GeForce4 King of 3d Graphics Accelerators
Written: Feb 19 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Incredible Speed and Performance
Cons: Costs much more than the normal video card
The Bottom Line: Looking for great performance, buy it. However, if you aren't a gamer and wouldn't use it to its full advantage all that much, consider a cheaper MX card.
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| awfullyjohn's Full Review: PNY Verto GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB VCGF4TI42A |
Yes, its true. The king of 3d graphics is Nvidia's GeForce 4 series. Why purchase one?
http://www.futuremark.com/ Checking out that site (Look at the top lists) will show to you that although it is not the newest card on the market, it still happens to be one of the best performing in the world. Futuremark is a benchmarking site, where you can download software and compare the performance of your computer with that of other hardcore gamers (Even if you yourself aren't into computers that much).
4. NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200
As of this review, it is listed at #4. With its upgraded counterparts the 4400 and 4600 above it, and at the number one spot the ATI Radeon series. All of which are much more costly than this graphics card. If you are looking for speed, with relatively low-end cost, this is the card for you.
However, this isn't a normal video card that comes stock with your HP or Dell. This is a big-daddy-pumped up 3d graphics accelerator, gaining scores of more than 8x that of stock brand video cards, myself getting 8000+ points on the 3dmark2000 benchmarking program. Now available is the 3dmark03 edition, which you should download and compare your score with scores obtained by other Nvidia GeForce TI 4200 gamers. Then if you aren't satisfied with your current card, I suggest you upgrade if you have the dinero.
Using this as a measurement of speed and performance you will notice a dramatic improvement in any PC Game that requires a 3d accelerator, from Quake running at 200+ (Although it won't show that fast because you can't even see that fast) frames per second, to your GTAIII running reasonably acceptable frame rates (GTAIII is known to run at excessively low speeds on any low-end type cards, including the MX series from Nvidia, at about 10 or less frames per second on more than 800x600 resolution, which makes it unplayable).
One great advantage other than increased frame rate is the fact that you can now set your resolution to 1024x768 on games such as Max Payne with full antialiasing (Increased picture quality) and still have it running at a good and steady 30 FPS.
Buy this card and you receive increased frame rates, increased resolution, full featured antialiasing and other features such as fog, and an incredible benchmarking score to show off to your buddies.
However, for myself, I paid $179 months ago, although now I beleive the price lower because of newer models being released. This is not a graphics accelerator neccessary for increased Microsoft Word performance, or even to watch AVIs, MPEGs and DVDs on your computer. There will be no increased performance in any of those. And resolutions, most likely you will not exceed 1600x1200 anyways, which is availible on the low-end $50 MX400s, which I recommend for any home user. For power users however, I do recommend getting this card, its performance and speed is such a boost that you could probably keep this card for a year and still play the newer releases at great framerates.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 179
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Epinions.com ID:
awfullyjohn
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Location: Southern California
Reviews written: 8
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