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Normally, we
would just dive right in and find the ?sweet spot? for
overclocking, and compare it to the original numbers. I have
done so here, and found that I could get this card from
250/500 to a sweet 305/610 (!). This was performed without
any extra cooling of the DDR on the card, which frankly
surprised me a bit. What I added to the mix were scores from
a GeForce 3 Ti 500 card so we could see if current GF3 users
should consider a purchase. I decided to use Quake 3 and
3DMark 2001 to show our comparisons.
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Overclocking The Abit Siluro GeForce 4 Ti 4200 |
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Where you really
stretch those dollars |
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At standard core
and memory speeds, the GF4 and the GF3 were neck-and-neck,
and no clear winner can be named. In each test, the GF3
edged the GF4 by a frame or two. When we overclock the card,
then we start to unleash it?s full potential, coming close
to the scores we had seen for the GF4 Ti 4600.
In this test, we
didn?t even need to get into the overclocking, to see that
the GF4 Ti 4200 beats the GF3 hands down. At 1024x768 it has
a 12% higher score than the GF3. That gap, however, was
closed as we went to the higher resolutions. Once again,
overclocking the card gave us another 10% or so increase in
score, bringing it closer to what we saw with the Ti4600,
and leaving the GF3 behind.
The Abit Siluro GeForce 4 Ti
4200 is that rare mix where the customer gets the
performance they are looking for at a price they can afford.
Its scores were consistently lower than its big brother, the
Ti 4600, but only by a fraction in most cases, yet it costs
half the price. It easily overmatched the Radeon 8500LE,
which also usually retails for slightly more than the
expected price of the Ti 4200. Add in the fact that this
card screams for overclocking and you?ve got yourself a
sweet deal. GeForce 3 owners should also see an improvement
in performance, all the while adding in the new technologies
that the GF4 uses such as the nfiniteFXII Engine and
Lightspeed memory architecture. As long as Abit provides
some cables, and maybe a game or two in the retail package,
this is a perfect opportunity to get GF4 power at an
affordable price. Some capacitor placement on the card,
however, should be rethought as it hinders some heatsinks
from being mounted to the RAM chips on either side of the
card. All things considered, we?ll give the Abit Siluro
GeForce 4 Ti 4200 a 9 on the HotHardware Heat Meter.
Come
Get Some In The Hot Hardware PC Hardware Forum, Right Now!
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