OCSystem's Enhanced GeForce4 Ti4200
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More and more manufacturers have been using marketing like "The fastest --- ever" and OCSystem is no different. They have begun offering "Enhanced" GeForce4 Ti4200s with claims of being faster than a GeForce4 Ti4600. Of course this is possible through overclocking and what stops you from picking up a GeForce4 Ti4200 and overclocking it yourself? Well to be honest, I don't think you'll be able to match the performance of one of these babies.
OCSystem's Enhanced GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB DDR
Manufacturer: OCSystem
Price: $215 as tested
Availability: Now
Written by: Chad (Memphist0)
Reviewed: September, 2002
Edited by: Mack (SPeeD)
Introduction
More and more manufacturers have been using marketing like "The fastest --- ever" and OCSystem is no different. They have begun offering "Enhanced" GeForce4 Ti4200s with claims of being faster than a GeForce4 Ti4600. Of course this is possible through overclocking and what stops you from picking up a GeForce4 Ti4200 and overclocking it yourself? Well to be honest, I don't think you'll be able to match the performance of one of these babies.
Let's start of with a quick peek of the cards, errr card.
Looks kind of nice. Definitely not an embarrassment when you head off to that prestigious LAN party with this showing through your case window.
A couple of things you'll notice right away about this card is it doesn't have the cheapo GPU heatsink and RAMsinks you'll find on most video cards you buy. That's right, OCSystem has already outfitted this puppy with probably the best air cooled heatsink for a video card, the Thermaltake GeForce4 Copper Cooler. Next you'll notice the have protected the card's precious RAM with optional Tin-Coated RAMsinks, aluminum heatsinks are the standard option. And of course all this looks hella-sweet on the red PCB.
Specifications(what they did to it)
GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB
TV Out
DVI Out
Thermaltake GeForce 4 Copper Cooler w/10.6 CFM fan
RAMsinks
Artic Silver 3 premium thermal compound
Overclocked from default speed of 250/500 to 320/610 in bios
Aggresively set the memory timings in the bios
Not too shabby. I was really impressed to see how far they were able to push the GPU overclock, from 250MHz to 320MHz! I can't even push my GeForce4 Ti4400's GPU that high.
For nVidia's official specifications of the GeForce4 architecture here is a link. I'm way too lazy to paraphrase something you've probably already read a dozen times or more.
Installation
It was a piece of cake. Simply uninstall your current video card either through the control panel or device manager, turn off your PC, remove your old pathetic card, install the new shiny card, turn your PC back on, and install the drivers from the disk provided. Done. You may want to additionally install my favorite tweak utility, RivaTuner, so you can see the OCSystem GeForce4 in all its glory.
Test Setup (Hardware)
Abit IT7 Max, bios 8H
Intel Pentium 4 2.26 @ 2.77
512MB GeIL PC3500 @ 434MHz DDR
Maxtor 80GB ATA133 7,200rpm hard drive
OCSystem Enhanced Geforce4 Ti4200+
Leadtek GeForce4 Ti4400 at default speeds and 300/670...best I could get out of it
nVidia 29.42 drivers
Software
Performance
Now we get to see if OCSystem's statements are true or if their just part of another hype machine.
Starting it off we'll look at everyone's favorite...3DMark2001.
Interesting, it seems the overclocked Ti4400 @ 300/670 had a slight advantage over the OCS Ti4200 @ 320/610. Apparently, 3DMark2001 seems to be a little more concerned with measuring the memory performance of the card over the GPU performance. One thing I should point out is based on how close the two scores are, if the OCS Ti4200 was run against a Ti4600 it would be about its equal if not have a slight edge.
Well let's check out some more Direct X performance.
In this round the OCS Ti4200+ is able to distance it self from the others. I'm guessing that high GPU speed is kicking in.
Dronez was set to the highest quality settings run at 1280x1024x32. Here we see that the memory bandwidth of the overclocked Ti4400 pays off by getting an additional 7 frames per second over the OCS Ti4200+.
Next: Conclusion >>
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