NVIDIA GeForce4 4200 Go: Bringing mobile gaming to new heights

Performance - Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Serious Sam 2 - Little Trouble Extreme Quality 800x600x32 (aniso off) Desktop GeForce4 Ti 4200 Desktop GeForce4 MX 440 GeForce4 4200 Go Mobility Radeon 9000 117.7 78.7 59.0 55.6 | 0 | 24 | 47 | 71 | 94 | 118 | 141

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter paints a different picture of the GeForce4 4200 Go. Although the chip still performs better than the Mobility Radeon 9000, the performance gains the solution offers are not as impressive as those demonstrated in Unreal Tournament 2003. In addition, the desktop chips have no problem flexing their muscle and outperforming all the mobile solutions. We can attribute this to the nature of the Serious Sam 2 demo: it appears to be much more CPU and platform dependent than video card dependent. At 800x600x32, the GeForce4 4200 Go runs 6% faster than the Mobility Radeon 9000 but falls behind the desktop GeForce4 Ti 4200 by a whopping 99%.

Serious Sam 2 - Little Trouble Extreme Quality 1024x768x32 (aniso off) Desktop GeForce4 Ti 4200 Desktop GeForce4 MX 440 GeForce4 4200 Go Mobility Radeon 9000 98.8 52.7 46.5 43.2 | 0 | 20 | 40 | 59 | 79 | 99 | 119

At 1024x768x32, the GeForce4 4200 Go runs 8% faster than ATI's offering but both chips still fall a good deal behind the desktop chips.

Serious Sam 2 - Little Trouble Extreme Quality 1280x1024x32 (aniso off) Desktop GeForce4 Ti 4200 Desktop GeForce4 MX 440 GeForce4 4200 Go Mobility Radeon 9000 68.2 34.1 31.2 29.9 | 0 | 14 | 27 | 41 | 55 | 68 | 82

As the desktop GeForce4 MX 440 system begins to become video card limited, the performance difference between the GeForce4 4200 Go and the desktop MX card shrinks. The GeForce4 4200 Go still remains 4% faster than the Mobility Radeon 9000.

Serious Sam 2 - Little Trouble Extreme Quality 1600x1200x32 (aniso off) Desktop GeForce4 Ti 4200 Desktop GeForce4 MX 440 GeForce4 4200 Go Mobility Radeon 9000 48.5 23.9 22.7 21.9 | 0 | 10 | 19 | 29 | 39 | 49 | 58

The extreme quality setting of Serious Sam 2 brings the GeForce4 4200 Go to its knees at 1600x1200x32. Performance is more than half that of the desktop GeForce4 Ti 4200 but still remains 4% faster than the Mobility Radeon 9000.