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- Date:
- Monday , March 04, 2002
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Sean Quinn
- Google +1
VisionTek GeForce4 Ti4600
Now that the retail cards are for sale with the pre-purchase orders filled, we dig into the VisionTek version of what is surely going to be one of the best selling GPUs of all time.
Introduction
VisionTek has done it again. Just as they were the first to offer their GeForce3 and GeForce3 Ti based video card, they are also the first to offer one with their new GeForce4 Ti4600. There has been some recent confusion, however, with PNY's recent announcement of being first to retail with a GF4 Ti based card. While PNY may be the first to market with an official press release, VisionTek is actually first to market with the actual hardware. Their cards are being sold as we speak and all the preorders were shipped and most delivered last week.
Unless you've been cut off from all civilization, you've most likely heard of the GeForce4. If not, it's imperative that you read our GeForce4 Preview article before continuing on with this review. To sum it up, there are two different GeForce4 series: the MX and the Ti. It's important to know the differences between these two chips as it could possibly shape your future buying decision. The GF4 MX series is based on the NV17 core and the GF4 Ti series is based on the NV25 core. For reference, the GeForce3 is the NV20 core and the GeForce2 is the NV15 core. This information, I think, helps put into perspective where each chip lies in the grand scheme of things. The GeForce4 Ti 4600 is clocked at 300MHz core / 650MHz memory, while the Ti 4400 is clocked at 275MHz core / 600MHz memory; the Ti 4200's speeds have not been announced yet, but they will most likely be 250MHz core / 460MHz memory. In this review, we're going to be taking on the high end NV25 core. More specifically, the Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600 from VisionTek.
VisionTek has risen very quickly in that they lead NVIDIA retail chipset board sales in the USA. They have moved from the OEM market to the top spot in the retail market in what seems like overnight! Of course, being the manufacturer of reference boards for NVIDIA in the past might also have something to do with that. Being able to be first to market with these products, VisionTek acquires a lead over most video card manufacturers. Also factoring into the ability to get to market first is being the only card high-end retail card manufacturer in the marketplace that builds all of their cards right here in the good old US of A.
VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600 Specifications
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 GPU
• AGP 4x compatible with fast writes
• 128MB DDR memory
• 300MHz core clock / 650MHz DDR memory clock
• 350MHz RAMDAC
• DirectX and OpenGL API support
• VGA, DVI, TV In/Out connectors
• 1.23 trillion operations/sec.
• 136 Million triangles/sec. setup
• 10.4GB/sec. memory bandwidth
• 256-bit 3D and 2D graphics accelerator
• NVIDIA nView™ display technologies
• Lightspeed Memory Architecture™ II
• Accuview Antialiasing™
• High Definition Video Processing Engine
In addition to the card, the package contains an installation guide and CD, drivers, demos, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and Cyberlink's PowerDVD and PowerDirector.
The Card
Here are a couple of pictures of the front and back side of this card. What you will probably notice first is the new memory packaging. The GeForce4 Ti introduces BGA (Ball Grid Array) DDR RAM. This is basically a newer and more advanced RAM packaging, one that allows the RAM to be clocked higher and run cooler. This is a very welcome technology, as new cards are now reaching very high memory speeds. The GF4 Ti 4600's memory runs at 325MHz (650MHz DDR), the highest on any video card as of writing this. I researched the part number on the memory at Samsung's site and found that it is rated at 3.3ns (1000/3.3 = 303MHz). The part number of the chips on this board is K4D26323RA-GC2B. This number is a bit different then what we are used to seeing on some other memory chips. Here, you cannot tell directly what speed the chips are rated at. Looking at a .PDF, I found that the "2B" marking at the end is a code for the speed rating of these chips. According to the product documentation, they are 2.8 volt chips running at 3.3ns*. They run so cool that a heatsink isn't even needed for them, even at this high speed!
*Update 3/06/02
We have received more then a few emails lately regarding the speed of the RAM. We shot an email off to VisionTek and got a prompt response that I believe is correct. If you look at our memory chip picture above you will see the last two characters in the string "K4D26323RA-GC2B" the "2B". That is the part that on these Samsung chips tells us at what speed the chips are. Looking at Samsung's PDF on this RAM here they do not list "2B" however, they have "2A", "33" and "36" The "2A" is rated at 350Mhz and at 3.3ns at 2.8v THAT is the closest thing I could find until VisionTek responded with this: "I believe they changed their marking spec without updating the data sheet. Rather than using the 2A, they switched to the normal convention of marking the speed in nanoseconds which is 2.8 nanoseconds for 350 MHz." -John Malley The difference between that last character being a "B" or an "8" is simply almost a state of opinion! It is definitely not the easiest thing to tell. However what John says makes a hell of a lot more sense then what I said earlier. If it were 3.3ns then our max speed of the RAM would be 303Mhz as we indicated above, so the fact they would have it clocked at 325Mhz would have meant they were overclocking the RAM stock, which just isn't something they would do. And the fact I was able to overclock without RAM Sinks to 700Mhz just didn't make sense at 3.3ns either. So is that a "28" as in 2.8ns? I believe so. Thanks John for the information!
You will notice the BLORB on this card. This is not what the retail cards will have. My card is a pre-release card and does not use the NVIDIA HSF design that the retail cards carry. Check out the GF4 Technology Preview for a look at the HSF that is being delivered with the card now.
In the second picture, you can see the outline of where the HSF is placed. Notice the elongated VGA port in the third picture. I don't have a specific answer on why it is, but I'm assuming it is extra shielding for better 2D image quality. This card has the standard VGA port, S-Video Out, and DVI Port. Remember that with NVIDIA's new nView technology, you can use a DVI to VGA adapter to fully support dual VGA monitors with this card. The DVI to VGA adapter is not included in VisionTek's retail package, though. They can be picked up for as little at US$6 at various Net vendors.
A major concern and a curiosity of mine is the length of this card. It's much longer than previous cards have been. While it's still shorter than a Voodoo5, it's longer than most other cards out there. If you look in my first and second pictures directly above, you can see that it almost reaches to the edge of my motherboard. This could be a problem if you have a lot of IDE cables, or if your IDE ports are lower in line with the AGP slot. In the last picture, I have laid out some other cards for a size comparison.
Starting from top to bottom: KYRO 2, Reference GF3, ATI Radeon 8500LE, Asus GF3, and the VisionTek GF4 Ti 4600. As you can see, all of the other cards are pretty much the same length, but the new VisionTek GF4 is noticeably longer.
We are already seeing issues with this card not being able to fit on certain mainboards due to the mainboards being built with components that are out of specification. From our careful evaluations, it seems that the VisionTek card is well within AGP2.0 specifications. Also, since almost every GF4 Ti card you will see will be built on the NVIDIA reference standard, the physical problems you are seeing with one GF4 Ti card will very likely translate to every GF4 Ti made of the same model.