Home > Consumer Reviews > Gainward Nvidia Geforce 4 MX440se 64MB AGP

This is a great value AGP card, it gives a high class performance for an entry level price. As soon as the driver is loaded you can see a difference especially with colour depth. Its fast, and it increased the overall speed of my machine, especially in Graphics intense packages e.g. Games. The card supports DirectX 8.1 which seems to be important these days. Theres not much else I can say. The installation was pretty straightforward, take 1 out put 1 in sort of thing. The only thing I would really say is get the latest generic GeForce4 driver, this will give better performance than the one on the CD.

Summed up, Brilliant

I build quite a few pc's for many different people. And this is the Graphics card i put in most of the computers due to its value for money. I myself have a Ge-Force 4 Ti4200, and theres not much visible difference between the two except when your running highly intense graphical applications. For example : Playing Grand Theft Auto 3, on the MX420, you can run it on the highest resolution possible and only a small amount of stutter occurs, but the Ge-Force 4 Ti4xxx models run it with out stuttering. Drop the resolution by one level, and the MX420 runs happily with no stuttering of the 3d graphics.

For the price, i recommend this card for people who want the large amounts of power without the large price.

This is, I've been led to believe, an enhanced version of the Geforce2 400mx card, and though nowhere near as well featured as the Geforce4 Ti 4xxx cards, it's only about a third the price.

I just wanted a reasonable quality card that would still be able to handle the latest games and I'm extrememly satisfied with it.

Fitting it took a matter of minutes and the driver installation was totally hassle free (although, as with virtually any card, more up to date drivers can be downloaded from the net....no problems with the update either).

So far it's exceeded my expectations in performance. I'd reccommend it to anybody on a limited budget.

Having a slow PC (Celeron 466) means that I can't comment fully on the 3D aspect of this card... my PC simply isn't fast enough to keep up!! Having read reviews elsewhere though, the 3D speed of the card does seem to be good for the price.

However, I have noticed a significant speed increase over my old nVidia Vanta when using general 2d applications. It makes light work of Windows XP's themes, and effects like drop-shadows on menus no longer slow my PC down like they used to.

If you've got plenty of money, go for one of the GeForce 4 Ti range of cards - you will get the best performance there. If you live in the real world with the rest of us and can't justify that kind of expenditure, then get this card. It does it's job, and does it well, it is easy to install (nVidia's drivers are superb) and even comes with it's own over clocking utility so you can get every last drop of performance out of it.

All I need do now is get a PC that can keep up with it!

I bought this card having bought a new computer as a student and so having my budget restricted somewhat. Although wanting a Ti series I found myself "stuck" with getting a low-end GeForce 4 which I thought would struggle with a lot of the newer games.

I wasn't entirely wrong, but I wasn't entirely right either. After playing games such as Next Generation Tennis, Warcraft 3, Command and Conquer Generals and IGI 2, I found that this card managed modern games quite happily, albeit usually at 640x480 or 800x600 and often with medium detail levels.

Older games, usually year 2000 and older, are managed with aplomb. Many games I could play at 1024x768 or even higher with the detail level cranked up to full. For a card that cost me relatively so little, I was pleasantly surprised.

However, everything has its bad side and the MX440SE is no exception. This card has one serious issue - compatibility. You will find a lot of developers have found issues with the MX series, or more specifically, it's drivers, but strangely not with other GeForce cards using the same graphics drivers. Some notable examples are Project IGI, Motorhead, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Monaco Racing Simulation 2. Hopefully this issue will be resolved in the drivers but with Nvidia's attitude towards customer relations (the "just ask your dealer, we don't wanna know" attitude), this probably won't come anytime soon.

Otherwise though, this card is one I'd highly recommend. It will work with the vast majority of games that you buy, it's just that compatibility is lower in comparison to other cards on the market.