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You've probably heard reports of this card being huge, and after opening up the packaging, I'll have to agree. This is by far, the biggest video card I've seen in recent memory. There has been talk around the Internet that Visiontek's (as well as others) Ti4600 has been having some problems fitting on some motherboards. You can find a good report by . I gave Visiontek a call, as well as an email to nVidia, and both of them confirmed that the GeForce 4 Ti4600 reference model falls within the AGP 2.0 specifications. We'll get more into this later on.
As you can see in the above pictures, the GeForce 4 uses the newer Ball Grid Array (BGA) DDR memory, and there is a 128MB of this goodness, running at 325MHz (double pumped to 650MHz). The BGA design discards traditional soldering techniques, and allows for the ram to be smaller, cheaper, faster and cooler.
is a little out of date, since the part number, "2B", in the picture above isn't documented. The part seems to be the correct 2.8 specification, since overclocking in excess of 350Mhz wasn't any problem.
The Ti4600 is based on nVidia's reference design, which isn't much of a surprise as Visiontek is their current reference design partner. The card also uses the nVidia designed heatsink/fan combination, which aesthetically I find a nice departure from the standard square heatsink I'm used to seeing.
Going back a bit, the ram is clocked at 325MHz by default. This is a lot faster than the GeForce 3 Ti500's 250Mhz, so you might be wondering where the heatsinks for the ram are. As I stated earlier, the BGA ram runs cool enough that the heatsinks are unnecessary. Even so, the GPU heatsink is designed to blow air over the ram. Granted, the air will be a little warm, since it's heated up from the GPU, but warm, moving air is still better than stagnent air.
The issue some motherboards are having are the above capaciters (pictured above) interfering with the motherboard capaciters. I should point out that this problem not only applies to just Visiontek, but any manufacturer who follows the nVidia reference design. Since the design is within specifications, it's the few motherboard manufacturers that are out of specification. Depending on which motherboard you have, you're going to want to do a little research to see if the Ti4600 is going to fit.
  
As I've mentioned, The Ti4600 is AGP 2.0 compliant. The above pictures are from the installation in our Asus A7V266-E. As you can see, there were no problems here as Asus checked their AGP 2.0 manual beforehand.
Rounding things out are your I/O connections. The Xtasy Ti4600 supports the nView technology, but unfortunently, if you have two standard VGA monitors, you'll have to get yourself a DVI-to-VGA adapter. They're not terribly expensive, but it's a shame Visiontek failed to include one. They are aware of it though, and perhaps for future products, this won't be an issue.
Prev Page - Visiontek Xtasy Ti4600 Intro
Next Page - GeForce 4 Debrief
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