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Introduction
Let's
be straight for a change, most button-thumping full-on
gamers have moved on from the GeForce4 in mind or
spirit and are either using or are saving for the
next generation cards like the Radeon 9800 or GeForceFX.
At the other end of the scale are the Solitaire playing
masses who want nothing much more than hardware cursor
acceleration and readable text and wouldn't know a
GeForce 4 from a Voodoo Banshee. Somewhere between
these two extremes are a huge group of people who
are limited by their finances or perhaps by a healthy
supply of common sense, and who realise that there's
a very viable middle ground that may not give you
quite the same bragging rights but which by the same
rule won't get you caned in Unreal Tornament just
because your framerates have hit single figures. These
are the guys you overtake in your Porsche and who
flick the bird at you when they drive past as you're
filling your fuel tank for the third time that morning!
NVIDIA's
former high end GeForce4 Ti series GPUs may have lost
a little of their magic in the face of stiff competition
from both ATi and from NVIDIA themselves courtesy
of their new GeForce FX DirectX 9.0 cards but are
they still a worthy purchase?
MSI
have a strong heritage on retail sales and have an
uncanny knack for nailing their target market with
products that seem to hit the sweet spot. We already
know that for the most part the added AGP 8X support
is of limited benefit at the moment but there's still
a lot going for the subject of today's review, MSI's
Ti4800SE VTD. Let's view the specs:
 Chipset
MSI Feature
◊ MSI Live VGA BIOS
◊ MSI Live VGA Driver
◊ MSI 3D!Turbo
Experience™!
◊
Hardware Monitor
◊
InterVideo WinProducer/WinCoder Ver2.0
◊ MSI
5.1 Channel DVD Player
◊ Virtual
Drive 7 Professional
Version
◊ Restore It 3 Professional
Version
◊ MSI Foreign Language
Learning Machine
◊ MSI
3D Desktop
Support Memory
128MB DDR SDRAM
Video Output Function
TV-out
(S-Video connector)
Video_in (Composite Video)
DVI Connector |
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Chipset
Features
◊ nfiniteFX™
II Engine for full programmability
- Morphing
- Programmable
Pixel Shaders
◊ Dual programmable Vertex
Shaders
◊ Accuview Antialiasing -high-resolution
antialiasing
◊ nView multi-display technology
- Allows for multiple configurations of
CRTs and digital flat panels
- Multi-desktop integration
◊ Lightspeed Memory
Architecture II engine for unmatched
performance
◊ Support for AGP 4X/8X
◊ Shadow Buffers
◊ Integrated hardware lighting engine
◊ DirectX and S3TC texture compression
◊ Dual cube environment mapping capability
- Reflection maps
- Accurate, real-time
environment reflections
◊ Hardware accelerated real-time shadows
◊ True, reflective bump mapping
◊ High-performance 2D rendering engine
◊ High-quality HDTV/DVD playback
◊ High-definition video processor (HDVP) for
full-screen, full-frame
◊ Operating Systems
- Windows XP/2000/ME/98SE
◊ API support
- Complete DirectX
support, including DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3
support
Performance
◊ 4.4 billion
AA sample/sec. fill rate
◊ 125 million
vertices/sec.
◊ 8.8 GB/sec.
memory bandwidth
◊ 2.1 GB/sec.
AGP Bus bandwidth
Compatibility
◊ NVIDIA Unified
Driver Architecture (UDA)
◊ WHQL-certified
for Windows XP/2000/ME/98SE
Supports
super high resolution graphics modes
640x480 8/16/32
bit colors with 150Hz
800x600 8/16/32
bit colors with 150Hz
1024x768 8/16/32
bit colors with 120Hz
1152x864 8/16/32
bit colors with 120Hz
1280x1024 8/16/32
bit colors with 100Hz
1600x1200 8/16/32
bit colors with 85Hz
1920x1200 8/16/32
bit colors with 75Hz
2048x1536 8/16/32
bit colors with 60Hz
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