SUMMARY: Everyone has been raving about the GeForce4 Ti4600 cards since they hit the market, but they're EXPENSIVE! So what is a hardcore gamer on a limited budget to do? Come join Asher "Acid" Moses as he takes a look at the MSI GF4Ti4400 Video Card. It's just possible that the question asked above will have a very nice answer, and at about US$100-150 less than the monster Ti4600 too.
It is no secret that nVidia is currently at the top of the high-end graphics card market. Ever since the release of their GeForce256 GPU, nVidia have completely dominated the market, outperforming any products the competition could throw at them. After acquiring 3dfx, nVidia's only competitor in the high-end graphics market has been ATi. Fortunately for nVidia, until recently ATi hasn't been able to produce anything that can compete with nVidia's products because of their continually poor drivers.
This, however, all changed with ATi's release of their Radeon 8500 GPU. After a few driver revisions, it performed on-par with, if not higher than nVidia's flagship product at the time, the GeForce3 Ti500. Frightened, nVidia was quick to release their GeForce4 range, which consists of three high-end GPUs (Ti4200, Ti4400 and Ti4600), and three low-end GPUs (MX420, MX440 and MX460). All three of their high-end GeForce4 products quite comfortably outperformed the Radeon 8500, which once again sent ATi back to the drawing board.
With ATi's next generation graphics product still quite far away, it seems that nVidia should hold a comfortable lead on the market for some time to come. That brings me to the subject of this review. We have managed to obtain one of MSI's latest graphics cards based on the GeForce4 Ti4400 chipset. This is not the fastest card in the GeForce4 range, however, it looks to be ideal for those who want high-performance at a relatively low price. Read on as we determine if the MSI Ti4400 graphics card is worth your hard-earned dollars.
