Editor's Note: As we were wrapping up this review, we learned that VisionTek is in financial trouble. Currently, the company is looking for a buyer rather than turning to liquidation to solve its problems. At this time, VisionTek is continuing to take orders, ship products, and honor rebates, according to a company rep. Buy at your own risk.

WHAT'S HOT: Priced at only $100, the Xtasy GeForce4 MX 420 is the second least expensive board on our chart. It performed a hair faster than the MSI G4MX420, which is based on the same NVidia chip and also costs $100.

WHAT'S NOT: Overall, the Xtasy GeForce4 MX 420 isn't a stellar performer, though it's fast enough for common business applications and for light-duty game playing. In most of our tests, it couldn't reach 60 frames per second, even at 1024 by 768 resolution using 16-bit color, our lowest test resolution and color depth. Frame rates dropped considerably--by about 80 percent, on average--when testing the board's mettle at the more demanding resolution of 1600 by 1280 with 32-bit color, making games virtually unplayable. The lukewarm performance may be partially attributed to its 64MB of SDRAM--all of the other cards we tested at the same time came equipped with faster DDR SDRAM.

WHAT ELSE: Our check of the Xtasy's antialiasing capabilities, running Unreal Tournament 2003 in the card's vendor-recommended Quincunx (five samples per pixel) mode, revealed minor improvements with jagged edges on moving objects.

To test image quality, a three-person panel watched demos of our test applications and observed each card's ability to render complex textures and to display colors and contrast. We saw little difference in image quality between this budget model and the faster, high-end cards.

This card's features list is exceptionally short: It comes bundled with color-calibration software and it offers partial hardware-based DirectX 8 support. Otherwise, the included S-Video-out port and software for playing DVD movies are common additions.

VisionTek provides a lifetime warranty on its graphics cards, in addition to 11 hours of weekday toll-free technical support--more than most vendors offer. Additional help is available via a large illustrated set-up poster--reassuring if you need guidance to install a new graphics card.

UPSHOT: Suitable for modest graphics needs, the bargain-priced Xtasy GeForce4 MX 420 is relatively slow and offers little beyond core features.

SUMMARY

VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 MX 420 $