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HotHardware
regulars know that we like to give every product to arrive
in our labs a thorough physical inspection, before
installing it into a test rig and running it through our
suite of benchmarking apps.
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Quality
of
the Visiontek GF4 Ti 4600 |
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Lot's of NVIDIA
hardware! |
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THE CARD:
Our tour around
the Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti 4600 begins with a look at the
new GPU cooler developed by the folks at NVIDIA. This
new cooler is slightly larger than ones installed on the
majority of earlier NVIDIA based video cards. It's
size isn't the only advantage though. This cooler is
shaped with fins that direct airflow from the fan, out of
the cooler, towards the RAM. Having air constantly
circulating over the RAM will keep the memory cooler, which
should help with overclockability and stability. Next
we see the Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti 4600's external
connectors. On the plate you'll find a standard 15-Pin
analog VGA monitor connector, the Video-In / Video-Out
socket and a standard DVI connector. Also notice the
analog VGA connector extends back about an inch over the
PCB, we suspect to add another layer of shielding over the
output filters. In the third picture, a multitude of
capacitors can be seen, as well as the new BGA (Ball Grid
Array) packaged DDR RAM.
Memory using BGA
packaging is able to hit higher clockspeeds than standard
modules, while generating less heat and taking up less real
estate on the PCB. The particular modules found on our
Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti 4600 are from Samsung 2.8ns parts,
clocked at 650MHz. (325MHz x 2). If we do a little
math though, and divide 1000 by 2.8, we find that
technically this memory should be able to hit 357MHz. which
equates to 714MHz. DDR. That should give us some
overclocking headroom. We'll delve into overclocking a
little later though.
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Installation and
Drivers |
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Anyone can do
this... |
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Installing the Visiontek GeForce
4 Ti 4600 was a piece of cake. We inserted the card
into our AGP slot, powered up the system, booted into
Windows XP and waited for the "New Hardware Found" dialog
box. We then browsed to the folder where our drivers
were located, and one re-boot later we were ready to rock.
We've explored
the Detonator XPs in quite a few previous articles, so we
won't bore you again with regurgitated details. The
above screenshots show the general driver information tab,
D3D, OpenGL, AA and nView settings tabs. If you've
already got an NVIDIA based video card installed in your
system, you've probably seen these before, but those who
don't may want to check them out and see what they're made
of.
As we mentioned
on page one, Visiontek bundles Cyberlink's excellent
PowerDVD XP with the Xtasy GeForce 4 Ti 4600.
DVD playback
using PowerDVD XP was top-notch. I routinely watch
movies on my PC while working or browsing, and have been
very happy with the Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti 4600's DVD
playback.
The
Test Rig, Some Screens & DirectX 8 Benchmarks
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