THG Graphics Card Buyer's Guide

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Older NVIDIA Models

With the chip internally codenamed NV34, NVIDIA brought DirectX 9 to the low-cost market segment, replacing the outdated GeForce 4 MX line (DirectX 7). Like its bigger siblings, it features complete DirectX 9 support. However, NVIDIA reduced the number of pixel pipelines to four and didn't give the chip the modern memory interface of the bigger models. Instead, it uses the time-tested solution from the GeForce 4 Ti generation. The vertex shader performance is also reduced relative to higher-end models. The chip has a transistor count of about 45 million and is produced on a 0.15µ process.

In light of the very limited performance and the only moderate clock speeds, DirectX 9 support seems to be more of a paper feature than a real boon here. In practice, the chip is simply too slow for complex DirectX 9 calculations in resolutions of 1024x768 and above. Despite this, the chip is still quite a good performer for an entry-level card. This is due to the memory interface, the multi sampling FSAA, and the average (trilinear) filtering performance, inherited from the GeForce 4 TI cards. Beware of non-Ultra parts, though, as some of them are only equipped with much slower 64 bit memory modules.

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This chip carries the internal designation NV31 and is produced on a 0.13µ process. It was meant to be the successor to the highly successful GeForce 4 Ti 4200 line. Shortly after its introduction near the beginning of 2003, NVIDIA improved the Ultra version of the card; thanks to the switch to a flip-chip design, NVIDIA was able to increase the clock speed by another 50 MHz to 400 MHz. The previous Ultras were then supposed to be sold as standard chips, but whether or not this was always the case is hard to tell. By now all of these remnants should be off the shelves, but there is no guarantee that the old chips might not still be found on Ultra cards. Prospective buyers should therefore keep an eye on the clock speeds. If your card only runs at a clock speed of 350 MHz, it still carries the older version of the chip.

From a technological perspective, this DirectX 9 card features all the functionality of its bigger brother, such as Color Compression, fast (adaptive) anisotropic filtering and multi-sampling FSAA. Only the number of pixel pipelines fell victim to the "red pencil," leaving just four. Also, the card features a 128 bit memory interface instead of the high-frequency 128 bit DDR II memory of the NV30 (FX 5800) or the 256 bit memory of the NV35 (FX 5900).