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Introduction
We've looked at two cards
from XFX, and both cards have performed very well. In fact, the Ti4400
was the first product to receive the illustrious "Editors Choice"
award for scoring above an overall mark of 96%! But now we're looking
at what we hear is the "baby" of the GeForce4 Ti series - the
XFX GeForce4 Ti4200 video card. Now, why this is called a baby, I'll never
know. The benchmarking results and more specifically the overclock abilities
of this card are jaw-dropping. If you are in the market for a new video
card, and you are looking for the best value, you'd be a fool not to purchase
the XFX GeForce4 Ti4200 right after reading this review.
The XFX GeForce4 Ti4400 is powered by
Nvidia's NV25 Graphics Processing Unit. Much like the Ti4400 and the Ti4600,
this card is based on the same chipset, however, the clock speed of the
GPU and the RAM are set at 250 and 500 respectively. The card also boasts
64 MB of RAM, and unlike the 4400, the onboard RAM does not have heatsinks
attached. Did that matter - turns out it didn't when it comes to performance..
Specifications & Features
Hardware Specs
- 250 MHz GPU
- 500 MHz RAM
- 64MB RAM
Monitor & Display support
- D-shell (15-pin) VGA connector
- Register compatible with VGA
- DVI-I
- S-Video TV out Module enabling big-screen
gaming, digital timeshifting VCR, and video-editing applications
Features
- nfiniteFX II Engine
- Accuview Antialiasing
- Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
- 3D Textures
- Shadow Buffers
- High-Definition Video Processor (HDVP)
- Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
- AGP 4X/2X and AGP Texturing Support
- Dual Vertex Shaders
- Highest Quality and Highest Performance
Microsoft Windows XP Support
- Lossless Z-Compression
- Microsoft DirectX 8.X and OpenGL 1.3
Optimizations and Support
Quad Cache
- TV-Out and Video Modules
- World's Fastest DDR Memory Interface
- Z-Correct Bump Mapping
Warranty
Retail Bundle
Retails packages include...
- Manual
- S-Video Cable
- XFX Driver CD
- PowerDVD XP 4.0
- Trial Versions of "Dronez"
and "Gunlok" Games
And for the specifics of the XFX GeForce4
Ti4200 against some other cards...
| |
Core Clock
/ RAM MHz |
Memory
Bandwidth |
Fill
rate Mpixels/sec |
Triangles
per second |
Asus GeForce2 GTS
|
200 /
333 |
5.3 GB/s
|
800 |
25 Million
|
GeForce3 Ti500
|
240 /
500 |
8.0 GB/s
|
960 |
40 Million
|
GeForce4 MX420
|
250 /
332 |
2.7 GB/s |
1000 |
31 Million
|
| XFX
GeForce4 Ti4200 |
250
/ 500 |
8.0
GB/s |
4
Billion AA Samples/Sec.* |
113
Million** |
GeForce4 Ti4400
|
275
/ 555 |
8.8
GB/s |
4.4
Billion AA Samples/Sec.* |
125
Million** |
GeForce4 Ti4600
|
300
/ 650 |
10.4
GB/s |
4.8
Billion AA Samples/Sec.* |
136
Million** |
* Fill Rate
** Verticals Per Second
We used the top flight system to benchmark the XFX GeForce4 Ti4200 video
card...
Test System Specifications:
- AMD 1800+XP Processor
- ABIT KR7A Motherboard
- 512 MB RAM
- Windows XP
- DirectX 8.1
- nVidia detonator drivers, version 28.32
We used the following benchmarking utilities to the fullest:
- 3D Mark 2001 SE
- Comanche 4 Benchmark Demo
- nVidia Chameleon Benchmark Utility
- Quake III (32-bit color, everything maxed out)
The scores you will see will shock and amaze you. Keep in mind that this
card runs a full $100 less than the Ti4400 and almost $200 less than the
Ti4600. Simply breathtaking as you shall soon see!
3DMark2001 SE SCORES
3DMark2001 SE is the latest installment in the popular 3DMark series. By
combining DirectX8.1 support with completely new graphics, it continues
to provide benchmark results to make informed hardware assessments. This
is probably the most popular benchmarking program out there, and for good
reason. Anyway, the results...
Breaking down the graph into simple numbers...
| |
3DMark
Score |
GeForce2
GTS
|
3201 |
GeForce3
Ti500
|
8135 |
GeForce4
MX420
|
3900 |
XFX
GeForce4 Ti4200
|
8558 |
| GeForce4 Ti4400 |
8992 |
Very simply, the card outperforms the top of the line GeForce3 card, which
retails for $50 more on the open market. The card performs at 95.17% of
the "next card up" which would be the GeForce4 Ti4400, which retails
for $80 to $100 more! Obviously there's no comparing this card to a GeForce2
GTS nor a GeForce4 MX420 ... but for those gamers out there with those cards,
you can see how much more power you can have by upgrading to the XFX GeForce4
Ti4200!
Comanche 4 Benchmark Demo
Next we ran through the popular Comanche 4 Benchmark Demo. We ran through
three different runs, on 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024 resolution levels.
The Benchmark demo is a DirectX 8.1 benchmark that represents a real-world
gaming experience. It measures a given system's performance in frames per
second and Tris per second (more is better).
| |
800x600 |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
| GeForce4 4400 |
32.34
FPS /
6.441M Tris Per Sec |
32.02
FPS /
6.377M Tris Per Sec |
31.99
FPS /
6.373M Tris Per Sec |
| XFX GeForce4 4200 |
32.04
FPS /
6.382M Tris Per Sec |
32.19
FPS /
6.411M Tris Per Sec |
32.05
FPS /
6.383M Tris Per Sec |
| GeForce4 MX420 |
26.51
FPS /
5.250M Tris Per Sec |
22.23
FPS /
4.403M Tris Per Sec |
16.03
FPS /
3.174M Tris Per Sec |
As you can see in this real world gaming
test of a Direct X 8.1 environment, the XFX GeForce4 Ti4200 outperforms
its counterparts!
This was just absolutely unexpected that the card would run through this
benchmark at nearly identical levels as the model above it on the great
video card food chain. The card actually performed better at 1024x768
than it did on 800x600 mode. We double checked the benchmark ... and we
got the same phenomenon. Do we care that this is breaking some fundamental
law of physics? No! It works , it works better, and we love it.
On to Page 2 / 2 - More Benchmarks,
real world gaming, Overclocking (you GOTTA read this), and Final Results!
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