Editor's Note: As we were wrapping up this review, we learned that VisionTek is in financial trouble. Currently, the company is looking for a buyer rather than turning to liquidation to solve its problems. At this time, VisionTek is continuing to take orders, ship products, and honor rebates, according to a company rep. Buy at your own risk.

WHAT'S HOT: The VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4400 fell only a few frames per second short of the newer, far more expensive EVGA.com E-GeForce4 Ti 4600 we recently tested--even at our highest test resolution of 1600 by 1200.

WHAT'S NOT: In our antialiasing tests with Unreal Tournament 2003 at 1024 by 768 resolution using the card's vendor-recommended Quincunx mode (which takes five samples per pixel), we noticed little or no improvement in the overall image quality and a drop in frame rates from 180 fps to 110 fps--though that rate is still well above the 60 fps sweet spot (the further above 60 fps your board can go, the less of a chance that you'll see stuttering or image-quality problems). VisionTek skimps on the hardware and software extras, although it does include DVI-out for plugging in a digital display.

WHAT ELSE: VisionTek offers a lifetime warranty on all of its graphics cards, in addition to 11 hours of weekday toll-free technical support.

To test image quality, a three-person panel watched demos of our test applications and observed each card's ability to render complex textures and to display colors and contrast. The panel saw little difference in image quality between the high-priced boards the budget models.

UPSHOT: This gaming card packs plenty of punch at a reasonable price, but other cards offer more hardware and software extras.

SUMMARY

VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4400 NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4400 chip, 128MB of DDR SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC; DVI-out, S-Video-out; color-calibration utility, software DVD player. $250 800/726-9695 www.visiontek.com