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Contents
Introduction
What else would be the next step from the Geforce 3 but the Geforce 4. the name Geforce has become a mark of the latest speed and power for the consumer, and the Geforce 4 Ti range is no different. Boosting higher clock and memory speeds than ever before. 2 Ti cards have been released so far, with one more potentially in the pipeline. The Two cards that have been released are the Geforce 4 Ti 4400 and the 4600. The Ti4200 is soon to be released. This is a further cut down card in a 64Mb and a 128Mb version.
It should be noted that the chips on these cards are the same, I don't mean the cards are the same just the chips. They are manufactured at the same time by the same process. The two chips from the 4400 and the 4600 have one slight difference the ones that go into the 4600 are stable at the higher clock speeds. The 4400 cards get the chips that can't handle the higher speeds but can manage a lower clock setting. Less waste more profit. Both Chips are labelled the NV25, however the chips that can maintain 300Mhz are labelled NV25 Ultra's.
The 4200 card has all the features of the other Ti cards just at a lower clock speed. At around half the price at time of release of the Ti 4600, the Ti 4200 seems like a very good choice for a mid range card. we'll have to see how the prices begin to pan out. Recently Added to the list of Geforce 4 Ti cards are the Geforce 4 Ti 4800 and the Geforce 4 Ti 4800 SE. The specs for these cards are below.
As you can see the 4800 cards are not much different from the 4600 and the 4400 respectively. The main reason behind these new cards is that both these new cards from Nvidia are fully 8x AGP cards giving them 2.1Gb of bandwidth from the AGP bus. There are as you can see 2 new cards. The thing you will have to watch here is that the Geforce 4 Ti4800 SE is actually the slower of the two cards. Unlike most companies who use SE for Special edition. Nvidia seemed to have used it for something like slower edition. But more than likely second edition. Nvidia have also released the 4200 again with AGP 8x support. This is simply called the Ti4200 w/AGP 8x (if you are looking to buy it) Chipset Details of the Geforce 4 Ti
The Geforce 4 Ti range has gone up a gear in the Vertex Shaders. First off The Geforce 4 Ti has Dual Vertex Shaders. You don't need a degree in maths to see that automatically you are looking at faster performance. The Vertex Shaders work in parallel allowing each shader to work on a different vertex. For more information on the vertex shader and for more in depth info on what it does we recommend this article over at Toms Hardware. The article is on the Geforce 3 but contains all the information about the vertex shader and the T&L engine. Lightspeed Memory Architecture II Lightspeed Memory Architecture is the part of the graphics card that Nvidia designed in order to better utilise the available memory bandwidth. Recently over the past couple of years, the memory bandwidth has been the limitation of many of the graphics cards. Since then graphics card companies have been tirelessly looking for ways to better use what's available. Nvidia describe their Lightspeed technologies on this page. This is a new full scene anti-aliasing technique from Nvidia. The idea is to bring FSAA quality with such a big performance hit. After browsing round the net on this topic its seems that it does improve the performance as well as looking better than 4x mode. However its still not possible to say that you can have a FSAA mode without a noticeable performance hit. Still the best option out at the moment though. Again for a more technical look at this feature please follow this link
The reference design is provided by Nvidia to the 3rd party manufacturers. Then these companies such as Creative, Hercules, Sparkle, Abit, ASUS and more will adapt it to there own design and take and leave which features of the card they like. They will then create their own Drivers and extra utilities, this is what makes the difference between the manufacturers. Its best to go for a company who gives good after purchase support with drivers and knowledge bases etc. Otherwise you want to hunt out the card with the features you want for the best price. For example some manufacturers leave out things such as TV-Out to save a bit of money on the design and then can pass the saving to you. Others will include games bundles to justify the cost of their card. It wise to have a look round.
Well do you say when another powerhouse of a video card hits the market. Well first you say that its going to be expensive. Above all you have to consider if you really need it. Apart from the cost thing its the new king of power. The Core and memory speeds have previously never been touched and all Nvidia's card features increase the power and speed of the card. The only thing for Nvidia to do now is increase the quality of its graphics like ATI have done. As Always now this card is aimed at the gamer. As the games become more complex the cards try to match it with more power and more efficient technologies. For the mainstream user you should maybe be looking at the Geforce 4MX range. The good news for those of you that are on a budget and stay one step behind the times is that the release of this card will knock down the prices of the Geforce 3 Ti cards and they are not exactly considered old news yet. It took about 2 months for the Geforce 4 cards to actually hit the stores after its release by Nvidia. I really don't know the delay or what it was for but even now the cards are only dripping into stores, they are very hard to get hold of. Hopefully we will get some more info on the real world speeds of these cards once the mainstream users get their hands on it and each companies Drivers are tested fully. Until then the anticipation is that this again will keep the masses satisfied at high FPS gaming on the latest games. If you have a Motherboard with AGP 8x capabilities then go for the newer Geforce 4 Ti 4800. They offer a performance boost over the AGP bus and because the specs of the card are not much different from the 4600 they shouldn't be much more expensive if at all.
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