Taking A Closer Look

The first thing I noticed when I took the card out of the box was the fact that instead of having Abit's usual black PCB (Printed Circuit Board), the Siluro MX440 is dark blue. Colored PCBs appeal to case modders because many of them install window kits into their cases, which allows the inside mechanics of the PC to be seen by everyone passing by. Let's face it, a colored component would look much more attractive than a regular brown/green component. To complement the blue PCB, Abit also has an attractive silver heatsink/fan unit cooling the GPU. I found that because of its large size, the heatsink/fan unit is basically touching the first PCI device when installed. For optimal cooling performance, leave the top PCI slot empty.

The Siluro MX440 features a core clock speed of 275MHz, and a memory speed of 400MHz. There are four 16MB memory chips on the card, two on the front and two on the back. This gives a total of 64MB onboard DDR memory. The memory chips on the card are made by Samsung and are rated at 4ns. What this means is, in theory, the memory should be able to run at 500MHz without a problem. We'll get to overclocking a little later in the review though.

The card we received does not include a DVI connector, however, the slightly more expensive Abit Siluro MX440 VIO card includes not only a DVI connector, but video-in as well. The TV output that is included on the card supports resolutions of up to 1024x768, however, most televisions won't run at more than 800x600, or even 640x480.