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Today we'll be taking a look at the Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES, a high-performance, value minded graphics card from Abit. Capitalizing on the reputation of the GeForce4 Ti4200 being a great overclocker, Abit has taken the popular card and given it some tweaks of their own. This is no ordinary Ti4200, but one that comes with a GPU and memory that is clocked faster than your average Ti4200. The end result is a midrange video card that offers high-end performance without the high-end price tag. In order to give the Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES its extra edge, Abit introduced an innovative new cooling design like nothing we've ever seen before, the Outside Thermal Exhaust System or OTES. Coupling a unique heat pipe design with a 7200 RPM fan, OTES looks to keep the temperatures of the Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 relatively low at stock and overclocked speeds. Obviously, once we laid eyes on the Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES, we were eager to put it to the test. Not only did we want to see how it performed versus a Ti4600, we wanted to see if OTES gave the card greater overclocking abilities over an ordinary GeForce Ti4200. So strap yourself in folks, things could get interesting.
 | | Specifications of the Abit Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES | | It's Small, But it Packs a Big Punch. | | | Abit GeForce4 Ti 4200 OTES | | | | DDR-RAM 15-pin VGA, S-Video In/Out, DVI-I 256-bit Graphics Architecture AGP Interface ? 4x/2x support NVIDIA nfiniteFX II Engine: - Dual programmable Vertex Shaders, faster Pixel Shaders
Lightspeed Memory Architecture II: - With 128-bit DDR Lightspeed Memory Architecture II provides nearly double the memory bandwidth of GeForce3.
Accuview Antialiasing Engine: - High-performance and stunning visual quality at high frame rates.
Output Jacks: - Standard 15-pin VGA
- S-video jack
- DVI-I port
| Specifications: - Controller: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200
- Memory 64MB DDR SDRAM
- Core Clock 275MHz
- Memory Clock 550MHz
- 350MHz internal RAMDAC
- API Support Direct-X, Open GL ICD for Windows
- Connectors VGA, DVI, S-Video In/Out
| 4 dual rendering pipelines, 8 texels per clock cycle Features at a Glance:
- AGP 4x compatible with fast writes
- 256-bit 3D and 2D graphics accelerator
- NVIDIA nView display technologies
- Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
- Accuview Antialiasing
- High Definition Video Processing Engine
- TV Out connector
- DVI connector
Cooling solution:
- OTES-Outside Thermal Exhaust System with 7200 RPM Fan
The Bundle:
The bundle that accompanied the Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES wasn't as impressive as the card itself. While Abit did include the necessary cabling for each feature of the card, the CD came with antiquated utilities and no games. The package included a detailed User Manual that contained some of the most thorough documentation we've seen in quite a while. We were please to see that Abit took the time to explain each available setting in the video card drivers, eliminating any guess work for the user. There was also full details for each of the additional software packages included on the Installation CD. Abit provided all the necessary cabling to access each of the card's outputs including a TV-Out Y-adapter with a standard RCA connection as well as a S-Video connection for digital output. A DVI to VGA adapter was included for connecting a CRT monitor to the DVI port.
The installation CD had a decent list of software packages included on it, although some titles were not compatible with all versions of Windows. The CD included the necessary drivers to get the card installed as well as a copy of DirectX 8.1. An electronic version of the User Manual was included on the disk for quick reference and a copy of Acrobat Reader 5.0 was also provided. There appeared to be a nice selection utilities available on the CD, but we were soon disappointed to find that several of them were legacy products that would only work with Windows 98/ME. The first of the legacy titles was a handy looking tool called Graphics MAX, an application designed for overclocking the video card. The other title was 3Deep Color, a color balancing program designed to tweak the quality of the monitor output. Both of these products looked useful and we were saddened to see that Abit hasn't made any efforts to update these products to support the very popular Windows 2000/XP Operating Systems. Abit did include fully functional DVD player software called SiluroDVD. This appears to be a customized version of WinDVD and it turned out to be a terrific player with all of the functions needed to experience DVD playback on your computer.
Now let's take a closer look at the card itself.
Setup and Overclocking
