The GeForce4 MX
The GeForce4 MX chip, also know as the NV17, is the new low-end GPU from NVIDIA, and it's an intriguing combination of technology culled from the GeForce2, GeForce3, and GeForce4 Ti. The fastest GF4 MX variant will be the GF4 MX 460, clocked at 300MHz with 64MB of DDR memory at 275MHz (550MHz DDR). From there, it gets hazy. The GF4 Ti 440 will also use DDR memory, and it will run somewhat slower than the 460. The GF4 420 will be mated with plain ol' SDRAM.

The strangest thing about the GeForce4 MX is that its 3D rendering core is ripped directly from its predecessor, the GeForce2 MX. The GF4 MX has two pixel pipelines capable of laying down two pixels per clock, and it has a fixed-function T&L engine. There aren't any pixel or vertex shaders in sight (unless you count the GeForce2's register combiners as primitive pixel shaders, I suppose). In terms of 3D technology, the GF4 MX is significantly less advanced than the GeForce3 or the Radeon 8500.

It's possible NVIDIA might try to implement a software vertex shader. DirectX 8 has its own set of routines to handle vertex shader programs on the CPU if no vertex unit is present. NVIDIA might choose to write its own, highly optimized software vertex shader—perhaps making some use of the GF4 MX's fixed-function T&L unit—to help improve performance. However, the fact remains: the GeForce4 MX lacks a vertex shader.

And pixel shaders can't really be emulated.

Beyond that, the NV17 does include some worthwhile new tech, like the Lightspeed Memory Architecture bits lifted from the GF3/GF4 Ti. The one big modification to LMA for NV17 is that two of the four memory controllers in the crossbar config are eliminated. Those controllers are paired up with rendering pipelines, and the NV17 has only two pipes. Even so, with Z compression, occlusion detection, and fast DDR memory, the GF4 MX 460 ought to bring a monster fill rate to the party. If all you want to do is push pixels in DirectX 7-class games, the NV17 will certainly do so.

The GF4 MX also lifts the antialiasing and display units from the GF4 Ti, so the chip will include one of the better AA implementations around, plus excellent dual-display output capabilities and the nView feature set.

The one piece of unique technology in the NV17 is a nod to the fact the NV17 will find its way into lots of laptop PCs. The chip includes a full MPEG2 decoder, so DVD playback should require almost no CPU overhead. NVIDIA says they left the MPEG2 decoder out of the GF4 Ti because big, fat desktop PCs with GF4 Ti cards don't need much help with DVD playback. Makes sense to me.

What doesn't make sense to me is why in the world NVIDIA is introducing this product, with this 3D rendering pipeline, at the beginning of 2002. One would expect a "GeForce4 MX" to include a cut-down version of the GeForce3/4 rendering pipeline, perhaps with two pixel shader/rendering pipes and a single vertex shader. Instead, we're getting a card that's incapable of taking advantage of all of the new 3D graphics programming techniques NVIDIA pioneered with the GeForce3.

With every GF4 MX that NVIDIA sells, the installed base for yesterday's 3D technology will grow, and resistance against truly ground-breaking games and other software will be strengthened. Not only that, but attaching the "GeForce4" name to a chip with a GeForce2 MX rendering core seems deceptive to me, especially since the correlation between the GeForce2 and the GeForce2 MX was pretty tight.

Yes, the GF4 MX will be fast; it will have nice dual-display capabilities; and it will be cheap. But this cheap and easy date will be a nightmare the morning after.