is earning quite a reputation among enthusiasts. With the announcement of the GeForce 4 GPU a couple months ago, as with the GeForce 3, they're the first to release the Ti4600 to retail in North America. Borrowing heavily on their OEM experience, Visiontek was able to fill out the pre-orders, and many users got their hands on nVidia's next-gen GPU before any other manufacturer released theirs. At the time of this writing, you can count the number of Ti4600 retail cards (that you can buy right now) on one hand, although the MX 440 GeForce 4 are a dime a dozen.
Announced a few months ago, The GeForce 4 isn't as big a jump from the GeForce 3, as the GeForce 3 was to the GeForce 2. The GeForce 4 isn't a completely new technology, when compared to the GeForce 3, but there are plenty of new and upgraded features that allow for it to walk stomp over the competition. Unlike the GeForce 3, where the Ti200 (slower part), and the Ti500 (faster part) were released 6 months later, nVidia is covering all there bases by announcing all their GeForce 4 parts. Granted, the Ti4200 isn't in full retail yet, but it will be soon. The Ti4400 is available from a few manufacturers, but the budget MX family, and the high end Ti4600 are out there.
Promising to "release you bowels", we're going to examine Visiontek's top of the line card. Thankfully, they dropped their strange naming convention used with their GeForce 3 parts, and went with something buyers should immediately recognize. So, putting on our diapers, let's look at what the Xtasy Ti4600 has to offer.
Specifications
" NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 GPU
" AGP 4x compatible with fast writes
" 128MB DDR memory
" 300MHz core clock / 650MHz DDR memory clock
" 350MHz RAMDAC
" DirectX and OpenGL API support
" VGA, DVI, TV In/Out connectors
" 1.23 trillion operations/sec.
" 136 million triangles/sec. setup
" 10.4GB/sec. memory bandwidth
" 256-bit 3D and 2D graphics accelerator
" NVIDIA nView" display technologies
" Lightspeed Memory Architecture" II
" Accuview Antialiasing"
" High Definition Video Processing Engine
Of note, when compared with the GeForce 3 Ti500, nVidia have added nView capability to all their GeForce 4s. It'll be up to manufactuers to add support, but for designers, or dual screen power users, this is a nice feature to add. Other than that, a few architecture upgrades, and a new antialiasing technique, the GeForce 4 is like a GeForce 3 on steroids. With a 300MHz core clock / 650MHz DDR memory clock, we're inching even closer to true high resolution gaming, without a penalty hit on framerates.
Unlike most cards, Visiontek uses a plastic shell to package the card for shipping. Although it doesn't look like much, this will do a better job at protecting the card than a simple anti-static bag covering it, and secured by a folded piece of cardboard.
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In their rush to reach the market first, Visiontek's supplier of the video in/out cable was unable to provide enough cables before packaging, and the shipment. Instead, you'll have to go online and fill out a form for the cable and the video editing software. Although it only takes a few minutes, and shipping is on them, it is a bit of a nuisance, but they'll give your a T-Shirt for your troubles. I, for one, am looking forward to replacing my 1980's Quiet Riot shirt.
By this time though, the supply problem should be resolved, and future shipments will include everything, although I doubt a T-Shirt is going to be included in there.
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Other than a driver CD, you get foolproof installation instructions on a fold-out sheet, as well as my personal favorite, PowerDVD software.
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.
Overclocking
Overclocking such a fast card may seem like overkill, and unless you plan to play at high resolution, it is. As we've stated a dozen times before, low resolution is more CPU taxing, and higher resolution is more video card intensive.
Despite owning a fast system, I still play most of my online games at 1024x768. The reason I do that, is because high framerates are an absolute must for me. Yes, as you'll see later on, the GeForce 4 allows for fast, high resolution gaming, but in multiplayer games, there will be times when a video card might get overwhelmed, and drops in framerates can be a killer. Although a card may benchmark 130 FPS at 1600x1200, that is only an average. Even on a high end card, you can expect framerates to drop by half in a 32 player Wolfenstein fragfest. At 1024x768, I'll always maintain over 125 FPS, which is why I play at that resolution. Single player games are different, as I'll play at 1280x1024 or higher. Since the system is only concentrating on your experience, I'll sacrifice some of the framerates for eye candy.
That being said, for single player games, I turn on all the eye candy, and play at high resolution. It can get choppy, and this is where overclocking might come in handy.
I was actually disappointed that we seemed to fall within the "below average". The ram overclock was a little lower than what I expected, as the ram is rated for that speed anyways. Anything higher than our 305/710 led to 3D Mark crashing. Now, anyone can fiddle around with the overclocking, and snap a screenshot, but for me, a successful video overclock means 3D Mark can be run, and completed, 5 times.
The above is at 1600x1200 with 32 bit colour enabled. Everything was at default. Depending on how much more we overclocked, we'd get random errors. We did manage a 315/710 overclock, and run 3D Mark twice, but we still got lockups by the third try. We even managed an overclock of 314/716, and it ran Windows alright, but whenever we started 3D Mark, it would continually lock up on the Game 1 test. So, instead of outrageous 3D Mark scores, we got this instead...
Since our Visiontek Xtasy Ti4600 is one of the first revisions, as well as being the top end part, I guess I shouldn't have expected any spectacular overclocking results. I did not modify the card with additional cooling, as I wanted to give results that would be possible to attain by anyone. Bear in mind that every setup is different, and you may score lower, or higher than we did.
Benchmark Setup
I'm not sure how many of you have read Maximum PC's GeForce 4 article, but they had a set of benchmarks using an older Pentium 4 where the results were less than special. Before some of you trash the Pentium 4 architecture, a friend with an Athlon 1.2 GHz suffered a similar fate. Make no mistake, unless you have a high end CPU, you'll be wasting a lot of potential power with the GeForce 4. Keep in mind that this does not mean it's a bad purchase. Given the design of the GeForce 4, as you upgrade the CPU, the video card can be migrated to the new machine.
Anyhow, we prepped our rig up for maximum performance, so here we go...
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz)
Asus A7V266-E
512MB Kingston DDR PC2100
2 x 80GB Maxtor 7200rpm ATA100, RAID-0
Soundblaster Live! Audigy
Windows XP Pro
VIA 4-in-1 v4.38
nVidia Detonators 28.32
3D Mark 2001 SE
Quake 3 Arena
Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Villagemark
Comparison Hardware:
Visiontek Xtasy 6964 GeForce 3 Ti500
ATi Radeon 8500 LE
PNY GeForce 4 Ti4600
We actually tested the PNY GeForce 4 solution earlier, but since we're still finishing up the review, we can still provide numbers for an apples to apples comparison. Realizing the Radeon 8500 and Ti500 may be outclassed for these tests, both are still fine cards for todays gamers. They were king of the hill a mere 2 months ago, and I'm including them simply for the sake of showing how far graphics speed has come. Because of the power of the modern video card, we're dropping all tests of below 1024x768 for the top end cards. I figure, if you paid 400$ for a video card, you better already have at least a 17" monitor and play at high resolutions. With the faster processors available, high resolution will shift the onus of the work on the video.
Quake 3: Arena
id Software's last game engine has spawned several excellent games since the release of Quake 3: Arena a few years ago. It's getting a little old, but many still use it as a measure of a video card's OpenGL performance. 1024x768 is a piece of cake for most new video cards now, so let's take a look, starting at 1280x1024.
The GeForce 4 Ti4600 flexes it's high resolution superiority by over 30%, when compared to the competition. Still, the older Ti500 and Radeon 8500 do very well, and any framerates in excess of over 150 will do more than enough for most people. Then again, with this much power in the Ti4600, why not go for more?
At over 150 frames per second, at maximum resolution, this is an impressive showing indeed, besting the previous "framerate kings" by over 25%. The differences between the PNY Verto and Xtasy Ti4600 are less than 1%, and well within our margin of error.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Grey Matter licensed the Quake engine to revive a classic. Return to Castle Wolfenstein uses a heavily modified Quake engine (it's actually modified Team Arena code), and therefore demands a more robust system to maintain Quake 3 framerates.
We no longer see the 200 frames per second we were used to with Quake 3, but all our contenders do quite well for themselves. Although not totally maxing out the Ti4600, it does keep a little over 11% in terms of framerates over the competition.
It's all about high resolution when we're talking about with the Ti4600. Older cards just can't keep up with the improved speed, and memory enhancements of the GeForce 4.
At over 100 frames per second, it's obvious who is the current high resolution king. Keep in mind that these are "averages", but the higher the average, the more likely the peaks and valleys of actual gaming will remain consistent.
Jedi Knight 2
Unless you've been swearing off anything Star Wars, mostly because of Jar Jar Binks, any action gamer will probably have heard of Jedi Knight 2. Instead of developing their own engine, LucasArts contracted Raven, who in turn contacted id for the engine. The graphics have again been overhauled, and huge environments are the end result. This, of course, will strain your system more than Quake 3 did.
Quite a difference from before, but it seems like we've found a game that will make the Ti4600 sweat it out a little. Although over 20 frames per second separate the slowest from the fastest, actual game (i.e. playing it) performance is similar.
Unlike the Radeon and Ti500, the Ti4600 doesn't suffer the same performance hit as we move up in resolution. Looks like the the LMA II is kicking in.
We see an even bigger hit at maximum resolution, but the Ti4600 still maintains playble framerates. I'm not really sure why the Radeon 8500 dropped to below 20fps, but this was my result with both the 6025 and 6043 drivers. I'll have to retest with the newer drivers, but as far as I know, the 6043 were quite good.
In terms of performance between the PNY and Visiontek cards, there was almost no difference exceeding 1% in all our tests. I guess the old saying of "a GeForce 4 is a GeForce 4" applies here.
3D Mark 2001 SE
A well known synthetic benchmark, we use it here for our Direct3D tests, as there aren't really many Direct3D benchmark programs I like that much. Add to the fact that you can compare yourself with other users add to it's value.
As with our previous benchmarks, 640x480 and 800x600 have been dropped. We chose the default settings, as well as test the AntiAliasing performance, including nvidia's new 4XS mode.
At 1024x768, this is the closest we've came to 10 000 3D Marks. Obviously, with a bit of tweaking, that number would have been attainable. It's about 15% behind, but the Radeon 8500 shows that it's still a contender for Direct 3D. I'm not really sure why the PNY kept scoring about 4% lower than the Visiontek, but that was the best I was able to manage out of it.
The Radeon maintains it's lead over the Ti500, but it pales in comparison to the Ti4600 scores. Keeping a 10% lead over the Radeon, the Xtasy is proving itself to be the current Direct3D champ.
By this point, we separate the dudes from the dudettes. At 1600x1200, we're seeing 3D Mark scores by the Ti4600 very close to the scores of the Ti500 and Radeon at 1280x1024. Take this as you will, but as we said before, 1600x1200 gaming is very possible now.
AntiAliasing has always been the thorn in a video card's side. Although there is a loss in performance, at 2xAA, we're still keeping above 8000 3D Marks. The Radeon 8500 isn't too far behind, but the Ti500 is faltering.
Going up 4xAA, we see a huge performance hit across the boards. The Ti4600 still does very well, when compared to the Ti500. A testament to nVidia's improvement to the architecture.
Dropping the Radeon 8500, we selected Quincunx AA via the Windows video control panel. Quincunx was nVidia's baby afterall, so we removed ATi's card from the equation. Comparing the Ti500 to the Ti4600, ...well, the benchmarks speak for themselves. I mentioned in my GeForce 3 review, and I want to point it out again. Quincunx isn't really all that nice. Actual gameplay felt jittery, and the image quality was more washed out than the other modes of AntiAliasing.
nVidia has been pimping their 4XS AA. It promises better image quality, as it samples pixels a little differently, and although the end result is a better picture, it hits the framerates very hard. Like we said, only Direct3D is supported at this time.
Villagemark
We added the Villagemark benchmark simply to test one feature, Occlusion Culling, or hidden surface removal. This trick is a good idea because, why render something you cannot see? No point in slowing the game down needlessly.
The benchmark was designed with the Kyro II in mind, but most modern video cards have some form of this optimization. Granted, the Ti4600 is a lot faster than the Ti500 in terms of raw power, but at almost 40 frames per second faster, my guess is the improved Occlusion Culling has been improved.
Image Quality
It's great having an ultra fast video card, but if your games look nasty, why bother? Thankfully, games look as good as they ever did, though in my opinion, the Radeon 8500 is still a tad nicer.
AntiAliasing was, well, pretty much the same as before. It's certainly faster now, but for OpenGL, image quality was comparable to the GeForce 3.
As with the GeForce 3, I didn't like Quincunx AA all that much, and much preferred 2xAA, and/or 4xAA. At 1024x768, I found 4xAA very nice, and playable so long as it's a single player game.
We tested the 4XS mode, and I must admit, the image quality was very nice. Loading up Aliens vs Predator 2, the aging Lithtech engine is jaggy city, and some AA loving is what it needs. Jaggies were almost non-existent, and the image was clear, which is quite impressive when you consider AntiAliasing tends to blur the image. You do suffer a performance hit, but AvP 2 ran just fine at 1024x768. Quincunx was noticably blurry, and textures seemed more washed out.
Final Words
For now, this has been the most powerful consumer card we've had the opportunity to test. The benchmarks say it all, as the Visiontek Xtasy is one heavy hitter. Image quality was excellent, as was the 4XS AntiAliasing. Visiontek backs their product up with a lifetime guarantee, and they actually have staff that answer the phone. With nVidia's driver track record, you'll likely be well covered in this area for a long time.
Not everything is perfect though. Credit to Visiontek for being first to retail, but if you wanted to play with the TV-Out right away, you'll have to wait as they were unable to supply enough cables. This should be resolved by now, but if you wanted to power two monitors (via nView), well, you'll need to purchase a DVI-to-VGA adapter, as none was included. Overclocking was a mixed bag, but this will vary from card to card. Although nVidia followed AGP 2.0 specifications, not everyone is going to be able to use this card if their motherboard is out of spec.
Weighing in at ~350$ US, this amount is going to be tough on the wallet, though you'll have to consider that the Xtasy Ti4600 is actually one of the lower priced Ti4600s. The Xtasy Ti4600 is aimed at the true power user, who will pay for that power. Those of you on a budget, or if you already own a GeForce 3 (or Radeon 8500), you might want to wait for this Fall's products. Either that, or to look at the Ti4400, or the Ti4200 for better bang for the buck. For the framerate hogs, and hardcore gamers, you'll certainly want this card.
The Ti4600 may not be as revolutionary to the 3D industry, as the GeForce 3 was to the GeForce 2, but there are enough improvements to put this ahead of the pack. Way, way, way ahead...
Pros: 3D Quality is excellent, 4XS AA, nice hardware features, more than enough 3D power for all games upcoming, and those currently available...
Cons: ... but you pay (a lot) for the power. Lack of any true Direct3D v8.x games, and not many "extras" included.
