NVidia GeForce4: Power to Spare

NVidia's launch of its GeForce4 Titanium chip again raises the bar for PC graphics, giving demanding gamers far better visuals and faster frame rates than before, even at the highest resolutions. Also debuting is NVidia's more modest GeForce4 MX chip, offering better graphics to casual gamers and business users.

There will be three Titanium models, selling for $200 to $400. The new MX cards will come in three variants too, with prices from $99 to $230.

Frame Up

For our tests, we looked at two shipping graphics boards from VisionTek: the high-end $400 Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600, with a 300-MHz clock speed and 128MB of superfast 650-MHz DDR SDRAM, and the $179 Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440, with a 270-MHz clock speed and 64MB of 400-MHz DDR SDRAM. For a baseline comparison, we tested an Xtasy 6964, which has the GeForce3 Ti 500 chip and 64MB of 500-MHz DDR SDRAM.

Our tests of four games at two resolutions yielded mixed results, though all three cards generally produced very good images. The biggest differences in the new cards' scores appeared at 1600 by 1200 resolution and 32-bit color. There, the Ti 4600 (with NVidia's Quincunx antialiasing technology off) dominated, with the highest marks in all but the Unreal Tournament test, where the MX 440 card beat it.

Bargain hunters will be glad to know that the older Xtasy 6964 did well against the new cards at both 1600 by 1200 and 1024 by 768, topping or tying the others in four of the eight tests. Note that even the lower marks in our high-res tests mostly hovered near 60 frames per second--considered flicker-free, since human eyes can't detect problems at this rate.

NVidia says it has improved Quincunx, making it faster and able to yield smoother images. We were surprised, however, to see some games showing more detail and better contrast with it off. In our tests, it still slowed performance at top resolutions, too.

The Ti chips do boost game play, thanks in part to a revamped graphics engine, the Nfinite FX II, with advanced pixel shaders and dual-vertex shaders. It's faster and helps provide greater scene detail, with more-realistic lighting and surfaces. The Ti also supports the new DirectX 8.1 API (MX models have partial support for DX8). Another plus: New NView technology in Ti and MX chips lets you hook up two analog or digital displays in any combination.

Inside Gaming

NVidia expects games that exploit such GeForce4 features as DX8.1 support to be available shortly (including Star Wars Online and Comanche 4). But past experience tells us most of these games are unlikely to appear before year's end, so some users may be best served by waiting a bit for prices on the top GeForce4 Ti cards to drop. But if you need more speed at the highest resolutions now, a Ti card may be for you. Meanwhile, GeForce4 MX boards offer a good value for casual users.

SUMMARY

VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600 Street: $400

SUMMARY

VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440 Street: $179