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JimiH
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OC questions for GeForce 4 MX 440

Tue Mar 18, 2003 12:04 pm

I will soon be playing with my video card (see sig below) and in doing some homework have found out about Coolbits, which supposedly works with all cards that have Nvidia chipsets. Now Coolbits, from the screen shots that I have seen (at tweaktown.com, IIRC) has adjustments for the card processor speed and the card memory speed. My board allows speed, and voltage adjustments for the AGP. Am I right in my understanding that Coolbits will speed up the goings on inside the card iteself, but it will not speed up the communitcation between the main CPU and the card? Then, if I speed up the AGP, I will gain some extra performance there too, right, since I will increase the speed of communication between the main cpu and the video card? Any help you can give in understanding this will be appreciated. Thanks.
PC 1-- P4 2.8GHz, ASUS P4G800-V, 1.5 G 3200 3
50w psu, WD 120 gig HD, ATI 9600SE, XP Home w/SP2
****************
PC2-- XP 2100B (at 2.1 GHz, 175 MHz FSB) Epox 8RDA, 512 MB Corsair Value PC 3200, WD 40 G, Lite-on CDRW
 
SpotTheCat
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Re: OC questions for GeForce 4 MX 440

Tue Mar 18, 2003 7:25 pm

JimiH wrote:
I will soon be playing with my video card (see sig below) and in doing some homework have found out about Coolbits, which supposedly works with all cards that have Nvidia chipsets. Now Coolbits, from the screen shots that I have seen (at tweaktown.com, IIRC) has adjustments for the card processor speed and the card memory speed. My board allows speed, and voltage adjustments for the AGP. Am I right in my understanding that Coolbits will speed up the goings on inside the card iteself, but it will not speed up the communitcation between the main CPU and the card? Then, if I speed up the AGP, I will gain some extra performance there too, right, since I will increase the speed of communication between the main cpu and the video card? Any help you can give in understanding this will be appreciated. Thanks.
you do not need a lot of communication between graphics card and rest of the computer. you won't see any gains there unless you are on a 2x platform, which I doubt you are.

but you will see higher benchmarks if you o/c
 
Austin
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Fri Mar 21, 2003 7:34 pm

8) GF4MX is based on GF2 technology, pretty old now and not a good match for your powerful XP2100+. You should get a decent perf increase by raising the core and RAM speed of the gfx card, rem to use small increases and test thoroughly at each setting for visual glitches and general stability. When you find the limits, back off a couple of notches. O/c'ing the FSB to raise the AGP speed really isn't worth it esp since your CPU is much more capable than your gfx card. If you want to gain gaming perf the gfx card is the most critical part and there's no substitute for at least a Radeon8500 or GF4TI4200 which are the minimum you should ideally use.
 
JimiH
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Posts: 181
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Location: Ohio

Fri Mar 21, 2003 9:25 pm

Thank for the info Austin. I knew I wasn't getting much of a card, I just wanted a "starter"...my budget did not allow me to go for a high end card. This is my first build, and I want to learn as much as possible from it.

So, if I had a high end card, would an increase in the AGP speed give any kind of a performance increase? At my present level of understanding, I see the CPU handing the video work off to the card, at what 30 to 50 times a second, and the real work being done by the card. Is that an accurate, if simple representation of what happens? If so, it would make sense that speeding up the AGP would not really be worth it.

I have looked high and low for a good explanation of how video cards work and how they interact with the CPU, but haven't really come across one. Either they are too simplistic, or they dive in real deep, like anantech.com, and lose me. If you, or anyone else can point me to a good, wholistic explanation of video cards, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.
PC 1-- P4 2.8GHz, ASUS P4G800-V, 1.5 G 3200 3

50w psu, WD 120 gig HD, ATI 9600SE, XP Home w/SP2

****************

PC2-- XP 2100B (at 2.1 GHz, 175 MHz FSB) Epox 8RDA, 512 MB Corsair Value PC 3200, WD 40 G, Lite-on CDRW
 
Austin
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Location: Birmingham ENGLAND (some say Mars, or was it Uranus)

Sat Mar 22, 2003 8:30 am

:wink: GF4MX are good starter cards and now very cheap to boot, if gaming is important you'll def want something more capable in the near future. The AGP bus works at 66mhz but with AGP4x it's effectively at 266mhz and AGP8x it's at 533mhz, there's only about 10% perf diff on most cards between using AGP1x (66mhz) and AGP8x (533mhz) and virtually nothing (< 1%) between AGP8x and AGP4x and that's on the top end cards too.

8) The modern gfx cards (inc GF4MX) do most of the work themselves and hardly rely on the CPU for gfx processing, hence the AGP speed is only really used when a card needs more gfx RAM for which the AGP Aperture allows some main memory to stand in if needed. So basicly there's really no benefit to o/c'ing the AGP from 66mhz and can sometimes lead to instability.

:D Best gains come from o/c'ing the gfx card and/or CPU which ever is more limiting. On a Duron 1ghz with a GF4TI4600 you'll only really gain from o/c'ing the CPU as it's holding the gfx card back, with a P4 2.6ghz and a GF4MX440 you need to eek out every extra bit if speed from the gfx card as it's severely holding you back. On an AthlonXP2000+ with a GF4TI4200 it's a pretty nice match so gains will be good by o/c'ing both! Never hurts to o/c but for gaming o/c'ing both CPU & gfx card is only really worth it if both are a nice match. If your gfx card and CPU aren't well matched you'll find it's better to have the gfx card more powerful than the CPU as you can up the res, up the detail or use AA&AF to help use up some of the untapped gfx card potential.

:( No links come to mind but do try a search at TR or some of the other review sites.
 
JimiH
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Joined: Wed Dec 04, 2002 8:50 pm
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Sun Mar 23, 2003 12:28 pm

Austin, thanks for taking the time to educate me about this; much appreciated. :D
PC 1-- P4 2.8GHz, ASUS P4G800-V, 1.5 G 3200 3

50w psu, WD 120 gig HD, ATI 9600SE, XP Home w/SP2

****************

PC2-- XP 2100B (at 2.1 GHz, 175 MHz FSB) Epox 8RDA, 512 MB Corsair Value PC 3200, WD 40 G, Lite-on CDRW

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