THE TWO NEW graphics chips from NVIDIA we're looking at today, previously code-named NV18 and NV28, ought to look mighty familiar. They're essentially chips from the GeForce4 lineup—both MX and Ti—with a new AGP interface grafted on. Oddly enough, these new AGP 8X-capable GeForce4 chips only come in two flavors: GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP 8X and GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP 8X. (Catchy names, eh?)

NVIDIA has also taken this opportunity to tweak the clock speeds of these GeForce4 chips, so they should be a little bit faster overall, even without AGP 8X support.

By my count, this newest GeForce4 MX is the eighteenth incarnation of the original GeForce GPU, and the new Ti 4200 is the seventh GeForce3-derived product. Not counting Quadros. Mighty familiar, indeed.

So the questions are: What does the move to AGP 8X get you? What about the additional clock speed? Can these latest revisions of NVIDIA's aging GPUs keep pace with ATI's new Radeons? Keep reading to find out.