Overclocking

As the successor to the much praised and very overclock friendly Ti4200P I expected good things and that's what I got. Granted it didn't quite reach the same dizzy heights that we managed to scale with the 4200P-Turbo that could easily be down to the fact that we were lucky first time around.

From its default core/memory speed of 250/550 I was able to push the Ti4680P-Turbo to a very nice 310/690 as compared to 310/710 we managed on the Ti4200P-Turbo. Higher clock speeds were perfectly stable, in fact 3DMark would complete at 315/715 but not without some major artifacts. For a clean, artifact free run I was limited to a maximum of 310/690 though this was in a room with an ambient temperature of just 15 Celsius and the side of the case off so these were pretty good conditions for overclocking short of exotic cooling or voltage mods.

I had performed the overclocking while I still had the KT400 (KX400-8X) motherboard installed.

Ti4200P-Turbo Default(250/550) KT400
Ti4200P-Turbo O/C (310/690) KT400

I did a little digging after hearing reports that newer batches of Ti4200P-Turbo were falling some way short of the speeds reported by reviewers. All I can say is that Albatron assure us nothing was changed with regards component choice or build quality and that any deviations in final overclocking level, which could in theory be down to a variety of reasons, may also be related to particular batches of memory. At no point did they change supplier, switch to inferior quality components or cut corners in the build. I don't work at the factory so I'm I'm not qualified to comment but for those convinced there was a bait and switch tactic in force that's the official line. And for those who were suspicious that reviewers were being fed hand picked samples, I can only pass on the same assurances as our supplier, in this case The Overclocking Store gave us......it didn't happen!

Conclusion

Once again Albatron release a class leading product with some very nice fit, finish and features. Although we were slightly puzzled by the reduction in relative performance under the AGP 8X interface I have at this stage to conclude that this is directly linked to either NVIDIA's GPU or the motherboard's AGP 8X implementation as I really don't see how any other part of the video chain could possibly be responsible.

Mainstream User

For the regular user the Ti4680P-Turbo offers excellent performance out of the box and at a very keen price. The games won't exactly blow you away but the three year warranty and high quality components, particularly with regards cooling, should be considered a definite bonus. AGP 8X really isn't a performance factor right now but it may just buy you an element of future proofing, though if you want my honest opinion a lot of the games written to take advantage of AGP 8X will need something a little beefier than a Ti4200 to run them when they eventually appear.
TV out completes a well rounded product that should grace your system for some time.

Advanced User

As a low price alternative to NVIDIA's top-of-the-line Ti4600 or its derivatives the Ti4680 makes a sage alternative. It looks good enough to grace your side windowed and CCFL lit case and offers top drawer cooling without the sink needing to look ugly to achieve it. Overclocking was impressive, the price is good and it features a full three year warranty to boot. Ultimately it needs a slightly more up to date bundle and a DVI-VGA dongle would be nice to find in the box but how much extra would you want to pay for this?

Disable Fast Writes and slap it in a KT333 board and you're laughing but even if you don't you're buying a very fast product from a company who are earning a lot of respect both here and around the globe. On the subject of fast writes, AGP apertures and the like, if you get results that vary to ours by a significant degree please let me know as we'd like to investigate.

As always feel free to share your thoughts on this review or indeed anything else over in our forums. Thank you.