I think Thief II would probably look better on the MX 440, but the 64-bit version is not really desirable. But since you have it, you may as well test it to see if it performs well enough for you. Its a directx 7 card, so I think no point installing directx 8.1 with it.

I haven't used Radeon 9550 so can't really comment on performance, but I know Radeons are less compatible than Geforce when it comes to older Win9x games.

You list at least one game that uses the paletted fog feature (Thief 2), which will for that reason look better on the MX440. The MX440 despite being only DX7 compatible in hardware would have shipped with drivers that were already built and tested against DX8 at least, so no reason to hold back there.

For any games built with DX9 in mind, the Radeon would be better - and it should be waay faster than the MX. Hard to say for sure with all the nonsense going on at the time (128- vs 64-bit bus, SE vs non-SE, etc.)...

thanks for all the answers so for now I'm sticking to mx 440. I'll keep searching for the 128bit of the mx440, though.

The MX460 is guaranteed 128 bit, and sometimes comes up for a reasonable price. I got mine for £25 not long ago.

Get a 128bit card, or use the 9550.
Palleted textures and table fog be damned.

There are registry work arounds for the fog anyhow.
A 64bit MX card is crap.

Yeah, the 9550 is faster than any Geforce MX given it's 128bit. The 128bit MX440 is also a solid choice for Windows 98. However the 64bit version is awful. The best use case for it if it's bottlenecked by the CPU so much that the anemic bandwidth doesn't matter. Ir in cases like Fallout 2 which is a 2D game locked to something like 11fps.

PS: I have decent memories with the MX200, which is also 64 bit and generally considered crap. It's still an upgrade compared to any 90s graphics card maybe aside of the highest of high end. Cards like this imho have their place, but for a main retro rig, you'll need something with more muscle.

I'd look for a Geforce3 Ti200 or Geforce4 Ti4200. But a 128bit MX440 is a good placeholder until you find one within your budget.

AxeMan wrote on 2026-01-21, 07:39:

thanks for all the answers so for now I'm sticking to mx 440. I'll keep searching for the 128bit of the mx440, though.

That's probably the best choice, especially if your CPU < 700Mhz.

RandomStranger wrote on 2026-01-21, 19:57:

Yeah, the 9550 is faster than any Geforce MX given it's 128bit. The 128bit MX440 is also a solid choice for Windows 98. However the 64bit version is awful. The best use case for it if it's bottlenecked by the CPU so much that the anemic bandwidth doesn't matter. Ir in cases like Fallout 2 which is a 2D game locked to something like 11fps.

PS: I have decent memories with the MX200, which is also 64 bit and generally considered crap. It's still an upgrade compared to any 90s graphics card maybe aside of the highest of high end. Cards like this imho have their place, but for a main retro rig, you'll need something with more muscle.

I'd look for a Geforce3 Ti200 or Geforce4 Ti4200. But a 128bit MX440 is a good placeholder until you find one within your budget.

Yeah I had a PCI MX200 that I used with my K6-2 back in the day. It was a significant upgrade from the SiS6236 that I had on that board, but that's a low bar.
I even carried it over to my Duron replacement system, but not for very long.
If the OP is using a PIII or faster it's well worth the time to source a 128bit card (should be <$20 US on eBay) or just use the 9550.
It's a MUCH better card than a 64-bit strangled POS.
People get so hung up on ATI being poor quality, or incompatible or having bad driver overhead and honestly it is WAY overblown in the real world.

Jasin Natael wrote on Yesterday, 15:39:

People get so hung up on ATI being poor quality, or incompatible or having bad driver overhead and honestly it is WAY overblown in the real world.

The Radeon 9550 is a good GPU. It's just not worth upgrading from the Geforce MX400 if the OP has a CPU < 700Mhz or really likes Direct X7 games, especially if those games use paletted fog effects. At best, it would give the same performance, at worst it would be a big step down in image quality.

On the other hand, if the OP has an Athlon XP or a P4 processor, or a 32 or 64bit version of the GF4MX and wants to play Direct X 9 games, then the 9550 is a good buy right now, especially compared the asking price for an AGP Geforce 5700 or 6600.

Of course an AGP FX 5950 Ultra, 6800 or Radeon 9800XT would also be great, but those are way up the price ladder these days.

douglar wrote on Yesterday, 18:18:

The Radeon 9550 is a good GPU. It's just not worth upgrading from the Geforce MX400 if the OP has a CPU < 700Mhz or really like […]
Show full quote

Jasin Natael wrote on Yesterday, 15:39:

People get so hung up on ATI being poor quality, or incompatible or having bad driver overhead and honestly it is WAY overblown in the real world.

The Radeon 9550 is a good GPU. It's just not worth upgrading from the Geforce MX400 if the OP has a CPU < 700Mhz or really likes Direct X7 games, especially if those games use palette fog effects. At best, it would give the same performance, at worst, it would be a big step down.

On the other hand, if the OP has an Athlon XP or a P4 processor, a 32 or 64bit version of the GF4MX and wants to play Direct X 9 games, then the 9550 is a good buy right now, especially compared the asking price for an AGP Geforce 5700 or 6600.

Of course an AGP FX 5950 Ultra, 6800 or Radeon 9800XT would also be great, but those are way up the price ladder these days.

Maybe. I could be wrong but I think a 700mhz PIII would be strangled by a 64bit MX440. They are quite gimped, even with DDR bandwidth.
I would be willing to wager that the Radeon would easily be 20-30% faster in most titles, if not more.

As far as the table fog support goes.....so what? It's like one game that he listed? And if that's a big concern you can do a registry hack in two minutes to allow it to be emulated.
Hell I'm fairly sure certain more recent drivers have a tick box for it.

douglar wrote on Yesterday, 18:18:

if the OP has a CPU < 700Mhz or really likes Direct X7 games

OP never said he has a <700MHz CPU. He said he got a new board that is an ASUS P4S800D-X. Having a 700MHz CPU in that would mean some serious underclocking. He probably runs a Pentium 4 between 2.8-3.2GHz. At first I thought he was this guy, but it's just someone with the same concept.

Jasin Natael wrote on Yesterday, 20:42:

Maybe. I could be wrong but I think a 700mhz PIII would be strangled by a 64bit MX440. They are quite gimped, even with DDR band […]
Show full quote

douglar wrote on Yesterday, 18:18:

The Radeon 9550 is a good GPU. It's just not worth upgrading from the Geforce MX400 if the OP has a CPU < 700Mhz or really like […]
Show full quote

Jasin Natael wrote on Yesterday, 15:39:

People get so hung up on ATI being poor quality, or incompatible or having bad driver overhead and honestly it is WAY overblown in the real world.

The Radeon 9550 is a good GPU. It's just not worth upgrading from the Geforce MX400 if the OP has a CPU < 700Mhz or really likes Direct X7 games, especially if those games use palette fog effects. At best, it would give the same performance, at worst, it would be a big step down.

On the other hand, if the OP has an Athlon XP or a P4 processor, a 32 or 64bit version of the GF4MX and wants to play Direct X 9 games, then the 9550 is a good buy right now, especially compared the asking price for an AGP Geforce 5700 or 6600.

Of course an AGP FX 5950 Ultra, 6800 or Radeon 9800XT would also be great, but those are way up the price ladder these days.

Maybe. I could be wrong but I think a 700mhz PIII would be strangled by a 64bit MX440. They are quite gimped, even with DDR bandwidth.
I would be willing to wager that the Radeon would easily be 20-30% faster in most titles, if not more.

As far as the table fog support goes.....so what? It's like one game that he listed? And if that's a big concern you can do a registry hack in two minutes to allow it to be emulated.
Hell I'm fairly sure certain more recent drivers have a tick box for it.

Radeon 9550 is AGP is 8x only, so that probably means that the OP has something > P3 600.

I did some testing here a few months ago -- Here is a 9550 vs a bunch of cheapo NV cards, most were 64Bit bus. The 9550 didn't start to really open a lead until faster CPUs and Direct X 8 work loads

Notes:
The 9550 has fairly low bandwidth for a 128Bit controller because it is SDRAM
The 64Bit MX cards with DDR often have similar bandwidth
The 9550 has a lot more compute power than the older NV cards and really pulls ahead where that is needed
Edit- I double checkecd the chips on the 9550 and they are DDR, no SRAM, so my grapfic has it labeled wrong

I have p4 2.6ghz northwood but the thing is; it is very hard to find a solid gpu in my country. There is a listing for a 128bit mx440 in one of the second hand apps but the seller doesn't respond to my questions so I'm waiting for him to answer.

My concerns with the 9550 is the compatibility issues. Does it run well with win98se and the games I mentioned? I have p4s800d-x motherboard and I had issues with the sound card (creative sound blaster 0060 when I try to install drivers it froze the system every while installing sb16 emulation drivers) so I'm scared of formatting the computer again. I put the sound card into a different pci slot and installed only the bare minimum drivers for the sound card. But every minute I'm more convinced that I should switch to 9550. It is a sapphire 256mb 9550.

I'm not looking for an overkill. Some of the animations are acting weird like super fast animations. Maybe it is because of the cpu. Should I look for a lower capacity cpu?

AxeMan wrote on Today, 08:44:

My concerns with the 9550 is the compatibility issues. Does it run well with win98se and the games I mentioned?

It's a good card for Win9x gaming.

If you're specifically worried about games which use table fog such as Thief 2, you can always dual boot Win9x and WinXP, and install Catalyst 7.11 drivers on the latter. Those drivers provide perfect table fog emulation, so you can play any problematic games under WinXP.

Radeon 9550 is always DDR. Never saw SDRAM versions. 256Mb version is most likely 128-bit, so drastically better than 440MX 64-bit.

Yes and could be obviously very easily overclocked to Radeon 9600/Pro GPU clock.

Ydee wrote on Today, 10:44:

Yes and could be obviously very easily overclocked to Radeon 9600/Pro GPU clock.

not any 9550, the crappy 256mb models come with slower ram

a model very popular here in Argentina was the GV-R955128D

guaranteed 9600pro overclock and sometimes came very close of the 9600XT

The Serpent Rider wrote on Today, 10:35:

Radeon 9550 is always DDR. Never saw SDRAM versions. 256Mb version is most likely 128-bit, so drastically better than 440MX 64-bit.

Here is my card-- https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/powercolor-r96-lc3

HWInfo v7.03 reports SDRAM, but the chips are Infineon hyb250256163ce-5 , so I'd say you are right, the chips are DDR.

If your CPU is => 700 Mhz and you like playing direct X 9 games, then a 128 bit Radeon 9550 is drastically better than a 440MX 64-bit.

If you already own a 440MX 64-bit card and your CPU is < 700 Mhz or you only want to play games from the quake 2 or direct X 7 families, then spending $40 for a Radeon 9550 might not make as much sense

(Curiously, looks like the card has options for low cost 64 and 32 bit memory builds, but this one is 128bit.)

douglar wrote on Today, 13:17:

Here is my card-- https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/powercolor-r96-lc3 […]
Show full quote

The Serpent Rider wrote on Today, 10:35:

Radeon 9550 is always DDR. Never saw SDRAM versions. 256Mb version is most likely 128-bit, so drastically better than 440MX 64-bit.

Here is my card-- https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/powercolor-r96-lc3

HWInfo v7.03 reports SDRAM, but the chips are Infineon hyb250256163ce-5 , so I'd say you are right, the chips are DDR.

If your CPU is => 700 Mhz and you like playing direct X 9 games, then a 128 bit Radeon 9550 is drastically better than a 440MX 64-bit.

If you already own a 440MX 64-bit card and your CPU is < 700 Mhz or you only want to play games from the quake 2 or direct X 7 families, then spending $40 for a Radeon 9550 might not make as much sense

(Curiously, looks like the card has options for low cost 64 and 32 bit memory builds, but this one is 128bit.)

all the DDR memorys are SDRAM, we just call them DDR