ABIT engineered the patent pending OTES (Outside Thermal Exhaust System), a revolutionary cooling device that vastly improves thermal performance. By using the latest NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 GPU with AGP 8X, you can enjoy smooth video streaming and seamless game play. Combining the nFiniteFX II Engine, NVIDIA’s nView, Accuview Antialiasing™ and Lightspeed Memory Architecture (LMA) II techniques, Siluro GF4 Ti4200-8X OTES provides the ultimate cooling solution to prolong the life and deliver an unprecedented level of graphic performance!
Specifications
- NVIDIA GeForce4™ Ti 4200 256-bit GPU
- 64/128MB 128-bit DDR memory
- AGP 2X/4X with fast writes and AGP texturing support
- NVIDIA nFiniteFX™ II Engine brings unbelievable 3D visual experience never seen
- New dual programmable Vertex Shaders
- Advanced programmable Pixel Shaders
- 4 dual rendering pipelines, 8 texels per clock cycle
- NVIDIA Lightspeed Memory Architecture™ II for outstanding 3D performance
- NVIDIA Accuview Antialiasing™ enables high resolution antialiasing game play
- NVIDIA nView™ empowers the user with maximum flexibility in display options and control
- Integrated hardware transforms engine and hardware light engine
- High-quality HDTV and DVD playback
- Complete OpenGL® and DirectX® 8.1 support
- On-board TV-Out/DVI-I
- On-board Outside Thermal Exhaust System (O. T. E. S.) cooling unit
I/O Interface
- TV-Out connector
- D-Sub 15-pin VGA connector
- DVI-I connector for LCD monitors
System Requirements
- Intel/AMD/Other Compatible CPUs
- One available AGP Slot
- 64MB System Memory
- CD-Rom Drive
Operating Systems
- Windows XP/2000/NT/ME/98
ABIT SiluroDVD 4
ABIT SiluroDVD 4 DVD software is jam-packed with over 30 new features to bring your DVDs and video files to life. It combines the best visual and audio effects with advanced features such as time stretching, thumbnailed bookmarks, fully-adjustable zoom and pan, and much more. Take control of video session with ABIT SiluroDVD 4.
Product Features
- NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 GPU with AGP 8X
- Support for AGP 8X
- 64/128 MB DDR SDRAM memory interface
- AGP 8X/4X/2X/1X with Fast Writes and AGP texturing supporting
- NVIDIA nFiniteFX™ II Engine brings unbelievable 3D visual experience never seen
- NVIDIA Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
- NVIDIA Accuview Antialiasing™ delivers unbeatable visual quality and frame rate
- Microsoft DirectX® 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3 optimizations and support
- NVIDIA nView™ enables multiple-display flexibility
- High-quality HDTV and DVD playback
- TV-out for S-Video/Composite up to 1024×1280 (Siluro GF4 Ti4200-8X OTES 128MB only)
- DVI supports LCD monitors
- OTES Thermal Exhaust Port
- DVI-I connector for LCD monitors
- D-Sub 15-Pin VGA connector (Siluro GF4 Ti4200-8X OTES 128MB only)
- TV-Out (S-Video/Composite )(Siluro GF4 Ti4200-8X OTES 128MB only)
nfiniteFX II Engine
The NVIDIA nfiniteFX II Engine incorporates dual programmable Vertex Shaders, faster Pixel Shaders and 3D textures. The nfiniteFX II Engine gives developers the freedom to program a virtually infinite number of custom special effects to create true-to-life characters and environments.
AGP 8X
Provides double the bandwidth of AGP 4X—2.1GB/sec. vs. 1.1BG/sec. AGP 8X enables more complex models and detailed textures, creating richer and more lifelike environments. Uninterrupted data flow allows for smoother video streaming and faster, more seamless gameplay.
Accuview Antialiasing (AA)
The Accuview Antialiasing subsystem with advanced multisampling hardware delivers full-scene antialiased quality at performance levels never before seen.
nView Display Technology
The nView hardware and software technology combination delivers maximum flexibility for multi-display options, and provides unprecedented end-user control of the desktop experience. nView allows end-users to select any combination of multiple displays, including digital flat panels, analog CRTs, and TVs, and to modify the display properties using an intuitive software interface.
The top of the box looks very similar to that of the Abit Siluro Geforce 4 MX440, being in the same line of cards that is not surprising. The box is much more impressive as far as specifications and features are concerned because of this being a better card but this one is a bit more expensive. The back of the box has a little window in it so that you can see part of the OTES through it. There are also a lot more specifications and features on the back.
The card comes in a plastic container to keep it safe during transport. Along with the card itself you get a S-Video to RCA and S-Video converter along with a S-Video and RCA cable so that you can take advantage of the TV out feature of this card. I really like that the cables are included with this card so that you don’t have to buy them separately. I also like that they have included a DVI to VGA adapter so that you can have a dual monitor setup with two CRTs instead of just one CRT and a LCD. They have also thrown in a OTES case badge so that you can put it on your case to let everyone know what’s up.
The Abit Siluro Geforce 4 Ti4200 OTES is very impressive to look at, especially compared to other video cards. From the top of the video card you can clearly see that the OTES system is quite large and should do a pretty good job cooling the core. The back of the card has plate in a X shape which secures the OTES to the card so that it doesn’t fall off. Because the OTES is so big Abit decided to have the VGA and S-Video port built onto a riser card. As you can see from the side of the card this video card will take up 2 slots in your case and block one PCI slot. The OTES is named the way it is because the air is pushed out the back of this panel out of the case. The downfall to this design obviously is that it will take away one of your PCI slots.
Because this video card is the Ti4200 model which is supposed to be the bargain price model they are using the older style of RAM chips rather than the newer BGA ones. This isnt really a big deal in itself but with the BGA chips you may be able to get a little better overclock. This particular video card is using Samsung 3.6ns chips which should do pretty well when it comes to overclocking.
I wanted to see what exactly this OTES was all about so I decided to take it all apart. To get it off all you have to do is unscrew the 4 screws from the plate on the back of the card and pull everything off. The plate on the back of the video card has a little thermal pad on it to help dissipate heat from the tiny capacitors on the back of the card and so that they don’t get smashed.
The bottom of the OTES has a good amount of thermal compound on it which is really nice to see because if it didn’t that would kinda defeat the whole purpose of a nice cooling system. Also on the back of the heatsink there are two little foam shims that are there so that the pressure is evenly distributed over the core and card.
I took the blue shroud off the heatsink which was held in place by two screws and removed the blower from under it. The heatsink itself is really nice and the shine on the copper is great. There is a heatpipe that runs from the base plate to the fins to give it a bigger boost in heat dissipation. The blower for this OTES spins at 7,000RPM which means it will make a good amount of noise, especially if your system is quiet before. Overall I am really impressed with the workmanship and quality of this cooling system. Not only is everything designed really well but everything is made of really good parts and looks really nice.
The core of the card was covered really well in generic thermal compound which is really nice to see because a lot of the time companies don’t use any or don’t use enough. I cleaned off the core just to get a picture and as you can see it is the Geforce 4 Ti core. Arctic Silver sent me over 2 of their new prototype thermal compounds for me to test so I figured why not put some on this card.
I will be using 3DMark2001SE, Vulpine GLmark, Quake 3, and Unreal Tournament 2003 as benchmarks. All of the testing was done with all the eye candy turned on and everything at it’s highest. I benchmarked with the resolutions of 1024×768, 1280×1024, and 1600×1200, I did not do 800×600 because I don’t feel that many people out there are using that low of a resolution. I used nVidia’s 40.72 detonator drivers and ran all the tests from my system which was just formatted.
Test Bed:
- EPoX 8K9A2+ (review to come)
- 1800+ Athlon XP
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV HDD
- Corsair 512MB PC3200
- Abit Geforce 4 Ti4200 OTES 8x AGP 128MB
- Cooler Master ATC-101-SX2
- Generic 300w PSU
- Sound Blaster Live! Value
- ATi TV Wonder VE
- Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW
- pioneer 16x DVD
3DMark2001SE is one of the best synthetic benchmarking programs out there and probably used the most for comparison of cards. This card ran 3DMark2001SE great at the default speeds in all three tests. At the default setting for the benchmark the card was easily able to break 10,000 marks and after overclocking would easily to be able to break 11,000 and more. With the higher resolutions the card still did pretty well but of course not as good as with the default settings.
Vulpine GLmark is another synthetic benchmark that is used for video cards, it is not as widely used but I still like it. At 1024×768 the card was able to pump out 62.6FPS which is really good for this Vulpine benchmark. At 1280×1024 it only got a few less at 58.6FPS and at 1600×1200 it dropped quite a bit to 46.7FPS. Even at 1600×1200 the FPS was still high enough so that the testing didn’t look choppy.
Quake 3 is probably the most used game benchmark around the world and it will be used here as well. All of the graphical and sound settings were set to the highest settings to stress the card as much as possible. Benchmarking at 1024×768 I was almost able to reach 200FPS which is really more than you would ever see. Even at 1600×1200 this video card was able to do 118.3FPS which is really spectacular.
Final testing was done with Unreal Tournament 2003 which is one of the newer and more stressful games. I used the standard benchmarking tool which was included with the game to do this testing so you would be able to more easily compare with the results. The benchmark does a flyby of the map and a bot match benchmark for each resolution. I only made a graph for the flyby because I felt the bot match benchmark was irrelevant because it is done in 3rd person rather than 1st person like the game is played. This being the most intensive benchmark I did the FPS were the lowest that I saw but not disappointing. At 1024×768 this card was able to do 126.9FPS which is really good. At 1600×1200 the score was much lower at 62FPS but even that score is more than enough to play this game without any problem.
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