Here is my review of this card on epinions.com. There it would be difficult
to find it, epinions is a commercial web site, and they dug it far, far
deep, so that nobody could ever find it. If you search for this Mad Dog
Predator card on epinions.com, your are led immediately to the merchant web
site to buy it, no sleasy so called "reviews", nice and easy. NET, GET A
MAD DOG CARD WITH OLIVE PCB, NOT RED ONE.
So, here you are:
STANDOUT IN A DULL WORLD WHERE EVERYTHING WORKS
Feb 17 '04 (Updated Feb 19 '04)
Author's Product Rating
Tow stars out of 5
Pros
Cheap, impressive specs and add-ons
Cons
Fuzzy picture, freezes after 2 hours of work, fan starts to roar after
1 month.
The Bottom Line
If shades to the right of vertical lines at >60Hz, or it freezes or
the fan is noisy, bring the card back. ATI Radeon9100 for $50-60 is a better
choice.
Full Review
Got this card from Office Max on December 9, 2003. The price was
right, the card had TV-out, two video-outs, one of which is
analogue/digital, 64 MB very fast DDR memory and all niceties of GF MX440-8X
chip, which is claimed to be faster than GF FX5200. MX440-8X does not
support DirectX-9 in hardware, however. Nice picture at 120 Hz in 768X1024
resolution.
The card kept freezing, however, while the rest of the computer was
still running (including Internet sharing, sound, printing). Sometimes after
2 minutes Windows could switch to VGA mode and give a diagnostics that there
are problems with video adapter. It was happening after 2 hours of work and
could be cured by re-starting the computer.
In February a terrible fan noise started. I went to Office Max and
they were kind enough to exchange it for a new card, same model, sealed in
plastic. Brought it home, tore the plastic and found a used board with dusty
heatsink. Plugged it in and here is this loud sound from the fan bearing
again (the serial # was different on the board, however)!
Conclusion: on cards with green-colored PCB and golden-anodized sink
watch for fan bearing logevity!
I brought the card back and Office Max gave me another one. Now it was
with a silver heat sink and red PCB. See a 128 MB version here:
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.primetek.com.hk/vga_MX440%208X%20DDR.html" target="_blank">http://www.primetek.com.hk/vga_MX440%208X%20DDR.html</a>
Plugged it in and after several re-starts with showing garbage on the
screen it came alive. The fan is quiet this time. However, there are shades
to the right of any vertical black, blue, red or yellow line or letter. I
checked my monitor replacing this card with Permedia-2 PCI (Video Blaster
Exxtreme), which is 8 years old: no shades at 100 Hz. This means that the
monitor is fine. Put back the Mad Dog, re-installed the recent NVidia
drivers - shades again! Hooked the DVI via a DVI-to-VGA adaptor: no
improvement. Do not know if this one was freezing after 2 hours, though.
Replaced it with another red-colored board (these, in contrast to
olive-colored, have a bar graph on the box, not a table, comparing
performance, and the box does not say "DVI-to-VGA adapter" included, which
is true). Same fuzzy text, dark picture. It crashes, if "fast writes" are
enabled in the BIOS of VIA KT400 motherboard from Biostar (M7VIT Pro).
Finally found in another Office Max the right box without the dreadful
bar graph and bought it! The text is razor sharp at 120 Hz, and I have a
21-inch HP P1100 ($120 + tax, after-lease on a computer show, can't beat
it). "Fast writes" are enabled without problem. Now typing this review
looking at it.
I am under the impression now that in case of this "budget" card
version (red board, 4 Samsung-343 memory chips, 4 memory positions vacant,
silver "Primetek" heat sink, no label "Made in Taiwan, smaller in length,
BIOS from January 2003), Mad Dog is collecting a non-standard grade of
product run from original equipment manufacturer, while better testing cards
are sold elsewhere. Or maybe the entire run is like that.
Their re-packaging of a used returned product and selling it as new
does not speak favorably of them either.
Mad Dog used to perform better in the past. Are they under financial
stress now?
Recommended
No
Amount Paid (US$): 34 after reb
____________________________________________________________________________
__________________
"Mike" <ma21217.RemoveThis@here.com> wrote in message
news:PIjYb.105$nI1.51@okepread05...
> If you buy a Generic brand of card, what kind of performance do you expect
> to get out of it? Nvidia doesn't make the card. They make the GPU,
> everything else used on the card is up to the manufacturer. If they use
> shitty components, then you've got a shitty card, even if it's a Geforce
FX
> 5950 Ultra GPU.
>
> --
> AMD Athlon 64 3200+
> MSI K8T NEO FIS2R
> Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2PRO matched pair
> PNY Verto GeForce FX 5900 SE
> Maxtor 160GB SATA 7200 8MB
> Emprex DVD Dual 8x DVDRW
> LG 16x DVD
> Antec TruePower PSU 350W
> Windows XP Home
> Microsoft Wireless Keyboard and Optical mouse
> Total Cost: $1556.94, All bought at Fry's Electronics
> at retail costs. Would have been cheaper if bought online.
>
> Try to beat that with the latest Intel crap!
> "K. W." <kuenw.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:b1edd11b.0402161211.5831b0a9@posting.google.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I got a Predator GF4 MX440 8X AGP card (MD-NV4408X)installed on my
> > AMD (nForce2 Ultra 400) PC with WinXP Pro. But the text looks so
> > muddy. There are light gray shades to the left of the texts, making
> > them hard to read. The convergence of the monitor is fine. With my old
> > GF2 MX400 card, the texts look sharp. Isn't that GF4 MX440 a better
> > card?!
> > Besides, the device manager identifies the card as: "NVIDIA GEForce4
> > MX 440SE with AGP8X." Isn't this an MX440 or MX440-8X card, why does
> > it say 440SE?
> >
> > Is this a hardware problem or software problem? Please help.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > K.W.
>
><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
>> Stay informed about: Why is text display so blur? Wrong chip type?? 
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