ABIT OTES Ti 4200 8X - Wrapping up
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Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament comes with its won benchmarking utility. I didn't use it. Instead, I used the Benchmarking Utility that the boys at [H]ard Overclocker's Comparison Page have created. It's nice. Ladies and Gentlemen.. Unreal Tournament 2003 average frames per second in two demos.
The Phobos results were a little surprising. I checked and double checked, and the results stayed the same. The ABIT seems to have trouble with this. It doesn't make sense to me, but sometimes you gotta live with that.
There is a slight tolerance for error in all of these tests. It could be argued that the gap we see between these two cards is merely caused by the inconsistency of the benchmarks. I see the fact that the gap is fairly constant as proof however that the ABIT is in fact being outperformed. The fact that this could even come up in debate is very interesting indeed. We would expect the middle child of the GeForce4 line to demolish the youngest sibling, but we see this is not so.
Overclocking
This is what I'd been eagerly anticipating. Surely this card from the company that has been with us OCers all these years would bring great gains, especially with this cooler that is one bad mamma-jamma. This is where I almost cried. Sad as it is, this card is not a great overclocker. The core clock only reached 285 and the memory was limited to 575. The immediate disappointment I felt was somewhat relieved when I sat and thought rationally.
The GeForce 4 Ti4200 core speed as designated by NVidia is only set at 250Mhz. ABIT gives their card a "factory overclock" to speak of. The memory of the 128Mb variant is only supposed to be running at 440Mhz. Once again we see ABIT's specs go above and beyond what NVidia requires. I guess instead of thinking of the overclock as being 10/75Mhz, we could just as easily and prudently think of it as a 35/135Mhz OC.
Conclusion
ABIT has long provided the hardware enthusiast with top notch, high quality, and innovative products. The ABIT Siluro Ti4200-8x OTES is no exception. The build quality is solid and the cooling system is innovative. The outstanding stock performance combined with the stylish blue PCB offers the case modder a little eye candy to add show with his go. Providing excellent performance at stock speeds and a healthy software package, the ABIT is an excellent card all around. The fact that it manages to hang so closely with a card that is supposed to be its absolute superior is a testament to the excellent engineering at ABIT. The one and only true disappointment this card brings to me is the poor overclocking. In our circle, it is almost taken for granted that a Ti4200 will OC past the specs of a Ti4600. Maybe we are deranged, but it is so, and this card does not provide it.
Pros
Blue PCB
Unique OTES
AGP 8X
Good Stock Performance
Nice Package
Cons
Not a great overclocker
You will lose one PCI slot
Very loud
$45 more expensive than it's AGP 4X Cousin
I'd like to thank the good people at ABIT for the years of dedication to the relatively small market of enthusiasts such as ourselves, for the top quality work they have always done. We'd also like to thank you for joining us here at Dev Hardware today. Want to discuss this review as well as many others? Checkout the Dev Hardware Forums.
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