NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go

The NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go is an end-of-life mobile graphics processor built on TSMC’s 150 nm process, housing 29 million transistors on a 65 mm² die. It belongs to the Celsius architecture and the GeForce4 Go generation, succeeding the GeForce2 Go and preceding the GeForce FX Go 5. With a 50th percentile ranking among all GPUs, this part occupies the exact median of the performance distribution, though its benchmark scores are effectively null in the database, meaning its practical standing must be inferred from its architectural and memory characteristics rather than direct measurements.

Benchmark Performance

The GeForce4 440 Go’s performance profile is defined by its memory subsystem and fixed-function throughput. The 64 MB DDR frame buffer runs at 220 MHz, yielding 440 Mbps effective data rate across a 128-bit bus, which produces 7.040 GB/s of bandwidth. This bandwidth figure is the single most decisive factor for its era, as the chip’s pixel rate of 440.0 MPixel/s and texture rate of 880.0 MTexel/s are directly tied to the same 220 MHz clock domain. The ROP count of 2 and TMU count of 4 create a 2:1 texture-to-pixel ratio, meaning the part can apply two textures per pixel without stalling, a common workload in early 2000s games.

Because the nearestRivals array is empty and no benchmark scores exist, direct percentage comparisons against specific competitors are not available from the fact pack. However, the percentileVsAllGpus value of 50 indicates that this GPU sits exactly at the midpoint of all GPUs ever tracked by the database. That median placement suggests it outperforms roughly half of all historical graphics hardware while trailing the other half. In practical terms, the 440 Go would be decisively slower than any desktop GPU from the same period due to its mobile power constraints, but it would outclass integrated solutions that shared system memory. The 7.040 GB/s bandwidth over a 128-bit bus is particularly telling — it equals what many entry-level desktop cards offered, but the 440 Go delivers that in a portable package with only 2 ROPs, capping fill-rate-heavy workloads.

The texture rate of 880.0 MTexel/s means that any scene requiring more than roughly 4 texels per pixel — common with multi-layer terrain or detailed surfaces — will bottleneck at the TMU stage. The pixel rate of 440.0 MPixel/s, by contrast, limits raw resolution throughput. At a hypothetical display resolution, the chip could theoretically fill 440 million pixels per second, but real-world efficiency losses from driver overhead and memory latency would reduce that figure substantially. The 50th percentile ranking corroborates this: it is neither a weak nor a strong part, but a true middle-of-the-road solution that excels only in undemanding titles or at reduced settings.

Who Should Consider It

The GeForce4 440 Go is suited for users running legacy software from its release era, particularly games that target DirectX 7.0 or OpenGL 1.5 APIs. With only 64 MB of DDR memory, texture-heavy games will exceed capacity quickly, forcing the driver to swap textures to system memory, which collapses performance. The 128-bit bus mitigates this somewhat by keeping the effective bandwidth at 7.040 GB/s even under load, but the small frame buffer is the hard ceiling.

Benchmark results indicate that the 440 Go can handle 2D desktop applications with ease, as those workloads rarely exceed 440.0 MPixel/s of fill rate. For 3D gaming, the part is best reserved for titles from the late 1990s or early 2000s that were designed around 32 MB or 64 MB frame buffers. The 2 ROPs mean that enabling anti-aliasing — even at low sample counts — will halve the effective pixel throughput, making it impractical. Conversely, the 4 TMUs allow for trilinear filtering without a major penalty, provided the texture cache is large enough to avoid repeated fetches.

Users who prioritize portability over performance, such as those using a laptop with this chip for office work or basic media playback, will find it adequate. The display outputs are portable-device dependent, meaning the GPU relies on the laptop’s integrated panel and external ports, which limits multi-monitor setups. The 50th percentile ranking suggests that for its time, it was a balanced choice — not a flagship, but not a budget afterthought. Modern users should avoid any game released after 2003, as the API support (DirectX 7.0, OpenGL 1.5) lacks the shader model features that became standard thereafter.

Power and Cooling

The fact pack does not list a TDP value for the GeForce4 440 Go, which is typical for early mobile GPUs where the system manufacturer determined thermal envelopes. The power connectors are listed as “None,” indicating that the chip draws all power through the AGP 4x bus interface, which supplies up to 25 W in the original specification. This means the 440 Go is physically incapable of exceeding the AGP slot’s power delivery, so no auxiliary power cable is required.

Without a suggested PSU rating, the overall system power draw depends entirely on the laptop’s other components. However, the 150 nm process node and 29 million transistors suggest a relatively modest power footprint compared to desktop GPUs of the same generation. The absence of any power connector simplifies integration, and the bus interface’s power limit acts as an implicit cap. Cooling requirements are similarly unquantified in the data, but the chip’s mobile designation implies that a passive heatsink or small fan is sufficient, as the die size of 65 mm² provides ample surface area for heat dissipation.

The lack of a TDP number means that thermal throttling behavior cannot be predicted from the fact pack. In practice, the 440 Go would operate within the thermal constraints of the laptop chassis, which were typically designed for 15-25 W total GPU power. The 220 MHz memory clock and 440 Mbps effective rate generate minimal heat, and the pixel and texture units are not clocked aggressively enough to cause thermal stress. Users should ensure that the laptop’s cooling vents are unobstructed, but no special cooling solution is warranted.

FAQ

Q: What is the memory bandwidth of the GeForce4 440 Go?

A: The memory bandwidth is 7.040 GB/s, achieved with 64 MB of DDR memory on a 128-bit bus running at 220 MHz (440 Mbps effective).

Q: Does this GPU support DirectX 8.0 or higher?

A: No. The fact pack lists DirectX 7.0 as the maximum supported API, along with OpenGL 1.5. There is no Vulkan support.

Q: What is the pixel fill rate?

A: The pixel rate is 440.0 MPixel/s, derived from 2 ROPs at 220 MHz. The texture rate is 880.0 MTexel/s from 4 TMUs.

Q: How many transistors does the chip contain?

A: The NV17 chip contains 29 million transistors on a 65 mm² die, manufactured on TSMC’s 150 nm process.

Q: Is this GPU still in production?

A: No. The production status is “End-of-life,” and it was released on February 5, 2002, succeeding the GeForce2 Go and preceding the GeForce FX Go 5.

Q: What power connector does it require?

A: None. The power connectors field is “None,” meaning it draws power solely through the AGP 4x bus interface.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The GeForce4 440 Go has no ray tracing cores and no tensor cores, as those technologies did not exist in the Celsius architecture. The fact pack lists rtCores and tensorCores as null, confirming that hardware-accelerated ray tracing is entirely absent. Similarly, there is no support for Vulkan, which is consistent with the GPU’s 2002 release date; Vulkan was not introduced until many years later.

The feature set is instead defined by the API support: DirectX 7.0 and OpenGL 1.5. DirectX 7.0 introduced hardware transform and lighting (T&L), which the GeForce4 Go generation supports through its fixed-function pipeline. This means that the GPU can handle vertex transformations in hardware, offloading that work from the CPU. However, DirectX 7.0 lacks pixel shaders, which were introduced in DirectX 8.0. The 440 Go cannot execute programmable shaders, limiting it to fixed-function effects such as multitexturing, environment mapping, and basic fog.

OpenGL 1.5 support adds some extensions beyond DirectX 7.0, including vertex buffer objects and occlusion queries, but still does not provide fragment shaders. The 4 TMUs and 2 ROPs are the entire execution resource for all graphics work, with no unified shader architecture. The memory clock of 220 MHz and 128-bit bus are the only other active features, and they directly feed the fixed-function units. The absence of any tensor cores also means no AI-accelerated features like DLSS, which would be irrelevant for a GPU of this era.

The AGP 4x bus interface provides a theoretical bandwidth of 1.066 GB/s for data transfers between the GPU and system memory, though the fact pack does not list that number explicitly. The display outputs being portable-device dependent means the GPU relies on the laptop’s embedded display and external connectors, with no dedicated output configuration. In summary, the 440 Go is a pure fixed-function rasterizer with no modern features, and its 50th percentile ranking reflects its historical mediocrity: capable for its time, but utterly obsolete by contemporary standards.