Anyone had any positive experiences with a GF4 MX440?

I'm a new owner, relatively happy (score 20% better than my past GF2 Ti accross the board), so I was wondering about other people's opinions.

From what I've seen, some people were disappointed & I can't imagine why (as long at the GF4 MX440 is still a good $50 cheaper than a GF3 Ti200).

some people talk about it's incompatibility with some motherboards... others say that even the 460 is not better than a geforece 2 ti...
i believe it has cool features, but poor hardware to back them up

Re: Anyone had any positive experiences with a GF4 MX440?

It may be a bit cheaper but the GF3 will give you better DX8 support which equates inot longer use time. When DX8 games start trickling out faster you will either be buying a GF3 or if you buy one now you'll be happy you did.

Video cards are classic for the good old "pay now or pay later" saying.

Am using one here, started having problems yesterday, dunno if its related though...
I'll be going back to my geforce 3 ti 200 though after review is done. The 440MX other than being slower (& cheaper of course) has an older T&L unit as well (some other limitations too) so it's a bit of a let down call it a geforce 4 MX. The geforce 4 features it does have don't really help too much either, least not in what I've tested where I thought it might have.

Sounds like you should stay away from this "budget" card

Update, the locking up was a damned virus of all things. According to some online scanner it was Code Red.

Well, of course it's not what they call a hardcore gamer's card, yet to me it seems quite OK. And, once again, it scores MUCH better than the GF2 Ti from Leadtek I previously owned (20% in almost any game or app). Apart from the fact that it lacks pixel and vertex shaders (aka DX8 support), it has the same nVidia T&L like GF3 and GF4 plus all the other architectural benefits of GF4 (LMA II etc.).

It does indeed have some architectural benefits of the Geforce 4 Ti. However, it does not have the same T&L as the Geforce 3 and the Geforce 4 Ti. As you may know, the T&L of those cards are programmable. As you mentioned, the Geforce 4 MX has no DirectX 8 pixel shaders, but it does have limited support for vertex shaders. Also, as Anandtech mentions, "the chip does support NVIDIA's Shading Rasterizer (NSR) from the original GeForce 2". Basically what this means is that the Geforce 4 MX will perform very well in todays games, but it will perform worse than a Geforce 3 Ti200 in the Directx 8 games to come; games such as Doom III and Unreal II(Tournament II).

It's supposed to support hardware DVD (mpeg2) decoding but according to nVIDIA, software currently on the market can't take advantage of it. They decided to launch their own software like the ATI DVD player.

It sucks that the people that bought the GF4mx now will have to purchase it when it comes whereas it'll be in bundle with the new ones coming out.

Maybe nVIDIA'll come up with a program allowing the first gf4mx buyers to get it free or for a lower price. I think there was a pic of the program posted somewhere on the web.

I had this card (Geforce4 MX440) for about a week. I tried everything that I could think of, but was still unable to get it to work correctly. (It would randomly freeze everything, making a manula reboot nexcessary) I've pretty much figured out that it was a problem with my computer not supplying the card with enough voltage to power it correctly. Regardless of what the problem was, I decided to take it back and return it for another 3d card. I just happened to get the GeForce3 Ti200 that you mentioned. Currently at Best Buy, the 2 cards are the same exact price, but he geforce3 Ti200 also has a $30 mailin rebate offer. The geforce 3 Ti200 worked the first time I installed it in my system and has worked great ever since. (only 3 days, knocking on wood) Personally, from experience, I think that the price and performance of the GeForce3 Ti200 makes it a good buy when considering the geforce4 mx series.

Surely a Ti200 benches higher than a GF4MX anyway, since 3dmark makes use of DirectX8 features? and the price difference is not huge anyway.

Personally I would go for a Radeon 8500 over either.

Too many users and too many sites have reported dodgy driver support by ATI in the past, this makes me cautious about buying one. If I hadn't bought a GF3 some time ago I would be tempted by the 8500 as it is at an attractive price...

Since the Geforce4MX never worked properly on your PC, you can't really compare the performance of the two cards But from what I have read the cards benchmark at similar levels for quite a few benchmarks but the GF3ti200 comes out top on the majority, including of course any DirectX8 stuff ( www.madonion.com - 3dmark2001 ).

Geforce4Tis, MXs, 3s, ATIs benchmarked at Anandtech