Comment by Lwrless
13 hours ago
I don't see my first GPU on there, it was the humble GeForce4 MX440. It could run almost any game I cared about for a surprisingly long time, even if it's not a true modern card. These days almost all my machines are on iGPUs baked into the CPU. There's way less fun for me, but they are a lot more compact at least.
The GeForce 4 generation as a whole, while being solid enough cards, were historically not interesting. They were just basic spec bumps over the GeForce 3. No new features or similar. And, critically, the 9700 Pro released the same year as the GeForce 4 and absolutely smoked the living shit out of it.
And the 4 MX versions were GeForce 2 MX based IIRC. 3 was expensive.
The MX440 allowed players that were playing games on id Tech 3 to finally play at high frame rates. I remember this card being all the rage back then in pro gaming circles for this reason.
The MX440 was an entry level budget card? If it was all the rage in pro gaming circles at the time that's really just a reflection of how poor pro gamers were back then rather than anything to do with the MX440 being particularly noteworthy. In fact looking back at old reviews, it was if anything a flop. Launch MSRP was too expensive for the performance it offered. Especially when it was a DX7 card surrounded by DX8 cards at almost the same price point (including Nvidia's own Ti4200 for just $50 more)
That will probably be my next GPU.
I'm on a 3060 currently and the changes in the 4xxx and 5xxx just aren't appealing to me. As soon as iGPUs get 3060 performance I'll probably switch. And they aren't far off.
The MX440 is a nearly 25 year old GPU, it performed somewhere between a Geforce 2 and GeForce 3 ti 200.
It was a good budget option those decades ago.
Yes the MX440 deserves to be on this list. More important than the GeForce2 imo.