# NVidia Geforce4 MX 440 sucks. Need advice for replacing.

## Tin

Hello.

I bought a computer a while ago (around 2002)

It is a pentium 4 2.4 Ghz with 1Gb memory and I am very happy with it and gentoo, especially for such an old machine.

The only annoying stuff is that the 3D board Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 AGP 8x is really slow, and I am a bit pissed off that I am blocked with nvidia-drivers 96.xx and cannot go further with that board because it is not supported anymore.

I am using it with one lcd 1280x1024 monitor and one old tv.

I am using one display for each screen

(monitor is display :0.0 and tv is display :0.1)

so I can launch movies on the tv for the children while going on surfing with the monitor.

The pc is very slow when having to show flash web pages and when I look at result of the command "top" I see that X is taking often between 30 and 50% cpu, which I guess is because of software rendering.

When I run only glxgears, I got 135 FPS, and during it is running, top tells me that glxgears is taking 70% cpu and X 30%

I don't want to replace this desktop if it is possible to enhance its performance by replacing only the graphic board.

Do you have any advices, taking into account that I want to keep this two-screen config (with one X client, one K menu, one taskbar on each screen) ?

I guess it would be even better to have a very good board for THAT kind of old computer, means probably second hand stuff  :Smile: 

Do you have any ideas of boards sold one or two or three years ago, running with agp, and which were at that time DAMN good ?

Keeping Nvidia, or going to ati ?

Thank you very much for your advices  :Smile: 

[edit]

I am asking this here for two reasons :

1) I have no technical knowledge at all concerning graphic stuff, so every seller could sell me any crap

2) If some of you remember their old graphic boards for which they were VERY satisfied, their advices are highly valuable for me, because it is real experience with linux compatibility and drivers efficiency

[/edit]

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## agent_jdh

I've got an AGP GeForce 7600GT 256MB card which is about as good as it gets for AGP.  Still a perfectly usable card.

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## eccerr0r

I had a GeForce4 MX 420 AGP with my Athlon XP2200+ before it croaked.  It was getting fairly respectable glxgears (IIRC around 900+) and other graphics scores for its age and being bottom-of-the-line.  I was using the old nvidia-drivers.  The question is, what are you trying to do with the video card?  I've found that the GF4MX420 to be sufficient for most stuff, with the notable exception of playing World of Warcraft.  The board unfortunately died, so I had to resort back to an even older ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP which is nowhere near as fast.  It doesn't have respectable 3D either.  Movies that played fine on the GF4MX420 crawl on the ATI RageProTurbo.

Is Nvidia no longer providing updates for the legacy drivers? hmm...

Historically the choice poison would have to be NVidia (in terms of binary blobs).  It seemed to just 'work'.  The ATI poison historically was *really* bad.  However with reports that an opensource drivers available and the last catalyst driver *finally* fixing many World of Warcraft issues, I may have to change my stance on this.

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## Carnildo

My older computer (about the same age as yours) is running just fine with a GeForce 6600GT.  If you're buying a GeForce 6 series card, you'll want to avoid the 6800, 6800 GT, and 6800 Ultra cards because they've got a defect in the video acceleration circuitry.  You may also want to avoid the 6100, 6150, and 6200-series cards, as they're the extreme low-end cards from that era.

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## Tin

Wow, thank you very much for your valuable advices  :Smile: 

I will wait one week if any other people can add their experience and check the second hand market about the boards in your list.

What I do with the board is using both screens at the same time (mplayer on one screen and firefox on the other)

Concerning games, I am playing wakfu (and new version does not work anymore because legacy drivers 96.43.11, and 96.43.13 don't work at all with the board, so for that game, I am stuck)

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## Evincar

 *agent_jdh wrote:*   

> I've got an AGP GeForce 7600GT 256MB card which is about as good as it gets for AGP.  Still a perfectly usable card.

 

++

You can still play quite a few games on it. Fully recommended, although I don't know if/for how much you can get it nowadays.

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## Tin

 *Evincar wrote:*   

>  *agent_jdh wrote:*   I've got an AGP GeForce 7600GT 256MB card which is about as good as it gets for AGP.  Still a perfectly usable card. 
> 
> ++
> 
> You can still play quite a few games on it. Fully recommended, although I don't know if/for how much you can get it nowadays.

 

I can get the 512Mb AGP one around 60 euros.

Sounds me good  :Smile: 

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## Evincar

 *Tin wrote:*   

>  *Evincar wrote:*    *agent_jdh wrote:*   I've got an AGP GeForce 7600GT 256MB card which is about as good as it gets for AGP.  Still a perfectly usable card. 
> 
> ++
> 
> You can still play quite a few games on it. Fully recommended, although I don't know if/for how much you can get it nowadays. 
> ...

 

Sounds very good, I think I paid like 75, for the 256 MB. I am not sure 512 MB will help you at all, but they can't hurt, so if the price is right, why not.

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## Tin

Last but not least, I can have

7600 GT AGP 256 Mb for 30 euros

7600 GT AGP 512 Mb for 60 euros

I will wait for the auction to finish for the 256Mb.

If the price stays below 25-30, I think I will buy it.

I think that having 512 instead of 256 Mb will not change much.

And with the price difference, I will buy a pentium 4 3Ghz to replace the 2.4 one.

Seems a good balance  :Smile: 

I read some tests about this board and they tell that the noise is important.

Is it ok if you work beside your desktop, or is really unconfortable ?

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## Evincar

 *Tin wrote:*   

> Last but not least, I can have
> 
> 7600 GT AGP 256 Mb for 30 euros
> 
> 7600 GT AGP 512 Mb for 60 euros
> ...

 

Doesn't your Mobo support Core2? Even the Pentium E5300 will be massively faster than any P4, and will draw a heck of a lot less current.

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## Tin

 *Evincar wrote:*   

>  *Tin wrote:*   Last but not least, I can have
> 
> 7600 GT AGP 256 Mb for 30 euros
> 
> 7600 GT AGP 512 Mb for 60 euros
> ...

 

I am not sure at all.

My notherboard is a Asus p4pe-x

And they speak only about

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> 478-pin surface mount, zero insertion force socket for the intel pentium 4 processor, with 800/533/400 MHz system bus that allows 6.4, 4.3 and 3.2 GB/s data transfer rates, respectively.
> 
> 

 

For me, it is like chinese XD

Another point is I read some tests about this board and they tell that the noise is important.

Is it ok if you work beside your desktop, or is really unconfortable ?

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## Evincar

Doh, 478 pins=No Core2, so you are S.O.L. here. The P4 is overall a dreadful chip, even by it's time standards, but if you are stuck with it. However keep in mind that there are several P4 with the same clock speed, so you should research a bit more on that (or look at the models available and ask here).

The GForcer 7600GT is not a particularly noisy one, unless you are looking for a very quiet system, it is OK.

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## Tin

Great, thank you very much for your help.

I found some P4 3.0 GHz which are 800MHz FSB which is the maximum FSB speed accepted for my mother board, and for 15 euros, it is ok for me  :Wink: 

I think that it is a very good upgrade of this desktop with that mother board when we think of its age  :Smile: 

Let's go  :Wink:  and again many thanks.

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