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Overclocking The
Chaintech GeForce4 Ti 4600 |
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Where you really
stretch those dollars |
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Overclocking the GF4 using
Coolbits, we found the sweet spot to be a Core speed of
320 MHz, and a memory speed of 725MHz, which is in line with the
714MHz we figured the 2.8ns RAM would do earlier. At these speeds, we were able to
break the 10,000 barrier at 1024x768 in 3DMark 2001. While
the performance increase was barely negligible at lower
resolutions, the percentage increased as we went to higher
resolutions, topping out at a 5% increase when running
Quake 3 at 1600x1200. With some extra cooling, we suspect we may have been able to go a bit
higher, but we?ll still take the 5%.
As I sat back and looked at
the pros and cons of this card, I realized that I really
couldn?t find anything negative to say. First of all, the
A-GT61 is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce 4 Titanium 4600,
which is not only the most powerful GPU out there equipped with new technologies such as nfiniteFX
II, nView and the Accuview AA engine, but the most feature
rich. Couple that with 128MB of
blazing-fast DDR memory and you have a card that means business.
Chaintech went a step further, and included a visually
appealing
setup with a black PCB board and not only golden heatsinks
and fan, but a gold bracket as well. They provided standard
VGA out and TV-out capabilities, and also added a DVI
connection for digital output to a flat panel. To utilize
these ports, they include the cables and/or adapters to use
with them as well. Also included is the excellent WinDVD and two full games, Aquanox and MDK2. We
were able to get some sweet overclocking done without any
extra cooling, and suspect we could have gone even higher
with some more concerted effort. The
Chaintech GeForce 4 TI 4600 dominated the charts, except
during the Anisotropic filtering tests with Quake 3D, and I'm
sure NVIDIA is looking into this "issue" anyway. Using Pricewatch (http://www.pricewatch.com)
as my guide, I found that the Special Edition model of the
Chaintech GF4 was only selling for about $10-15 more than
the standard edition, at $319 US. I really can?t justify why anyone
wouldn?t cough up the extra money considering the
considerable difference in looks, cooling capabilities, and
included software. All in all, we were pleased with
the Chaintech A-GT61 and give it a 9 on the Hot Hardware Heat
Meter...
Come
get some in the Hot Hardware PC Hardware Forum, now!
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