why isn't there a geforce3 MX?

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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The geforce 4mx series was the geforce 3 mx, they just decided against releasing it and instead used the geforce 4 name instead. Its no real different to ati calling the radeon 7500. Both names link to a more expensive product and the PR people like that
 

Rand

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
11,071
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Originally posted by: subhuman
or how about this one:

why is there a geforce 4mx? ;)

Better yet, why isnt there a REAL GF4 MX?
As the current GF4 MX is based on the old GF2 MX core.

Its no real different to ati calling the radeon 7500.

At least with ATi the Radeon 7500 is at least faster then the Radeon 7000/7200 and previous generations of ATi graphics cards.
With nVidia we get a GF4 MX420 that is outperformed by a card that's supposedly 2 generations older- GF2 GTS.
:disgust:
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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With nVidia we get a GF4 MX420 that is outperformed by a card that's supposedly 2 generations older- GF2 GTS.

Not really, the geforce 4mx 420 is quicker than the the original mx, the 440 is up with the gts ultra and ti versions. I personally think it hets a bit of a hard time, its not meant to be a true gamers card, but it will play ut and halflife at decent speeds and for some people thats enough.

edit

Have a look through digit-life 3d digest here Their is some interesting scores
 

Blurry

Senior member
Mar 19, 2002
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The Geforce 3 MX is actually the Geforce 2 TI, Nvidia's decided to use the Geforce 2 TI as the card for mainstream users.
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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I dont think so, the geforce 4 mx is the nv17 compared to the geforce 2ti which is still a nv15 this points to the geforce 4 mx being the newer card which was to be introduced as the geforce 3mx
 

Rand

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
11,071
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Originally posted by: Mingon
With nVidia we get a GF4 MX420 that is outperformed by a card that's supposedly 2 generations older- GF2 GTS.

Not really, the geforce 4mx 420 is quicker than the the original mx, the 440 is up with the gts ultra and ti versions. I personally think it hets a bit of a hard time, its not meant to be a true gamers card, but it will play ut and halflife at decent speeds and for some people thats enough.

edit

Have a look through digit-life 3d digest here Their is some interesting scores

It doesnt change the fact that the GF4 MX420 is beaten out by cards that are supposedly 2 generations older, and the 3 generations older GF 256 DDR manages to come within 10% of the MX420's performance.
Even the fastest GF4 MX in the MX460 is beaten out by the supposedly 1 generation 'older' GF3 Ti500.


I personally think it hets a bit of a hard time, its not meant to be a true gamers card, but it will play ut and halflife at decent speeds and for some people thats enough.

It's marketed as an upper low end graphics card... which is precisely where the majority of gamers cards are sold. Even the GF4 Ti4200 is clearly out of mainstream pricing, and generally resides within enthusiast and high end mainstream computers only.
So I would say it is indeed meant to be a 'gamers' card in the mainstream.

Note, I have nothing against it's relative performance. The GF4 MX line performs reasonably for it's price and is more then adequate for the vast majority of systems it's sold in.
I have something against it's naming.
It's named as though it's superior in features and performance to the GF3 line... which it quite clearly is not. Judging by it's name one would logically expect it to solidly beat any GF2 easily.... that clearly isnt the case.

At best it should be named a GF3 MX, and even that is a bit of a stretch. Caling it a 'GF4' of any sort is awfully misleading.
 

Slaimus

Senior member
Sep 24, 2000
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nvidia never released crippled version of the first generation of each major chip design.
TNT had no variations, the TNT2 had the M64
Geforce256 had no crippled version, Geforce2 has the MX
So Geforce3 had no crippled version, Geforce4 has the MX(although its more crippled than the others feature wise)
 

Goi

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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I don't really understand why the GeForce4 MX family is receiving so much flak. Sure, it only supports DX7 rather than DX8, has no pixel shaders, only 2 pipelines with 2 texturing units each, and has a lower fillrate than the GeForce3 Ti200, hence in most cases performs worse.

However, it can play most, if not all current games well. It may not be the fastest, but I think it does its intended job at a price that's lower than the GeForce3 Ti200. Of course it sould perform worse than the Ti500, this thing was the bomb just a few months ago guys! You wouldn't really expect a "value card" now to beat a "top of the line card" a few months ago now would you? That would leave owners of the latter card pretty bitter and feeling pretty stupid for spending 3-5X the money.
 

Rand

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
11,071
1
81
However, it can play most, if not all current games well. It may not be the fastest, but I think it does its intended job at a price that's lower than the GeForce3 Ti200. Of course it sould perform worse than the Ti500, this thing was the bomb just a few months ago guys! You wouldn't really expect a "value card" now to beat a "top of the line card" a few months ago now would you? That would leave owners of the latter card pretty bitter and feeling pretty stupid for spending 3-5X the money.



The performance is fine, I have absolutely no complaints about the performance or the feature set. My problem is the NAME. They brand it as though it were superior to a GF3, and as though it was a cut down GF4 which is clearly false.
 

Goi

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
6,772
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Well, that name part, I'd have to agree. However, I guess they had a product in their hands that needed to be sold, and their marketing department(or whichever decided the name) decided they don't want to name it after an older product, and this product had some of the technology in the GF4 series(LMA2, etc) so decided to cash on the GF4 name, skipping the GF3 altogether.