Albatron Ti4200P Turbo Video Card Review

Albatron Ti4200P Turbo - Introduction

IntroductionnVidia has been producing the Ti4200 GPU for over six months now, and it has been one of the best GPU's when it comes to features, performance and overclocking. This GPU was introduced as the low end version of the Geforce 4 Ti line. From here it has grown to one of the most popular for manufacturers, hardcore overclockers, and in hindsight one which nVidia wishes they charged more for. Designed with exactly the same architecture as their high end Ti4600 GPU, the TI4200 just runs at a slower clock rate to the Ti4600, in every other respect, its identical, this is where end users benefit and nVidia suffers. With the right cooling and a larger PCB, the Ti4200 can reach 4600+ speeds, without straining the core. This has prompted some companies to use the Ti4200 GPU on Ti440 and 4600 PCB's to reduce costs and gain more sales. This has reduced the amount of more expensive Ti4400 and 4600 sales dramatically.Albatron, for such a young company has jumped into the overclockers market without any caution, and have in the past pulled over great feats. Designing boards and cards on proven technologies, Albatron has put together the TI4200P Turbo, based on the TI4200 core, with some rather un-usual designs on their hands.

Albatron Ti4200P Turbo - Specifications

Specifications of the TI4200P Turbo NVIDIA GeForce4™ Ti 4200 256-bit GPU 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- In/Out/DVI-I I/O Interface:- TV- In/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- WindowsXP/2000/NT/ME/98Software BundleAquanoxMotocross ManiaWinDVD

Albatron Ti4200P Turbo - Features

Features of the TI4200P TurboPackage and ContentsAlbatron has named their high end video cards the "Medusa" series. This series contains the Ti4200 Turbo, Ti4200P Turbo, Ti4600 and the upcoming Ti4800SE. These cards come in very similar boxes, with the serpent queen Medusa on the front and don't worry, looking at her won't turn you to stone as the legend suggests.Inside you get a very liberal bundle. Your card, user manual (used for all versions of the card), two games, one Driver CD, one Application CD and VIVO cables are included. Albatron stated that the rather limited bundle is to reduce costs since there were additional costs on the card itself, as you will see later.The Card - Ti4200 or Ti4600?The last time I held a card this big, it was a Ti4600. This is essentially what Albatron have built. A cost affective Ti4600 card. The PCB is 6 layers and is the full Ti4600 size. Meaning, that signal strengths and voltage regulators are designed for Ti4600 speeds. The GPU's are specially sorted, so only the fastest go on the card - after all it's not worth putting a limited clocking chip onto an overclocker board, is it?The Core - Ti4200 indeedOn removing the heatsink, we do indeed find a Ti4200 core, nothing special about it, just a very good core for overclocking according to Albatron. The heatsink is a copper composite, designed much larger than most Ti4200 and 4600 coolers, this baby should be able to keep your GPU cool at high core clocks. Using this cooler, we managed to hit 352MHz core - a very large overclock for a usually regular 250MHz TI4200 core.MemoryNormally, Ti4200 cards are accommodated by T-SOP memory modules, and often, if the right latency is used, do not require memory cooling. Albatron threw this out the window using the Ti4600 PCB design which allows for the use of Tiny-BGA memory modules. Samsung 2.2ns modules are used, these are identical modules used on most Ti4600 and ATI Radeon 9700 video cards due to their ability for high clock speeds. Frequency wise, they are clocked at 550MHz default, overclocking tests hit 710MHz flat out, which is simply an amazing speed.

Albatron Ti4200P Turbo - Benchmarks - Test Setup and Synthetics

Test SystemProcessor: Intel Pentium 4 3.06Ghz (Supplied by Spectrum Communications)Memory: 2x 256MB DDR-400 Kingmax DDR SDRAM (Supplied by Kingmax)Motherboard: Gigabyte 8INXP (Supplied by Gigabyte)Hard Disk: Western Digital WD80 (Supplied by Techbuy)Software Used: 3DMark2001SE, Vulpine GLMark, Quake 3, Star Trek Voyager, Jedi Knight II, Max Payne, Aquanox and UT 2003Synthetic Benchmarks3DMark2001SE3DMark2001 SE is the latest instalment in the popular 3DMark series. By combining DirectX 8.1 support with completely new graphics (including the GeForce4), it continues to provide benchmark results that empower you to make informed hardware assessments. Build 330 adds support for video cards that have Vertex Shaders but no Pixel Shaders, such as the SiS Xabre Video card.Higher memory frequencies allow the Albatron card to take the lead over many Ti4200 cards.Vulpine GLMark 1.1Vulpine GL mark is a Windows based OpenGL API designed to stress the OpenGL systems of a 3D Accelerator. Patch 1.1 adds in support for ATI Radeon 9700's fast 256bit memory interface optimisations and early support for the NVIDIA NV30 GPUVulpine takes more note of the core than the memory. We see all the Ti4200's score around the same, only a few FPS difference here.

Albatron Ti4200P Turbo - Benchmarks - OpenGL

Real World OpenGL BenchmarksQuake 3Quake III Arena is a real-world OpenGL benchmark that we have been using here at TweakTown for quite a while now because it has proven itself to be one of the best gaming benchmarks around to compare a wide range of different products. Quake III is getting very old, but is still the best way of testing video and PC systems for any instabilities and best performance.Quake 3 takes full advantage of the higher memory bandwidth provided by Albatron.Star Trek VoyagerStar Trek Voyager is another real-world OpenGL benchmark. Based on the Quake III Arena engine, this game is an OpenGL master utilizing DirectX 8. We also apply the new Opt3D patch to allow for the use of Hardware T&L as well as new optimizations for AMD Athlon XP and Pentium 4 SSE2Again, the extra bandwidth gives Albatron the lead.Jedi Knight IIJedi Knight II, Jedi Outcast is a newly released OpenGL game that many have been waiting for. It has greatly improved graphics over its predecessor and it fully supports advanced shaders, as well as very high texture resolutions and effects. There is one demo included in the multi-player section that is good for benchmarking use. In order to enable the benchmarking mode, you have to make a shortcut to the jk2mp.exe program located in the GameData folder of Jedi Knight 2. You have to put the switch "+set sv_cheats1" (no quotes) at the end of the line in the Target Area so that it looks like this: C:\Star Wars JK II Jedi Outcast\GameData\jk2mp.exe" +set sv_cheats 1. The demo file used is jk2ffaJedi Knight II is all round a great 3D stress tester. We see more memory bandwidth giving a light lead to Albatron in the last of our OpenGL tests.

Albatron Ti4200P Turbo - Benchmarks - Direct3D

Real World Direct3D BenchmarksMax PayneMax Payne is a new generation DirectX 7/8 game. This game is based on Hardware T&L advancements as well as many other features of the Intel Pentium 4 and Athlon XP.Max Payne does not run that heavy on today's video cards, so the extra bandwidth doesn't go as far with this game.AquanoxAquanox is the latest instalment of our benchmark software. This game is based heavily on DirectX 8 and 8.1 advancements and is designed to stress video cards to their ultimate limit, in all the best D3D benchmark to dateAquanox, being DX8.1 based runs heavy on the 3D systems, nearly a year old, and still a heavy 3D benchmark it shows what can be achieved with the right combination, Albatron has it.UT 2003Unreal Tournament 2003 continues the success that Unreal Tournament generated as an online game and benchmark. UT2003 pulls all of its weight on to the 3D and Memory subsystems, pushing graphics reality to the maximum is its game, and you need some serious power to pull this one offFinally, UT 2003 is a great memory hog, especially on video cards. Albatron with 128MB and the best bandwidth of any Ti4200 card wins hands down.

Albatron Ti4200P Turbo - Conclusion

ConclusionWith companies now putting their best foot forward on the nVidia line, and not afraid to put an overclocking product on the line, Albatron have come up with what I call the best all round GeForce 4 video card to date.Design wise, the card is huge, the same size as a Ti4600, so make sure your motherboard can handle the extra length of the card.Being based on the Ti4200 core reduces the cost quite substantially. While it is somewhat slower in clock speeds to the Ti4600, it features all the exact same architectural features at the Ti4600, just clocked slower, raising the clock speeds to 4600 levels are a simple process, and even further if you have a well ventilated case.The use of high quality memory modules only adds to the splender of the card. Overclocking is made simple with good quality components.We did find the games bundle somewhat disappointing, but it's nice to see the games being cut rather than cutting the quality of the components on the card.- ProsFastest Ti4200 card6 Layer PCB for enhanced Signal Quality2.2ns BGA memoryRamsinks on front and back for ram coolingVideo In and OutSuperb overclocking results- ConsSmall Games BundleLarge PCBRating: 9.5 out of 10 and TweakTown's Editors Choice Award