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It's not been long since I looked at Visiontek's GeForce4 Ti4400 board so if you aren't familiar with GeForce4/NV25 or Visiontek's Xtasy range of boards, have a peek here at my Ti4400 review to brush up.
With GeForce4 and Visiontek in mind, lets have a quick look at todays offering. When we first looked at GeForce4 way back with the look at the Ti4600 reference board, Ti4200 was a bit hazy and we weren't sure whether it would make it to market. Time has shown us that it did and initially released in a 64MB memory configuration, we are now starting to see boards with a 128MB configuration, just like it's bigger (literally in terms of PCB size!) brothers, Ti4400 and the range topping Ti4600.
The big question at this end of the GeForce4 scale isn't really whether or not a 128MB frame buffer is better for you than a 64MB configuration, but whether or not the products are attractive overall. With prices of NV25 based boards at a low with new products from all the major graphics card producers either here or coming soon, do these 128MB boards offer value for the money they'll cost you.
We know that 128MB of framebuffer memory has advantages over 64MB, bigger is better (right?) and in games that genuinely enjoy the extra breathing room of more memory you'll see a performance boost but for the titles on the market at the moment, the difference in performance is minimal in the real world.
We also know that to a small extent, due to the design of these smaller PCB boards, 128MB cards run a slower memory clock than their 64MB Ti4200 brethren, negating some of the benefit of the larger memory configuration and due to the modules chosen, the 128MB cards don't generally overclock as well. So getting your free Ti4400 performance from a 128Mb Ti4200 might not be so easy.
Bearing all this in mind, lets have have a look at the spec. We'll keep this short, for your benefit as much as mine since coverage of NV25 has been extensive at Hexus since the launch of the product. Take a quick peek at the graphics card reviews on the site for some background information on NV25 and also look elsewhere on the web for excellent coverage other than our own.
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