image tearing on GeForce 4 MX 440

[Hectone]

i recently bought this card for my 2.4 p4. it's not a bad card really. it doesn't have a cooling fan though which it does in the picture on the manual, mine only has a heat sink but doesn't feel hot or anything. anyway, after installing everything i watched a divx movie and noticed the image would tear so i went adjusted the card settings..no settings seemed to fix the problem. vsync and buffer settings are selected and i always keep my refresh rate at optimal. after 45 minutes or so i traced the problem to the fact that it happens when enabling 2 displays which are my monitor and tv. when i'm only using one display, tearing doesn't occur..except in tony hawk 3 but not when playing divx movies. the fact that it happens when both displays are enabled leads me to believe that it's a power issue. i'm using a 300w psu..anyone have any ideas or suggestions? it'd be appriciated, thanks for any help

[SaulTurnedPaul]

I don't think power is an issue with the FX line, unless you're running multiple hard drives, fans/lights, CD/DVD drives, etc. that are causing your power supply to strain. Two questions: Could you please post the brand of the product, and tell us if it is a 440 or a 440 SE.


Sean

[Hectone]

best data...440. i don't see anything about SE.

[GunHo]

After looking up the spec of your best data 440mx(google),It seems to match up with my MSI mx440 se-t.These are low end geforce cards with slower memory(mine was advertised as ddr sdram)They also do not come with fans.I have seen tearing in one game "battlefield 1942" but updating my drivers to 4403 seems to help.My nephew bought a Abit Siluro 440mx (he paid more for it) and it is MUCH better than mine.His memory is clocked much higher than mine by default and his has a fan...mine just a black heatsink.I only paid $50 for mine at a pc show,but for a few dollars more........nuff said

[SaulTurnedPaul]

My best guess would be somewhere along the lines of drivers, like GunHo mentioned. I know nothing about Powerware's Best Data line, so I don't know if that is a good thing or bad thing...

BTW, my eVGA MX440 SE doesn't have a fan either.


Sean

[F_A_L_C_O_N]

first if you havent allready deinstall old drivers and get the newest drivers from NVIDIA

as for the fan you can always add one yourself, check local comp shop they come in differenst sizes all the way down to 40 and even 30mm, the bigger is usually the better so if you have space you can slap on 60mm one

oh and the easiest way to slap fan on the heatsink is to get one that matches heatsinks size and then fit it with 4 screws through fans holes into the heatsink

[uart]

Yeah, I've also got one of those really cheap GF4 MX440-SE cards with slow SDRAM. Man this thing is quite noticaby slower than my old GF2 MX400!.

I think it's all down to the ram speed, the card just sucks with slow RAM. Download RivaTuner and try to bump up the memory clock a little. Dont even worry about the core clock for now (maybe later if you put on a fan), just concentrate on getting the memory going a little faster, that's what made a big improvement on my card.

[GunHo]

I installed a fan last night....removed a fan i had superglued to my old voodoo 3 2000. I've had riva tuner for sometime now,but would only bump the memory speed a little(my mx440 had the samsung 5ns memory,which i hear is the worst).The default speed for this card was 250/166(333) <--- i've seen no other mx440 clocked this slow.I'm now running at my nephews abit siluro mx440 default speed of 270/405..........so far so good 3dmark2001se score of 4613....
hectone........you may want to at least download riva tuner and see what clock settings you have,go from there.

K7s5a ver 3.1
xp1700 pal
Msi mx440 se-t
768 sdram pc133
Maxtor 7200 30 gig
sblive 4.1.....etc...

[uart]

The default speed for this card was 250/166(333) <--- i've seen no other mx440 clocked this slow.I'm now running at my nephews abit siluro mx440 default speed of 270/405

Hi GunHo, that's exactly the same as my card. When I bumped the memory clock up 190(380) it really seemed to make a very noticable improvement.

[GunHo]

Stewart...
Glad to see i didnt have some strange,one of a kind mx440.It's been running all day(just finished a couple of games in bf1942) and she's stable.