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When you
think of the movers and shakers in the motherboard
industry, names like Abit, MSI, and ASUS immediately come
to mind. Their solid products generally deliver the
best stability and more often than not, performance above
and beyond their competition. A reputation like that
takes years to build and can be torn apart in a single
product cycle. So you can be sure that when a
big-name Taiwanese manufacturer releases hardware, it?s
already been through the ringer on their end.
Nowadays,
the large manufacturers don?t seem to be content building
motherboards alone. They?ve also seen interest in
other markets, like video cards, speaker systems,
notebooks and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA). For
example, ASUS has been selling video cards for years using
outsourced graphics processors from the likes of NVIDIA
Corporation. In order to set their products apart,
ASUS has been known to make modifications to NVIDIA?s
reference design, coaxing additional performance and
adding more functionality. They have even managed to
rouse a fair share of controversy with special drivers
that change the way some 3D applications are displayed.
Thanks to ASUS? design engineers and driver team, each
successive product release has been met with praise from
the hardware enthusiast community.
NVIDIA?s
GeForce4 Ti 4600 must be significantly more complex than
their past products though, because ASUS has opted not to
tamper with the reference design. Their V8460 Ultra
closely resembles competing GeForce4 Ti 4600 boards, right
down to the placement of the Ball Grid Array (BGA) memory
modules. While this is the safest route for the sake
of stability, it also means the V8460 Ultra probably won?t
outperform any of the other high-end GeForce4 Ti 4600
cards. Instead, ASUS is leveraging their reputation
for quality along with a useful software bundle to attract
the attention of gaming enthusiasts to their V8460 lineup.
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Specifications and Features of the
V8460 Ultra |
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VGA, DVI, and
TV-Out |
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V8460
Ultra
- 300MHz GPU
- VGA, TV In/Out, DV
- 256-bit Graphics
Accelerator
- 1.23 trillion
operations/sec.
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
visual quality at high frame rates.
TV Out
Jack:
- On-board TV-out
support both RCA and S-video.
Cooling
solution:
- On-board active
heat-sink cooling fan
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Specifications:
- Controller: NVIDIA
GeForce4 Ti 4600
- Bus Type AGP
- Memory 128MB DDR
- Core Clock 300MHz
- Memory Clock 650MHz
DDR memory
- Dual RAMDAC 350MHz
- API Support
Direct-X, Open GL ICD for Windows
- Connectors VGA, DVI,
TV In/Out
- 1.23 trillion
operations/sec.
- 136 Million
triangles/sec setup
- 10.4GB/second memory
bandwidth
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
Package
Contains:
- V8460 Ultra video
card
- User Manual
- V8460 Ti Series
Driver CD
(Contains Software Driver, Product tutorials &
user's manual)
- 2 full games (Aquamark
and Midnight GT Action Racing)
- ASUS DVD200 playback
software
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Physically, the V8460 Ultra mimics NVIDIA?s reference
GeForce4 Ti 4600 card with the exception of the heatsink.
ASUS? circular ?Copper Fan Sink? is purported to aid
overclocking, and although it isn?t as extravagant as some
of the other heat sink solutions we?ve run across, it
definitely keeps the GeForce4 core cool enough in an
unmodified environment.
Now that
NVIDIA has incorporated respectable multi-monitor support
into their GeForce4, it has become possible to connect a
combination of CRT, LCD and TV displays. ASUS has
wisely included a Digital-to-Analog dongle for those who?d
like to use a pair of analog displays. Also, a
combination S-Video/Composite connector is included for TV
output. In addition to the DVD2000 playback
software, ASUS has bundled full versions of Aquanox and
Midnight GT with the V8460 Ultra.
Screen Shots, 2D Image Quality, and
Drivers
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