Graphics Cards for Every Budget

Graphics on a Budget
If the VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600, VisionTek Xtasy 6564, and ATI RADEON 8500 cards are considered high-end cards, the VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440 and Guillemot Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 would be low-end technology (i.e., technology for those on a budget). Keep in mind that by buying a budget graphics card you're sacrificing many of the features found in the high-end boards. To keep costs down, card manufacturers cut corners and remove many features (e.g., TV-out, DirectX 8.0 support) that are commonplace on more expensive cards. Despite these cost-saving measures, a budget graphics card can offer decent performance at the lowest possible prices.

VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440
For all the unbridled genius behind the engineers at NVIDIA, sometimes the company's marketing strategy makes me wonder. Whereas NVIDIA offers the GeForce4 Ti 4600, easily the world's most powerful GPU, the company slaps us in the face with a sister GPU that NVIDIA calls the GeForce4 MX 440.

Forget the GeForce4 prefix; the GeForce4 MX 440 is actually a GeForce2 MX GPU-the same GeForce2 MX that we've relegated to backup boxes that occasionally run something moldy such as Quake II. The GPU is the same GeForce2 MX that you just shouldn't be buying, no matter how tempting the "GeForce4" name might be.

Sure, the Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440 has advantages over a vanilla GeForce2 MX card. NVIDIA has squeezed out some performance from the MX 440 GPU by bumping up the core clock speed to 270MHz and using a thinner 0.15-micron fabrication to keep the chip running cooler. VisionTek was kind enough to supply the card with 64MB of DDR RAM with an effective memory clock speed of 400MHz.

So what's the problem? The Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440 is yesterday's technology wrapped in a shiny package hoping to lure in suckers who think they're getting cutting-edge gear at bargain prices. Don't be misled-the entire GeForce4 MX line lacks the vertex and pixel shaders found in the real GeForce4. In other words, the GeForce4 MX 440 is missing all the cool stuff that games are finally starting to support.

Yes, the $149 price tag might attract impulse buyers. Yes, you'll be able to run your existing library of games at high resolutions and see decent performance. And yes, it has the DVD features you need to turn your PC into a home theater centerpiece. However, you shouldn't buy this card if you want your hardware to last you more than a year before you're forced to upgrade because the industry has passed you by.

Guillemot Hercules 3D Prophet 4500
Built around STMicroelectronics' KYRO II chip, Guillemot's Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 delivers a full 64MB of RAM and a unique architecture that strikes a strong, but ultimately crippling, balance between price and performance. The KYRO II chip in the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 is an AGP 2X part (as opposed to the current, faster AGP 4X standard) that uses SDR RAM clocked at 175MHz with a matching core clock speed. The chip also lacks a T&L engine. As a final indictment, the KYRO II features a slow 270MHz RAM Digital-to-Analog Converter (RAMDAC). Going on specifications alone, the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 looks more like yesterday's throwaway than a current contender. However, just this once, don't go on the specifications alone because the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 performs at least as well as high-quality graphics cards at a fraction of the price.

The KYRO II performs so well thanks to its tile-based rendering architecture. Rather than filling in every polygon on a given scene, the KYRO II draws only visible objects-usually the polygons that display in the foreground. By breaking up a scene into multiple blocks (all rendered independently), the KYRO II can perform all Z-calculations (checking the forward-or Z-location of a given polygon relative to the other onscreen polygons) internally. As a result, the KYRO II doesn't waste valuable time traveling across the memory bus to access an external Z-buffer. This feature frees up processing power because the chip doesn't have to waste cycles drawing objects that end up being obscured anyway.

To test just how this unique architecture compensates for the low specifications, I installed the card on a mid-range 600MHz Pentium III Windows-based system using the included 7.89 reference drivers. Rather than taking the NVIDIA approach and spreading configuration options across multiple tabs, the KYRO II control panel lets you configure the card's settings (e.g., disabling VSync, enabling FSAA) from just two tabs (one for Direct3D and the other for OpenGL).

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