Written By:
Date Posted: August 2, 2002

In the Quick User's Guide you will find the list of features:

The nVIDIA nfiniteFX II Engine enable a virtually infinite number of special effects that deliver the next leap in realism to 3D graphics:

- Dual programmable Vertex Shaders
- Advanced programmable Pixel Shaders
- nVIDIA Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
- nVIDIA Accuview Antialiasing
- 3D Textures
- Shadow Buffers
- 4 dual-rendering pipelines
- 8 texels per clock cycle
- Dual cube environment mapping
- 64MB High Speed DDR RAM memory
- High-Definition Video Processor
- AGP 4x with Fast Writes
- AGP 4X/2X and AGP Texturing support
- 32-bit color with 32-bit Z/stencil buffer
- Z-correct true, reflective bump mapping
- High-performance 2D rendering engine
- Hardware accelerated real-time shadows
- True-color hardware cursor
- Integrated hardware transform engine
- Integrated hardware lighting engine
- High-quality HDTV/DVD playback
- TV-Out and Video Modules
- Multibuffering (double, triple, quad) for smooth animation and video playback
- Microsoft DirectX and S3TC texture compression
- nVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
- Up to 8.0 GB/sec. memory bandwidth
- 113 million vertices/sec.
- 4.0 billion AA sample/sec. fill rate
- 1.03 trillion operations/sec.

For more information on the GeForce 4 architecture, please refer to our Visiontek Ti4600 review.

The video BIOS on the card is especially interesting - it uses a Twin-BIOS which allows for worry-free BIOS flashing. Due to time constraints and development updates from Nvidia, and sometimes to increase performance, a video card's BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) will need to be updated. To accomplish this, the whole BIOS needs to be overwritten. This is called "Flashing" the BIOS.

There's only one problem with this method of replacing the BIOS. If the BIOS is flashed incorrectly - if your computer shuts off prematurely or the wrong BIOS is flashed, then the BIOS will effectively be dead. To compensate for this possibility, MSI uses Twin-BIOS which allows the user to use a jumper to switch to the card's original BIOS so that the normal BIOS can be repaired.

MSI also touts the cards' compatibility with Linux as well as Windows XP/2000/NT/98/95 (NOTE: Windows ME [Millennium Edition] is based on the 9x kernel, which is covered by support for Windows 98.)

The card also has nice refresh rates at high resolutions:
640x480 8/16/32 bit colors at 150 Hz
800x600 8/16/32 bit colors at 150 Hz
1024x768 8/16/32 bit colors at 120 Hz
1152x684 8/16/32 bit colors at 120 Hz
1280x1024 8/16/32 bit colors at 100 Hz
1600x1200 8/16/32 bit colors at 85 Hz
1920x1200 8/16/32 bit colors at 75 Hz
2048x1536 8/16/32 bit colors at 60 Hz

I personally will not run anything under 60 Hz ever, simply because of the eyestrain - then again I do not know anyone who runs at 2048x1536. Even so, the refresh rates are more than adequate, even for the power user. One must note though, that these are the maximum outputs for the video card itself - the monitor is also a limiting factor for refresh rates. Check the manual for your monitor, or the manufacturers web site for details on the refresh rates which your monitor can handle.

The Hynix ram that is used does not utilize BGA (Ball Grid Array) technology as to cut some of the cost for the card.

The Ti4200 chipset has a 250 Mhz CPU Clock, and a 513 Mhz Memory clock.
The default settings for a Ti4200 consist of a 250 Mhz CPU Clock and a 500 Mhz Memory clock.

It is important to note that the Ti4200 that I am reviewing is the 64 Mb version. The 64 Mb version of MSI's Ti4200's Hynix ram is 3.6 nanosecond memory, whereas the 128 Mb version of the Ti4200 has 4 nanosecond memory.

The BGA configuration was forgone for a TSOP (Thin Small Outline Package) configuration so that MSI could use higher quality RAM.

What does this mean exactly? These numbers reflect how long in nanoseconds it takes for information to be read from the RAM, it is measured in nanoseconds. The memory clock speed dictates how long it takes for the read information to be transferred back to the processor (in this case, the GPU.) This speed is measured in Mhz. Therefore overall latency is dependant on two factors - how long it takes the RAM to find and read information, and how long it takes for the GPU to get that information.

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