September 2002 3Digest -
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 460 64MB DDR 3.6ns

This chip is presented by MSI GF4MX460 64MB, AGP videocard.

Features:

• NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 460 chip, 300MHz clock rate; 300 MHz;
• 64MB DDR SDRAM memory in 4 Samsung 3.3ns (3.6ns) microchips, 275 (550) MHz clock rate, 275 (550) MHz, 128-bit bus;
• Peak fill rate in the multitexturing mode (without optimizations) is 600 megapixels/sec and 1200 megatexels/sec.

The beginning of April brought us the announcement of the new GeForce4 family. It included not only the top Ti 4400/4600 models, but also mainstream MX 420/440/460. The latter cards were not the pared-down GeForce4 Ti, but a kind of a hybrid of GeForce2 and GeForce4. The new MX cards lost not only the the half of pixel pipelines (2 of 4), but also the pixel shaders block, 3-level anisotropy, and EMBM support. This "castration" resulted in a cheap chip to easily compete not only with previous GeForce2 products, but also with ATI RADEON 7500 cards. These cards still have the GeForce4 core, including the faster memory controller, thus they demonstrate higher speed than their analogs released a year and a half ago. While the idea of MX440 was clear, the idea of MX460 was hardly explainable. But now junior Ti 4200 will press MX460, so its price is to drop below $120, and users will be able to get a solution faster than Ti200, though lacking some of its functions. But the wave of GeForce4 Ti washed away GeForce3 from the market, and GeForce4 MX haven't become any cheaper, risking to lose the demand after new releases from ATI and SIS.

Theoretical and analytical videocard reviews, containing functional analysis of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti GPU: NVIDIA GeForce4 MX

• Review of NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX GPU in MSI cards
• Review of NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440 cards from ASUSTeK, ABIT, Leadtek and Prolink
• Review of NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440 cards from InnoVision, Sparkle, Palit and Gainward
• Review of NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440 cards from eVGA, Chaintech and SUMA
• Review of NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440/460 cards from Gainward (MX460), AOpen (MX460), Leadtek (MX440 Ultra) and Triplex (MX440)

On the 10th of September 2002 the latest drivers from NVIDIA are 30.20, 31.00, 40.41 for Windows XP.

Overclocks to 340/700 MHz.

Test results are in the summary diagrams.

You can compare screenshots with reference ones (NVIDIA GeForce3).

Games / Cards	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX						-		-		-
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	25	26	27	28	29	30
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX
NVIDIA GeForce3

Game list: 1. Return to Castle Wolfenstein 2. Unreal2 - for GeForce cards, Unreal - for all other 3. Comanche4 4. Jedi Knight II Outcast 5. Morrowind 6. Colin McRAE Rally2 7. Red Faction 8. Rally Trophy 9. Sacrifice 10. Venom 11. Unreal Tournament 2003 DEMO 12. Real MYST 13. Blade of Darkness 14. Neverwinter Nights 15. 3DMark2001: Game1 16. 3DMark2001: Game2 17. 3DMark2001: Game3 18. 3DMark2001: Game4 19. 3DMark2001: Dot3 20. 3DMark2001: EMBM 21. 3DMark2001: Vertex Shaders 22. 3DMark2001: Pixel Shaders 23. Warcraft III 24. Soldier of Fortune II 25. Command and Conquer: Renegade 26. Max Payne 27. AquaNox 28. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter 29. IL2: Shturmovik 30. MoHAA And 6.* drivers are not compatible with the software for sound cards based on Yamaha processor, as well as with SoftXG100 software synthesizer. Start or Close Window buttons might be spoiled by some "garbage" in 2D mode. One solution is in the iXBT Forum. Andrew Worobyew (Anvakams@ixbt.com) Alexander Kondakov (kondalex@ixbt.com) Evgeniy Zaycev (eightn@ixbt.com) [an error occurred while processing this directive]