Today we will be taking a look at a graphics card by the number one selling nVidia graphic card manufacturer, MSI. As many of you may know, MSI is a favorite amongst PC enthusiasts as well as OEM's because of their ability to produce stable, high performance boards at a low cost. I consider MSI to be on the same level of Asus and Abit when it comes to stability, and a lot less expensive then the other two. I would like to thank MSI for providing the Viperlair team with MSI review samples, including the one I am reviewing today.

Specifications

MSI G4MX420-T
nVidia® GeForce4 MX 420 Chipset
64MB SDRAM
4X AGP
250MHz Core Clock
TV-out
MSI DVD Player
MSI Live Update Series
MSI VGA Driver, MSI 3D!Turbo Experience
Supports Windows® 9x, ME, NT, 2000
Supreme 3D Games: Aquanox
Plus 7 in 1 Games Collection

The Accuview Antialiasing (AA)
The Accuview Antialiasing subsystem with advanced multisampling hardware delivers full-scene antialiased quality at performance levels never before seen.

nView Multi-display Technology
The nView hardware and software technology combination delivers maximum flexibility for multi-display options, and provides unprecedented end-user control of the desktop experience.

Lightspeed Memory Architecture (LMA) II "
The NVIDIA® Lightspeed Memory Architecture II (LMA II) incorporates a number of revolutionary advances. These advances dramatically improve the memory bandwidth efficiency of the GeForce4 graphics processing units (GPUs), enabling them to deliver new levels of performance and image quality.

NEW MSI Live VGA BIOS"
MSI SafeBIOS" (Two BIOS In One Chip) technology
Guaranteed Boot-Up!
One-click, Live VGA BIOS detected & Auto-updated
Microsoft® IE 4.0 and later version is needed

The Starforce GeForce 4MX420 is based on, as the name suggests, the GeForce 4MX 420 GPU. The MX420 is the entry level GeForce 4MX chip. To clear something up, the GeForce 4MX line is more of a successor to the GeForce 2MX line, and not the GeForce 3, as the name implies. The name was a marketing strategy by nVidia, as the GeForce 4 name obviously is appealing to your average consumer. The Geforce 4MX line has no true DirectX 8 support, meaning that while your newer games will indeed run on this card, they will not be able to use pixel shaders and environment bump mapping as the developers intended.

Why release the GeForce 4MX line then? The answer is simple. Profit. nVidia plans on phasing out the GeForce 3 line, which, in my opinion, offers a lot of bang for your buck, especially the ti200 line of cards. nVidia realizes that they will sell more boards marketed as GeForce 4 MX's than they would if they were marketed as GeForce 3 MX's, due to the fact that GeForce 4MX sounds newer, and therefore better, than a GeForce 3MX would sound. Keep in mind, the GeForce 4MX uses a couple of the GeForce 4 Ti (NV 25) features. It features nView, which allows for multiple monitors on a single card. We cover this in detail in our nView article.

Also making an appearance is Quincunx AntiAliasing, an AntiAliasing mode that offers the image quality of 4X at the speed hit of 2X. I will test be testing Quincunx in this review.

One other feature that the MX uses is Lightspeed Memory Architecture 2, which allows for faster memory implementation. The GPU runs at a very modest 250 MHZ, while the RAM runs at 166 MHZ. For comparison, the GeForce 4 MX460 is clocked at 300 MHZ, while the RAM is clocked at 250 MHZ. The major difference here is the memory clock, as the MX460 has an 334 MHZ advantage over the MX420. 334 MHZ? Keep in mind that the MX460 uses DDR, whereas the MX420 uses SDRAM. The prices also vary greatly between both cards. Street prices show the MX460 costs about $100.00 more than the MX420. A very large price difference that, as far as I am concerned, isn't justified. For a further explanation of the technology behind the GeForce 4MX I strongly suggest reading our article.

 

Not to be outdone, MSI has gone the extra mile to ensure that you buy their card. A quick glimpse at the box shows the face of a green, growling monster, and the words "64 MB DDR" and "TV-Out" in huge letters.

The thing that caught my attention most about the packaging was the 64 MB DDR lettering on the box. Unforunately, the card I received does not use DDR. The box that the card came in is going to be used with the DDR based Starforce 420MX, which is going to be released in May.

The TV-Out feature is something I discarded as useless, since I will never use it. I suppose if you want to play games or watch DiVX movies on a big screen TV, then this would be a great feature for you. Opening the box I was greeted with a rather large manual, a bundle containing five CD's, a video cable, an MSI sticker and the video card.

Let me go ahead and say it. I think the card is very plain, and to be honest, ugly. I wish MSI would have gone with their red PCB here, but no such luck. The card has a black heatsink held on by spring mounts. There was an ample supply of thermal grease between the chip and heatsink, which is always a nice thing.

The card is a lot smaller than other AGP cards of today. As a matter of fact, it is one of the smallest AGP cards I have ever used. There are not a lot of components being used on the card, which allows it to be so small.

The included CD's included drivers, a full version of AquaNox (which isn't too great), an MSI Software DVD player (which isn't too great), and a 7 in 1 sampler CD with several demo's (which were pretty good, fun games). Overall, it's a decent bundle. Nothing to write home about though.

As far as packaging and my first impressions with the board, I would say they were fairly positive overall. I was a bit dissapointed that the card didn't include DDR RAM, as the box said. The fact that MSI included Aquanox was even more dissapointing. Aquanox is probably the most boring game I have ever played. I would much rather they had thrown in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. The worst thing is that this card won't even take advantage of the DirectX 8 features AquaNox is programmed to use.

After I removed the card from the anti-static bag, I installed into an MSI K7T266 Pro2 mainboard. Power up...nothing but beeps. I turned it off, powered back up, nothing but beeps again. I made sure everything was seated and cleared the CMOS, and it still wouldn't boot. Finally, I tried to power the system and it worked. This actually is a known issue with the MSI GeForce 4MX boards and the K7T266Pro2, and it is really annoying. After a call to MSI technical support I was informed that MSI is working hard to clear up the situation. I decided to not test the graphics card in that particular mainboard because of the obvious problems that it was having from the get go. This compatibility problem needs to be ironed out by MSI, and soon. I bought the K7T266 Pro2 because it is a great board, but if it won't work with the newest wave of video cards, then what good does it do me? After I decided to install the board in my MSI K7D Master, everything went fine. I installed the drivers supplied with the card, and everything went smoothly. The drivers were a bit dated, but I found them to be more than adequate in my gaming tests and benchmarks.

MSI Info

Overclocking goodness

As stated before, I decided to run the MSI K7D Master for the tests, as the graphics card seemed to run fine when installed in the board. The K7D Master is certainly not going to allow for the highest 3D Mark2001 scores, as it is a server board, but it will serve the purpose quite well here. I am comparing the GeForce 4MX 420 to an MSI Starforce GeForce 3 ti200, which both use the same drivers, and therefore make testing completely fair. An interesting note is that the GeForce 4MX line is actually taking the place of the GeForce 3 ti200, as it is being phased out of the market, along with the original GeForce 3 and the ti500, which are being replaced by the GeForce 4 ti4200 and 4400, respectively.

Test System

MSI K7D Master
1 Athlon XP 1700+
512 MB Kingmax PC2100 DDR
Windows XP Professional
10 gig Maxtor 7,200 RPM hard drive.
nVidia Detonator version 27.20 (version bundled with board, runs both cards.)

3DMark 2001se

3D Mark 2001se is the king of graphic card benchmarks. It tests DirectX 7 functionality, fill rate, and Direct X 8 functionality. Since the GeForce 4MX doesn't run any of the DirectX 8 tests, I don't expect too much from it. I am running each test using the 3D Mark 2001se defaults.

Default settings, not overclocked

Here we see the card get 4074 3D marks, which isn't too shabby, but still nowhere close to what the GeForce 3 ti200 is getting. Obviously, the lack of DirectX 8 features doesn't help the GeForce 4MX 420 when it comes to 3D Mark's. This score puts the board on par with Radeon 7500 cards, which isn't bad, as this card is about $20.00 less than the 7500.

Overclocked Memory 200MHZ, core 300MHZ. GeForce 3 ti200 at stock speed.

For all of the people who tell you overclocking doesn't help, show them this. I got nearly 700 extra 3D marks just by pushing the core and memory by 34 and 50 MHZ, respectively. The GeForce 3 ti200 is still beating it by nearly 1,000 3D Mark's, yet it only costs $40.00 more.

This card seemed to overclock very well, and I didn't notice any artifacts or color errors on screen during the whole benchmark. The overclocking tool is actually included within the MSI drivers, so you don't have to download Coolbits, or screw around with your registry. I didn't use any cooling other than what came stock, so with a Crystal Orb, we may have a heck of an overclocker. MSI doesn't warrant overclocking, yet they include it in the driver. Kind of ironic, isn't it? I suppose that if you installed RAMsinks and a Crystal orb, you could get 50 MHZ+ from the core and 60 MHZ+ from the memory.

 

Particle Fury

I notice that Particle Fury isn't used on other tech sites much for benchmarking, but it is a terrific way to judge OpenGL performance. I didn't overclock when using Particle Fury.

An average of 40.5 FPS is a very solid score in this benchmark. Interestingly enough, a GeForce 2 Ultra gets 53 FPS due to its incredible fill rate and high clock speed when running Particle Fury.

Quake 3: Arena

I ran this test at 1024X768 with graphics set to default.

Here we see that the MX card can play Quake 3 at a very respectable frame rate, but still lags quite a bit behind the GeForce 3 ti200.

Here I have overclocked the GeForce 4MX 420 to a 300 MHZ core and 200 MHZ memory.

Overclocking certainly helped narrow the gap between the two cards, but the ti200 is still up by more than 25 FPS.

Max Payne Image Quality

I don't benchmark using Max Payne, but I find it to be an incredible utility to test image quality at high resolutions. Here we see a screenshot with Quincunx Anti-Aliasing enabled at 800X600. I found that at higher frame rates the game would stutter with Quincunx enabled. It ran fine at the highest graphic settings at 1024X768 with Quincunx disabled, however. I found that in Max Payne, Quincunx made very little difference in the amount of jaggies.

Look at these pictures, and see if you can identify which one has Quincunx enabled.

The top picture has Quincunx enabled, while the bottom does not. I thought it was impossible to tell. I did notice that Quincunx was quite effective in Return To Castle Wolfenstein, so maybe it just doesn't want to work its magic in Max Payne.

Impression of graphic quality and performance

The card played nicely through Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake 3, and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, as long as I kept the resolution at 1024X768 with medium to high graphics settings and no anti-aliasing enabled. Quincunx was only effective at resolutions of 800X600 and under, whenever I went with a higher resolution frame rates suffered. The image quality was very good, as the animation seemed very fluid and the colors blended perfectly. I didn't notice any graphical abnormalities or glitches, even when overclocking. Keep in mind that upcoming games designed to take advantage of all of the Direct X 8 features, such as Doom 3, may not look their best on this card, although it should play them without any issues.

 

Final Words

As a value card, I am thoroughly impressed with the MSI Starforce GeForce 4MX 420. With the exception of the incompatibility issue with the K7T266 Pro2, I found it to be a very stable, decently performing board. It is not, however, a great card. It is a budget card, meaning that you should only consider buying it if you are on a budget. The lack of Direct X 8 support and the fact that GeForce 3ti200's are to be found for around $30.00-40.00 more, is a reason to steer clear. Unless you are strapped for cash and need to play games now, I would not buy this card. This card would, however, make an excellent addition to a family computer that is used to plays basic games and surf the net. That said, MSI did a terrific job of manufacturing this card, and there is no better all around card available for under $100.00.

Pros:
Inexpensive
Great benchmark scores for a budget card
Nice packaging
Good for overclocking projects
Best sub-$100 card on the market

Cons:
May not be worth buying if you can afford just a bit more, as much better boards are available for little more money
Incompatibility woes with K7T266 Pro2 mainboard
Direct X 8 functionality is not there
Won't play tomorrow's games the way developers want them to look

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