geforce 2 gts -v agp vs. geforce 4 mx440 pci

[drag]

Which card do you suppose is more capapable. A Geforce2 gts (ihave the slighty cheaper underclocked "-v" model with slower mem than the regular gts) running via AGP or a MX440 running on a PCI port.

I have a 1.13 thunderbird with 300+ odd megs of ddr ram and I plan on running a 3 monior setup (well realy 2 mon. and a TV) and want to know which card I should set up to use the middle monitor. Of course I would like the speediest/best quality on my main screen.

I know that the MX 440 is a slighty more capable card.... but how much of a choke is the PCI slot? I know that back with the original geforce cards when AGP cards were competing directly with PCI cards that the AGP slot realy didn't provide much of a performance advantage, but I am sure that 2 geforce2 cards (hehe geforce "4" mx440 my #$%) use quite a bit more of the bus bandwidth... but then again I am running a 133mhz bus. So in my mind the MX440 would be the slighty better card when all things add up......

On my computer is the PCI bus still restricted to 66 mhz? (for backward compatability) Or has the PCI bus kept up with the increases in technology.

(I remember back (seems like ancient history) when I overclocked my 233 mmx using a lower (3x) multipler and a increase bus speed of 83mhz (250 mhz WHOOHO!) it did make a bigger increase in performance than keeping the bus at 66 and running the multiplier at 4 (for a grand total of 264MHZ!!!!!!) (man my quake 1 performance rocked up to almost 56 fps on demo 1 !))

Is this still true?

 

[Mloot]

That's a good question. I am currently running a MX440 PCI, but since I've never had an AGP card, I'm afraid I can't be much help to you there.

 

[human2k]

I had one of those cards, Visiontek Geforce 2 GTS-V, that card was the best $65 I ever spent, I overclocked to Geforce 2 "PRO" speeds easily and it ran everygame up RTCW/MOH with out a hiccup at 1028x768 on my overclocked tbird. From what I can remember, that card puts the Geforce mx series to shame. (check for the THG old vga charts, it'll prove it)

 

[Mingon]

The mx440 PCI I used was equivalent to a GTS ultra (which I also had) and should be quicker than the gts - v.

 

[CZroe]

Are you sure the PCI model was equivalent? We are beyond the day when that was irellevant.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Both in AGP the GF4MX440 is faster than a FULL GF2GTS, it's faster than the GF2TI, even the GF4MX420 can get close to GF2GTS perf. But a card going from AGP to PCI will lose about 20% of its perf, and if more gfx RAM is needed PCI is VERY limiting. So MX440_PCI vs GTS should be pretty even but you're much better off using the AGP slot, not only for the sake of the other PCI devices but for additional texture storage too. BUT there's more ... the GF4MX have a number of other enhancements over GF2, namely much improved image quality, dual display (if present), TVout (a small improvement) and DVD playback. So it is pretty even LOL!

 

[RanDum72]

The GF4 MX series is basically a GF2 GTS with an improved memory controller (borrowed from the 'true' GF4's in the Ti-series) so it should be faster.

 

[Mingon]

So MX440_PCI vs GTS should be pretty even

Nope, the Mx440 is quicker. Despite the PCI bus being a slowdown the LMAII helps performance greatly in 32bit mode.
Below is a mx440 pci benchmark in 3dmark2001 which is roughly the same score as you would expect a pro - ultra to score (on a p4 2.4b) ;

3DMark Score 4469 3D marks
Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 104.2 FPS
Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 50.3 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 54.0 FPS
Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 20.7 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 79.4 FPS
Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 33.7 FPS
Game 4 Nature No hardware support
Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 435.2 MTexels/s
Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 830.5 MTexels/s
High Polygon Count (1 light) 18.9 MTriangels/s
High Polygon Count (8 lights) 6.5 MTriangels/s
Environment Bump Mapping No hardware support
DOT3 Bump Mapping 55.6 FPS
Vertex Shader 4.5 FPS
Pixel Shader No hardware support
Advanced Pixel Shader No hardware support
Point Sprite 9.4 MSprites/s

 

[bgeh]

mingon, my geforce 2 ti easily surpasses that
and i thought the gf 2 GTS is similar performance to the gf 2 ti and the gf 2 ultra gets around 4,900-5,000
check my rig stats
and my proc isn't overclocked unlike what is in my rig page
got worried about pci bus issues
too lazy to change it though

 

[Vegito]

i recently did a test using 440mx agp 8x with a gf2 gts agp.. both agp though..

on a p4 2.2 ghz the 440 did 4600 ish on 3dmark 2001 se and the gts did around 3600

 

[Mingon]

mingon, my geforce 2 ti easily surpasses that and i thought the gf 2 GTS is similar performance to the gf 2 ti and the gf 2 ultra gets around 4,900-5,000

A gf2 ti is slightly quicker than a pro and slightly slower than an ultra - both of which are much quicker than the gts-v.

For those who are interested, the gts- v uses a 175mhz core / 143mhz(286ddr) memory. This make it slower than the normal gts (200, 166(333ddr)), the Pro (200, 200 (400ddr)), the TI (250, 200(400ddr)) or the ultra (250, 230 (460)). The mx440 pci runs at 270, 200 (400ddr) BUT the addition of LMAII (HSR+memory controller) gives it a 10-20% gain in performance in 32bit mode (the HSR only works in 32bit). Although the PCI negates any advantage given the Mx440 pci (i.e 10-20% drop for PCI) it still has the performance of an GTS Pro - Ultra.

These are all non overclocked score, overclocked to 300, 500 the mx440 pci on a 1.8A p4 running at 2.8ghz gets a score of 5400 in 3dmark2001se

gts-v versus TI