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The
WinFast A170 DDR T GF4 MX 440 |
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Big Heat Plate... |
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We also had
high hopes for Leadtek's WinFast A170 DDR T. If you
take a quick glance at their
Editor's Choice winning A250 TD GeForce 4 Ti 4600,
you'll know that Leadtek is not a company that releases
"me too" products. The A170 DDR T didn't excite us
quite as much as their GeForce 4 Ti 4600 did though.
Technically, the Leadtek A170 DDR T had the best bundle.
Included with the card was a user's manual, S-Video and
Composite video cables and an S-Video to Composite
adapter. We also found a driver's CD complete with a
copy of Leadtek's "WinFox" tweaking utilities, WinFastDVD,
Colorific, 3Deep, True Internet Color and Cycore's Cult3D.
On top of all that, two complete games are included as
well, Dronez and Gunlock. Unfortunately, neither
game is especially good. The card is a standard,
green, reference design with a custom cooler, but the
cooler didn't strike us as being particularly effective.
Sure, it's big, but it's almost completely flat with only
two looping sidebars, which results in minimal surface
area. The Leadtek A170 DDR T was also the second
most expensive card here, with a price hovering around
$105 at most on-line retailers.
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The
Visiontek XTasy GF4 MX 440 |
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Dual Monitors on
this one... |
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Visiontek's
XTasy GeForce 4 MX 440 is the only card in the round-up
with two things...dual monitor outputs and passive
cooling. Due to the fact that the XTasy GeForce 4 MX
440 doesn't have TV-Out like all of the other cards,
obviously there was no S-Video cables or other adapters
included. Bundled with the card was only a "getting
started" pamphlet, a driver CD and a copy of the excellent
PowerDVD 4 XP. With it's dual monitor outputs,
Visiontek is targeting this card to the SoHo user looking
to take advantage of NVIDIA's new nView technology.
We briefly experimented with a second monitor on our test
system and fear that we will now have to buy two matching
monitors to fulfill our craving! I think the saying
goes, "Once you go multi-monitor, you never no back!".
Not finding active cooling mounted to the GPU turned us
off a bit. During testing the passive heatsink got
rather toasty, so user's with poor ventilation in their
case may have some extra heat to contend with. The
Visiontek XTasy GeForce 4 MX 440 was priced around $119,
making it the most expensive card we looked at.
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The
X-Micro Impact 440 GF4 MX 440 |
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Reference Card... |
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Last, and
least (but in a good way!), we have X-Micro's Impact 440.
Coming in at $81, this was the most affordable card in the
round-up. You'd think with a price that low X-Micro
would have skimped on something, but they didn't.
There is a basic cooler mounted to the GPU, similar to the
one we found on Abit's Siluro MX. The Impact 440's
bundle is also very complete. The card ships with a
full version of Croteam's Serious Sam, and Intervideo's
WinDVD. Also included was an S-Video to Composite
adapter and a Composite video cable. Our card
arrived before the retail packaging was ready, but we're
told the shipping product will also have a user's manual
and driver CD included.
Besides the
GPU itself, the one thing every card we're looking at
today has in common is 64MB of 4ns DDR SDRAM, clocked at
200MHz. (400MHz. DDR) installed on board.
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Our Test System |
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Pentium 4 / i845 /
DDR SDRAM Platform |
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Common Hardware:
Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz.
(2200MHz.) Processor
ECS P4IBAD (i845 DDR) S478
Pentium 4 Motherboard
256MB of Crucial DDR SDRAM
IBM DTLA307030 30GB. ATA/100
7200RPM HD
Pioneer 16X DVD-ROM
On-Board PC-97 Sound
Windows XP Professional with
Direct X 8.1
Intel chipset drivers, version
3.20
Video Cards:
Abit Siluro GeForce 4 MX 440
Chaintech A-G441 GeForce 4 MX
440
eVGA GeForce 4 MX 440
Gainward GeForce 4 MX Pro 600
TV (MX 440) Golden Sample
Leadtek WinFast AD170-T DDR
GeForce 4 MX 440
Visiontek XTasy GeForce 4 MX
440
X-Micro Impact 440 GeForce 4
MX 440
Driver
Revisions:
NVIDIA Detonator XP v27.50 |