X-Micro Impact T4200 Video Card Review

The Card

Now for what we've all been waiting for, the main attraction. The X-Micro folks went with a pretty straightforward design with this card. No fancy coloring, but everything we need to rock into some hardcore gaming goodness. While we have the whole card on display, take note that all of the capacitors are placed high up on the board. For those who have been hearing the stories of the Visiontek boards and the EPoX 8KHA+ motherboards, you'll realize that there won't be any issues with installing this video card into your favorite rig. There is nothing set low that can get in the way of the capacitors on your motherboard.

Also notice that the memory modules all have RAM sinks installed. Since we are going to be overclocking this card in a bit, its nice to know that we have everything set up for it right from the factory. There is, however, a single capacitor at the top of the card that gets in the way of the upper RAM sink. Oh well, you can't have everything. But what about those memory modules on the back of the card?

As you can see, that has also been taken care of. And since the video card normally sits in the same general vicinity as the processor, some of the overflow air from the heatsink will help keep the memory on the backplane cool as well. I just love it when a plan comes together.

Though we don't have the hydrofoil looking heatsink mounted atop the Ti4200 GPU like some other manufacturers, we do have a very large heatsink in place that will keep not only the chipset cool, but the memory modules as well. As the air from the fan blows down, the excess airflow is directed outwards to blow over the RAM sinks. They say that simplicity is always best and we're going to find out soon if this ideal works.

One thing to keep in mind. If you decide to go for a more high powered heatsink, make sure to get one that is designed for the GeForce4 Ti series video cards. The placement of the mounting holes is not the same as those used on a normal chipset cooler.

Included on the X-Micro card are outputs for a standard CRT type monitor, a flat panel monitor, and an S-Video output for throwing your favorite fragfest onto the big screen TV. And when using the nVidia AccuView capabilities, this is a very easy procedure. The included manual goes through the process with sceenshots to make sure that the job gets done right the first time.