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Quality and Setup of the
Abit Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES |
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Looking Good... |
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When we
opened the box of the Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES,
our first impression was "what the...?" Abit
has implemented a unique cooling system like
nothing we've seen before. With the goal of the Siluro
GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES being to
offer a cost effective video card with the muscle to give
more powerful cards some competition, they needed to do
three things. The first was the easy part, increase
the GPU and memory speed to give the video card an edge over
an equivalent model. The second, and more complicated
task, was to develop a viable cooling solution for the GPU
to handle the increased heat generated from overclocking.
The third was to ensure that not only would the
cooling package handle the overclocked GPU off the assembly
line, but also give the user some head room to do a little
overclocking of their own. The answer to the cooling
problem lies within the Outside
Thermal Exhaust System, otherwise known as OTES.
OTES
incorporates a liquid filled heat-pipe design that absorbs
the heat away from the GPU. As the heat is
absorbed from the GPU, the internal liquid of the heat pipe
vaporizes and is then carried to the rear end of the card where
a 7200RPM fan blows the heat out of the system. The
fan is wrapped in an enclosure which directs the airflow out
of the system through a rear exhaust port, preventing
recirculation of warm air within the case. This is an
effective, proven process that we've seen implemented in a
number of various ways, from cooling video GPUs to Pentium
and Athlon CPUs. Abit has simply taken the process and molded it to fit their
needs. In order to accomplish this, some extreme
measures needed to be taken.
In order to
accommodate the unique design of the OTES on a standard
Ti4200, there was one problem, the card would need to be
modified to make room for the oversized cooler. Paying special attention not to sacrifice features
in order to apply the OTES system, Abit had to
alter the card in a way that would give everyone the best
solution. To do this, the video card was designed to
reposition the VGA and TV-Out connectors to an add-on
component. With the placement of these ports lower
than standard Ti4200s, there was now room for the OTES to
fit comfortably on the card. One side affect of this
process was the card's width was doubled, requiring two
spaces be used in the case rather than one. This may
be OK for some and not for others, but if this card performs
on the level of a Ti4600, then it may all be worth it.
Before we
started benchmarking the Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES, we thought we should remove the
cooling components from the card
to see how well it made contact with the GPU. With the
removal of four screws on the back side of the card, the
cross shaped retention clip was removed and the OTES system
slid out easily. We were please to see the unit made
solid contact with the GPU and an even application of
thermal compound was applied to aid in proper heat transfer.
The only concern that we had was while Abit spent a lot of
time addressing the temperature needs of the GPU, virtually
no effort was made to cool the RAM on the card. The
majority of the performance gained with the Siluro GeForce4
Ti4200 OTES is going to be from the GPU anyway, so this may
not be a major issue. Perhaps now would be a good time
to take a look at how well the card overclocked to see
just how much this card was capable of putting out.
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Overclocking
the Abit Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES |
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Turning Up The
Juice! |
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Back when
Rob reviewed the original Siluro Ti4200, he was able to
overclock the card to a nice 305MHz core clockspeed, with a 610MHz
memory clock. When it came to overclocking the Abit Siluro Ti4200 with OTES, we weren't
sure what to expect. Since the card was already clocked
higher than standard Ti4200s, it was tough to guess where
the card would top out. So we applied the Coolbits
registry tweak to the system and got down to business.
Starting off at the the GPU, we were able to increase the
clock from 275MHz to a stable 310MHz. This was a
significant increase that put the Siluro past the 300MHz
stock speed of a Ti4600, but only 5MHz higher than Rob's
results. The total gain averaged out
to an increase of 12.72% or 35MHz. Next we tackled the DDR memory to see if it could keep up with the GPU's showing. Starting out at the stock 550MHz DDR, we reached a peak of 600MHz, anything higher and
artifacts would begin to appear. We were disappointed
that the card wasn't able to keep up with the original
Siluro, falling 10Mhz shy of its top memory speed.
In the end, the Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 OTES held its
own when overclocked, but with such an impressive cooling
design, we would've expected better performance versus the
original Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200.
Next we'll take
a look at the Siluro in the benchmarking arena and see how
the card compared to the best that nVidia currently has to
offer, the GeForce4 Ti4600. We were eager to see how this card
stacked up. So let's get to it!
DirectX Benchmarking with 3DMark2001SE
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