz.

MSI G4MX420-T graphics card is equipped with 64MB 128bit SDRAM. The memory chips are made by Hynix and feature 5ns access time:

The graphics memory also works at the recommended frequency of 166MHz.

Drivers and Utilities

MSI G4MX420-T graphics card is accompanied by a rich software bundle. However, I would like to dwell only on the most interesting utilities here.

Firstly, I would like to mention the software DVD-player from MSI aka MSIDVD, which appears very similar to WinDVD: the company logo is the only difference between these two programs. Look here:

Secondly, you should pay attention to the 3D Turbo Experience utility. MSI claims that it is a revolutionary utility, as they were the first in the world to use Flash-technologies there. I will not dare argue about this statement. I just want to point out that the utility we are talking about boasts advanced gaming interface and will definitely let you have a lot of fun adjusting your graphic card settings.

I've got only three comments to make. First, it is far not that trivial to figure out how all interface functions actually work. Second, the interface offers some hardware monitoring options, which cannot actually exist, as G4MX420-T graphics card doesn't support any hardware monitoring. As a result, those interface items, which do not work, simply overload the program and puzzle the user. And third, 10MB of Flash movies make this utility too large for both: hard disk drive storage space and RAM, so that it is simply impossible to have it on the tray, like PowerStrip, for instance.

By the way, since we cam to speak about RAM. One of utilities included into the MSI bundle, GoodMem, allows controlling the amount of free RAM in real time and providing the required capacity upon system request:

Testbed

We tested the following graphics cards together with our today's hero, MSI G4MX420-T (MS8860):

• Gigabyte GV-AR64S. This graphics card is based on ATI RADEON 7500 (64MB SDRAM, 256MHz chip and 175MHz memory frequency). We took it for our comparison as a competing solution from ATI brought to the value sector by forced reduction of the working frequencies and use of SDRAM.
• NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440. This graphics card with 64MB DDR SDRAM working at 400MHz (200MHz DDR) is based on GeForce4 MX440 chip working at 270MHz. We took it since it is next more expensive model following GeForce4 MX420 in NVIDIA's product range.
• NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400. This graphics card is equipped with 32MB SDRAM working at 166MHz. The chip frequency equals 200MHz. This is the previous generation cheap product from NVIDIA, which has become a real hit of its time. The comparison of the new GeForce4 MX420 with the good old GeForce2 MX400 will show us what advantages the newcomer can oppose to the honoured veteran in severe conditions, that is with slower SDRAM.
• NVIDIA GeForce2 Ti. This graphics card working at 200MHz chip frequency is equipped with 64MB DDR SDRAM working at 400MHz (200MHz DDR). We included it in the race as a representative of the graphics cards family selling now at about the same price as NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420.

That's what our testbed looked like:

• AMD Athlon XP 1900+ CPU;
• MSI K7T266 Pro2 v2.0 (VIA KT266A) mainboard;
• 2x128MB PC2100 CL2 DDR SDRAM by Nanya;
• Fujitsu MPF3153AH HDD.

Software:

• Version 6.13.10.6043 driver for Windows XP for ATI RADEON 7500 based graphics card;
• Detonator 27.70 driver for Windows XP for NVIDIA based graphics cards;
• Windows XP;
• Max Payne;
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter;
• 3DMark 2001;
• Quake3 Arena v1.30.

We ran these applications in the following modes:

Max Payne

Quality mode implied the highest graphics quality: disabled full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering (in order to provide equal conditions or the tested graphics cards), 32bit texture and buffer color depth.

Speed mode incorporated the lowest graphics quality (16bit texture and frame buffer color depth).

In the Max Payne test we used benchmark mod and PCGH's Final Scene No1, which are described in detail on the 3DCenter web-site.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Speed mode: "Speed" graphics quality settings, 16bit color modes;

Quality mode: "Quality" graphics quality settings, 32bit color modes.

For this test we launched a standard "The Grand Cathedral" demo.

3DMark 2001

16bit: 16bit frame buffer, 16bit textures, 16bit frame buffer, D3D hardware T&L.

32bit: 32bit frame buffer, 32bit textures and 32 (24) bit Z-buffer, D3D hardware T&L mode.

As we tested mostly Low-End products, all the tests were run in case the level of detail was set to "Low Detail".

Quake3 Arena v1.30

All tests were run with the highest graphics quality settings, with tri-linear filtering and texture compression enabled.

During the testing, we used two modes:

• 16bit texture and frame buffer color depth
• 32bit texture and frame buffer color depth

We tested with a standard four demo included into Quake3 Arena 1.30 patch.

Performance

Well, in the very first test GeForce4 MX420 proved much faster than NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400. At the same time, it cannot catch up with GeForce4 MX440 and GeForce2 Ti, as the slow SDR memory limits firmly the performance even though it is used with such a powerful controller as on GeForce4 MX440/MX460.

Here the results shown by NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 are again somewhere between GeForce2 MX400 and GeForce2 Ti.

ATI RADEON 7500 SDR, which lost the race in 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions managed to outpace GeForce4 MX4200 in 1280x1024 due to HyperZ technology, which is known to be most efficient in high resolutions.

The results of GeForce4 MX420 for 16bit mode in Max Payne are similar to what the other benchmarks showed. However, in 32bit mode GeForce4 MX420 outperforms GeForce2 MX400 quite noticeably and comes really close to NVIDIA GeForce2 Ti due to highly efficient memory controller.

In Quake3 Arena the cards with SDR memory lag behind those with DDR SDRAM even more: the results in 16bit modes are determined by the polygon fillrate (and hence by the graphics core clock speed and number of pixel pipelines). And in 32bit modes the determinatives are the graphics memory bandwidth and its efficient use.

Higher chip working frequency and LightSpeed Memory Architecture II allow GeForce4 MX420 to outperform GeForce2 MX400 by the good 20%-25% in 16bit modes and by almost 1.5 times in 32bit modes.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter loads the graphics cards really heavily, especially in the "quality" mode. That is why the results here are much lower than those in Qiuake3 Arena. The advantage of NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 over GeForce2 MX400 has got considerably smaller, and in "quality" mode the performance difference between GeForce4 MX420 and GeForce2 MX400 doesn't exceed 25%.

The general picture has slightly changed. ATI RADEON 7500 in "quality" mode outpaced NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 due to the natural advantages of RADEON 7500 chip: fast anisotropic filtering and the ability to lay three textures per pass.

2D Image Quality

The entire NVIDIA GeForce4 MX family offers very good 2D image quality, absolutely incomparable with what NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX200/MX400 provided.

Of course, I can now talk only about graphics cards following NVIDIA's reference design accurately, as no one would guaranty that the changes made to the PCB layout so popular among the noname manufacturers will not lead to sad consequences.

The 2D image quality shown by MSI G4MX420-T proved very high. Only in 1600x1200 resolution on a 19-inch Hitachi CM776ET monitor we could notice a slight the blurring effect.

Conclusion

So, NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 chip positioned by NVIDIA as a suitable replacement to GeForce2 MX400 proved faster than the latter due to more efficient use of the graphics memory. In some cases, the advantage of the newcomer over the predecessor exceeded 50%. Nevertheless, there are not so many functional differences between the new GeForce4 MX420 and the old GeForce2 MX400, despite all the pretentious novelties, so that the new GeForce4 MX420 can be called a "faster GeForce2 MX400".

The only important advantage of the newcomer is the support of full-scene anti-aliasing via multisampling. Which ensures much lower performance losses compared with the supersampling algorithms. Of course, NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 looks very attractive against the background of GeForce2 MX400 running at lower speed and supporting performance-killing supersampling algorithms. However, don't be too carried away: the performance of NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 in resolutions greater than 800x600 with FSAA enabled may appear absolutely unsuitable for proper gaming.

This way, if GeForce4 MX420 based graphics cards will sell at reasonable prices, that is the same or a little bit higher than the cost of GeForce2 MX400 based products, these cards will undoubtedly turn into very popular pretty fast low-cost solutions ousting the older GeForce2 MX400 based cards from the graphics market.

If the prices will remain around $100 for a long time, which we see happening now, actually, then the card will never become a "people's choice", as there are a few other interesting graphics cards selling at about the same price.

And in conclusion I would like to say a few words about the MSI G4MX420-T graphics card we tested.

MSI made a high-quality product complying with NVIDIA's recommended reference design and we didn't have any complaints about it. It is worth pointing out specifically that the card has no active cooling so it works absolutely quietly. Keeping in mind excellent image quality in 2D provided by the card, I would recommend it as a good office solution. We also liked the slim-boxes for CD-disks, as they proved really practical and convenience to use. The only thing we didn't like that much, actually, was the 3D Turbo Experience utility, as we don't think that the use of Flash is justified here :)

Highs of MSI G4MX420-T:

• Smart package contents;
• Excellent 2D image quality;
• Good PCB mounting;
• TV-Out.

Lows of MSI G4MX420-T:

• None.