MSI G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X Review January 29, 2003 Brandon Bell

Introduction

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Since its release, the GeForce4 Ti 4200 has been selling really well for NVIDIA, its unique combination of price and performance allowed it to dominate the mainstream segment for most of 2002, making it one of NVIDIA’s most successful products last year. Therefore, it came as no surprise when the first cores based on NVIDIA’s second-generation GeForce4 core (codenamed NV28) were built utilizing the GeForce4 Ti 4200 GPU, now NVIDIA is bringing AGP 8X to the rest of the GeForce4 line.

We already know that the Ti 4200 variant of NV28 is officially known as the GeForce4 with AGP 8X. This board ships with a 128MB memory configuration officially clocked at 500MHz, although if you look a little closer you’ll see that the memory is actually operating at 513MHz on these boards in standard configurations. We’ve seen board manufacturers take cards based on this core to the next level, ASUS for example offers their V9280S. This is essentially an overclocked Ti 4200 (NV28) core built on a Ti 4600 board design and outfitted with high-speed BGA memory. But what about those manufacturers who want to include AGP 8X in their higher-end GeForce4 product mix that don’t wish to resort to overclocking? This is where the Ti 4800 series comes in.

Ti4800? You’re probably wondering where that name came from, and if this is some form of a performance-enhanced GeForce4 card. To answer the latter question, the Ti 4800 is nothing more than a GeForce4 Ti 4600 with AGP 8X support. This means it can take advantage of the 2.1GB/sec of bandwidth the interface provides, although as we’ve found out in the past, you won’t see any performance enhancements with the new interface in any of today’s latest games.

As far as the naming is concerned, things get a bit tricky. In the European and Asian markets, these Ti 4600 NV28 cores will be marketed under the Ti 4800 label, while here in North America they’ll be known as the Ti 4600 with AGP 8X. NVIDIA is also making a Ti 4400 variant of the NV28 core that is known as the Ti 4800-SE overseas, so you’ll have to keep an eye out so you do mistakenly pick up one of these cards if you really want the Ti 4600 board.

If you hit up the NVIDIA website, you see no mention of these cards at all. It’s as if they don’t officially exist. That’s because NVIDIA would rather focus their marketing efforts on GeForce FX, while still fulfilling NV28 shipments to its board partners. As a result, it has essentially become the role of these card manufacturers and the media to inform consumers about these products. You’ll need the latest Detonator 41.09 drivers to run this core, although in a mild bit of irony our MSI G4Ti4600-T2D8X card was detected as a GeForce Ti 4800 -- it looks like someone in NVIDIA’s driver department forgot to read the memo from marketing concerning the products’ official name.





SIDEBAR: MSI G4Ti4600-T2D8X Product Webpage

Board Features

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Dual DVI

As you can see in the image above, the MSI G4Ti4600-T2D8X ships with dual DVI connectors. Two Silicon Image Sil 164 PanelLink transmitters are used to power the cards’ two DVI outputs. It is important to note the “T2D” in T2D8X, as MSI also ships a Ti 4600-8X card with a DVI/VGA connector configuration, the G4Ti4600-TD8X. Therefore, the “2” obviously is used to designate the dual DVI connectors the card boasts. This makes MSI one of two manufacturers with a dual DVI Ti 4600 product that we’re aware of.

Unfortunately, MSI only includes one DVI-to-HD-15 adapter in our packaging, so if you planned to use two CRT monitors with the G4Ti4600-T2D8X, you’ll have to purchase an additional adapter (although the instruction manual and box state that two adapters are provided so this may have simply been an omission unique to our card).

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T.O.P Tech Cooling

T.O.P. Tech Cooling is the moniker used to describe the awesome cooling unit that has been implemented on the G4Ti4600-T2D8X card. MSI starts the package off with two copper plates, one for cooling the graphics core and memory on the top of the card, and a second plate on the underside of the card for cooling the memory there. Copper is a better conductor of heat than aluminum, so by shifting from aluminum to copper, MSI has implemented a more effective solution.

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Accessories

Besides the dual DVI connectors, one other difference between the G4Ti4600-T2D8X and the G4Ti4600-TD8X is in the TV-out/Video-in connector. The G4Ti4600-T2D8X comes with a breakout box, the G4Ti4600-TD8X doesn’t. S-Video and composite connectors are provided, so you shouldn’t have any problems connecting your peripherals to the video card. For hooking the G4Ti4600-TD8X to your TV, MSI also includes a 1.8m S-Video cable.

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Test Systems

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System Setup

Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz (Hyper-Threading Enabled)

ASUS P4G8X Deluxe motherboard (Intel E7205)

512MB Mushkin PC3200 SDRAM (operating at 266MHz with CAS Latency 2)

MSI G4Ti4600-T2D8X (NV28)
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 (NV28)
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 (NV25)
Detonator 41.09

ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
Driver version Catalyst 3.0

30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive

Windows XP Professional

DirectX 8.1

Benchmarks

Quake III: Arena version 1.17
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (Elephant Atrium demo)
Unreal Tournament 2003
Comanche 4




SIDEBAR: MSI also has Ti 4800 SE cards in its product lineup.

Serious Sam 2

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Serious Sam 2 - OpenGL

SIDEBAR: The MSI G4Ti4600-T2D8X should be the first Ti 4800 card that is coming to market.

Quake III

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Quake III - High Quality

SIDEBAR: MSI shipped 11.5 million graphics cards last year, more than any other NVIDIA-based card manufacturer.

Unreal Tournament 2003

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Unreal Tournament 2003 - flyby

Unreal Tournament 2003 - botmatch

SIDEBAR: MSI brands its AGP 8X motherboards and video cards under the 8X Extreme Series moniker.

Comanche 4

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Comanche 4

SIDEBAR: Besides graphics cards and motherboards, MSI also manufactures optical storage devices such as CD-R/CD-RWs.

2x Anti-Aliasing

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Quake III – High Quality

SIDEBAR: MSI was founded in 1986.

4x Anti-Aliasing

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Quake III – High Quality

SIDEBAR: MSI is manufacturing nine different cards based on the NV28 core.

Ballistics Report

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Pros

T.O.P. Tech Cooling: It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t start the Ballistics Report without mentioning MSI’s T.O.P. Tech cooling system first. This feature really makes this card what it is and sets it apart from every other GeForce4 Ti 4600 card available on the market. Not only does T.O.P. Tech keep temperatures in check, it’s also incredibly quiet, and does so without consuming an additional PCI slot.

However, as you saw in our overclocking results, don’t expect T.O.P. Tech to give you better overclocking results, as the graphics core plays a much bigger role than the cooling system for Ti 4600 cards. Purchase the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X for its whisper quiet noise levels and the other features we’ve listed below.

Dual DVI: With dual DVI functionality, the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X allows for more flexible monitor configurations than the vast majority of GeForce4 Ti 4600 cards on the market. Its dual Silicon Image transmitters allow it to drive dual DVI’s or it can be used with two analog VGA displays. There’s only one other manufacturer on the market that we’re aware of that can also claim this feature: Gainward.

Video-in/out: The popular Philips SAA7108AE video encoder/decoder chip is used for video output as well as input capabilities, making this card a contender for video editing buffs. MSI includes a copy of InteVideo’s WinProducer and WinCoder so you can crank out those homemade videos right out of the box.

Performance: While the GeForce4 Ti 4600 is no longer state-of-art nor the fastest graphics core on the market, it is still more than capable of running all of today’s latest games with great frame rates. Until DirectX 9 games become more prevalent, you’ll be in more than capable hands with NV28 cards like the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X.

Hardware utilities: While MSI’s 3D! Turbo Experience utility for hardware monitoring/overclocking could still use a lot of work, MSI’s Live BIOS and Live Driver utilities make keeping up with the latest software updates a snap. Rather than searching the ‘net for the latest driver, the Live Update series can do all the work for you.

Cons

RADEON 9500 PRO/9700 PRO: As we’ve just mentioned, GeForce4 Ti 4600 cards like the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X are no longer the latest and greatest, so those of you who crave the most performance and/or features really should look into the RADEON 9500 PRO/9700 line if that’s what you really want. This is certainly not the fault of MSI, as our performance results showed that the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X performs just as well as NVIDIA’s own Ti 4600 reference design.



SIDEBAR: Is this the last GeForce4 review on FS? We think so.

Final Verdict

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FiringSquad says:

In the quest to make PC graphics faster and faster, noise level is often overlooked. Sure, we all love to see the frames fly, but eventually it comes to a point where the cons (in this case, noise) outweigh the positives.

As a result, we’ve seen a shift in the way the industry is heading. On one end we have the performance at all costs crowd, while on the other are those who believe that silence is golden. Finally, we have that huge group in the middle that wants a little bit from both camps. The MSI G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X is designed to appeal to the latter group, although to be honest the card has aspects that should appeal to all three. While the card isn’t silent like say, the Sapphire RADEON 9700 Ultimate Edition, its T.O.P. Tech cooling makes it the quietest GeForce4 card we’ve tested.

It accomplishes this thanks to its low RPM fan, making it as quiet as a system chipset cooler that ships with many of today’s motherboards. Fortunately, the copper heatsink used has a large surface area, keeping the graphics core as well as the memory nice and cool. The end result is a cooling package that effectively combats heat while at the same time keeping noise levels at bay, and frankly we like MSI’s way of dealing with these two problems more than anyone else’s. Heat pipes for instance, do a great job of keeping the graphics core cool, but they consume an additional PCI slot in the process and can either generate excessive amounts of heat in your system chassis (in the case where the heat pipe isn’t accompanied by a powerful fan as we saw with the Sapphire Ultimate) or extreme amounts of noise (as we saw with ABIT’s OTES Ti 4200 card).

But, the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X story doesn’t end with T.O.P. Tech cooling. MSI also throws in additional features like dual DVI outputs, and video input/output capability. There aren’t many other GeForce4 cards that can boast these credentials, putting the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X in very rare company. When you combine this with the software bundle (Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Duke Nukem Manhattan Project, WinDVD 5.1, WinProducer, WinCoder, and seven additional game demos) and MSI’s Live Update series, the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X is a pretty hard GeForce4 Ti 4600-8X package to pass up.

Without a doubt, the MSI G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X is the most feature complete Ti 4600 card on the market. On top of that you’ve got a card with good performance, excellent cooling, and a software bundle that is nothing to scoff at. MSI deserves tons of credit for building so much in one graphics card. The G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X may be the end of the line for the GeForce4, but MSI certainly went out with a killer product on their hands. This bodes really well going into upcoming products such as NV30 and beyond.



SIDEBAR: What do you think of the G4Ti 4600-VT2D8X, and the Ti 4800 core in general? Would you consider one of these cards or are you looking for something different? Voice your thoughts in the news comments!