Date:
Sunday , July 14, 2002
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Sean Quinn
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Asus GeForce4 Ti 4600 Ultra Deluxe

Like Copper? Like different implementations of cooling? Check out this review to see if this card lives up to its name.

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Test Setup

AMD Platform

MSI K7T 266 Pro 2 (VIA KT266A)

AMD Athlon XP 1800+

Coolermaster HHC-001

1x Corsair 256MB XMS3000 DDR SDRAM

3Com 905CX-TXNM 10/100 PCI

Maxtor 40GB ATA/133

Windows XP Professional

DirectX 8.1

VIA 4n1 4.38

So that you can compare our scores here with our other video card reviews we are using our standard video card benchmark setup, an MSI KT266A motherboard with an Athlon XP 1800+ and 256MB of RAM. Windows XP is the OS and we are running the 4.38 version of the 4n1’s.

We used NVIDIA Detonator 4 driver version 28.32 for all the tests so that you may also compare this video card’s raw scores with other GeForce4 Ti 4600s we have reviewed. In the graphs you will find only the results for this video card. Results will show performance with and without Anti-Aliasing on as well as overclocking in each test with and without Anti-Aliasing. This will give you a good idea how this card performs with Anti-Aliasing and how much overclocking will help improve performance with Anti-Aliasing.

3DMark2001SE

3DMark2001SE was used, testing at default settings but changing the texture bit depth to 32bit instead of the default Compressed. This way we would be testing at a full 32bit color and 32bit textures for optimum image quality.

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The Asus Ti 4600 Ultra Deluxe starts off with great performance, but by overclocking we are able to edge out some better performance at higher resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. Enabling 2X AA takes a larger performance hit at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 than it does at 1024x768. However, once we overclock the card it gives us around 500 3DMarks higher in each resolution. At 4X AA the hit is even higher, so high in fact that it takes some overclocking to make things real playable at 1024x768.

Quake3

Quake3 1.17 was used with Q3Bench testing at maximum quality in Demo001.

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There is no question that Quake3 performs exceptionally well with current graphic cards. In all resolutions, both overclocked and not overclocked, this game is playable with smooth frame rates. When we enabled Anti-Aliasing though we can see how much of a burden Anti-Aliasing really is with current graphics cards. At 1600x1200 we lose 82 FPS just for enabling 2X AA. The frame rate is still acceptable though, and by overclocking we do gain about 10FPS more. When enabling 4X AA though it bogs down so much more. It is now at a point where you would probably not want to play it at 1600x1200 anymore. 1280x1024 or 1024x768 would offer much smoother gameplay. With overclocking we gain more at 1024x768 than we do at higher resolutions.