WHAT'S HOT: Based on NVidia's fastest chip, the EVGA.com E-GeForce4 Ti 4600 produced top-notch scores across-the-board in our performance tests: Its overall average frame rate was higher than any of the cards we tested for our roundup. It earned a whopping 149 frames per second in our Unreal Tournament 2003 tests at 1024 by 768 using 32-bit color, about 10 fps faster than the next-speediest card.

WHAT'S NOT: At $380, the E-GeForce4 Ti 4600 isn't cheap. We had trouble installing the drivers on our Windows Me test system, but we installed the card under Windows XP without problems. The card's one-year parts and labor warranty is shorter than most. In addition, technical support is not toll free, and it's available for only 9 hours on weekdays.

WHAT ELSE: The board has an S-Video-out port to send video to a TV or VCR, and a composite-out port for connecting to older devices that often lack S-Video support.

We tested this board using its vendor-recommended 4X antialiasing setting. (Antialiasing can help to smooth the jagged edges you see on objects at lower resolutions, but it requires a lot of processing power.) In Unreal Tournament 2003 at 1024 by 768 resolution, the card hit 72 fps, and the jagged edges did improve slightly--but we were still able to see some roughness.

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. We saw little difference in image quality between this higher-priced board and the budget models.

UPSHOT: Delivering exceptional performance, the EVGA E-GeForce4 Ti 4600 is best for serious gamers with deep pockets.

SUMMARY

EVGA E-GeForce4 Ti 4600 NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4600 chip, 128MB of DDR SDRAM, 350-MHz RAMDAC, DVI-out, S-Video-out, composite-out; color-calibration utility, software DVD player, PowerDirector Pro ME 2.0 video editing software. $380 714/528-4500 www.evga.com