Overclocking
Overclocking of this video card was done with the Coolbits registry hack which works with the detonator drivers. The core comes stock at 275/500 which means it is already overclocked from the Ti4200 speeds up to the speed of a Ti4400.
Because this video card has superior cooling in comparison to other cards which have a little fan and heatsink it should overclock quite well. The obvious downfall to this cooling system is that the 7,000RPM blower is much louder than that of a generic fan.
I don’t like noise and this fan is pretty loud, but not unbearable loud, if you are using a fan on your heatsink above 30dB I don’t think you will mind too much. I slowly overclocked the card little by little so that it would be able to burn in and adjust. After a few days of slowly increasing the speed of the card I reached the highest stable speed which was 295/580.
When moving either the core of memory past 295/580 I would get artifacts while testing in 3DMark2001SE. I think that if there were some RAMsinks on the RAM I would have been able to overclock even further. I am pretty impressed with the overclock that this card is capable of especially considering that it comes overclocked out of the box.
Conclusion
After using having a Geforce 3 in my system for a long time this video card definitely makes a difference. Not only are synthetic benchmarks much better than they were but I could see the increase in performance while playing actual games. The one obvious thing that sets this video card apart from others on the market is the OTES that it has.
I really like that this video card comes with all the cables needed to use the S-Video and that it has the DVI to VGA converter. The two main downfalls to this video card are that it blocks a PCI slot and that it is loud due to the 7,000RPM blower for the OTES.
The Geforce 4 Ti4200 is the slowest in the Ti line of cards but that doesnt mean it its slow overall. Because this video card is able to overclock to just about Ti4600 speeds there is really no need to get a Ti4600 unless of course you want that to overclock and go farther than any nVidia card on the market. If you are looking to upgrade your video card and don’t want to break the bank this would be a good video card for you.
Of course, if you want the best of the best you may want to wait for the Geforce FX which should be out pretty soon. I am very impressed with this video card and am going to give it a 9/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Abit for sending me this card. Hopefully in the future you will see more review of Abit’s great products.
Pros
- Blue PCB
- Cables and converters included
- Outside Thermal Exhaust System
- VGA, DVI, and S-Video
- Good amounts of thermal compound used
- Overclocks well
- WinDVD included
Cons
- Blocks a PCI slot
- Fan is loud
- Game bundle is lacking
