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» Channels :: Graphics Card
Leadtek WinFast A250 LE TD 64MB
By Vijay Anand
Category : Graphics
Published by Jimmy Tang on Wednesday, 10th July, 2002
Rating : 4 out of 5 stars  
Price : SGD385


Introduction

For months, gamers awed at the performance numbers produced by the current industry’s leading GPU - The NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 and Ti 4400. Excellent features and speed of the GeForce4 Titanium series have kept gamers craving to upgrade their graphic cards, but its extreme price factor has deterred all but the most resolved gamers who are determined to enjoy and afford it.

NVIDIA’s GeForce4 Titanium line-up originally comprised of the Ti 4600, Ti 4400 and Ti 4200. Unfortunately until very recently, only the speedier and more expensive Ti 4600 and Ti 4400 products were available. There are reasons for the initial delay of this lower-grade, high-performance GeForce4 Ti 4200 based card. One of which could be that the initial high-cost release of the Ti 4600 and Ti 4400 would assist in gradually lowering prices of the existing GeForce3 products in the market. Once the GeForce3 prices are slashed, the Ti 4200 can move in to take up the favorable sweet spot in terms of pricing. If it had been released earlier, by virtue of its the price, it would have triggered a stand-still in sales for GeForce3 products. Hence, the extra time delay would have helped clear some stocks of GeForce3.

Yet another reason could be that NVIDIA has been practicing 3dfx tactics of the past. When 3dfx was ready to manufacture graphics cards based on the VSA-100 chips, they concentrated on the more expensive Voodoo-5 to gain more profits before releasing the Voodoo-4 much later. Production capacity of those chips were low, hence 3dfx had real grounds to back the plan with. Akin to 3dfx, NVIDIA seemed like it was trying to capitalise this more lucrative market prior to releasing a more affordable high-performance card based on the Ti 4200.

Whatsoever the reasons were, it is time to rejoice that the actual product is available for purchase. The NVIDIA Ti 4200 based graphics cards are certainly highly anticipated products ever since the launch of the GeForce4 Titanium series. The specifications positions the Ti 4200 to be more affordable and yet retain all the features and the performance of the higher-end counterparts. One thing for sure is that the Ti 4200 uses lower clock speeds and to tally with that, lower power requirements. As such, the yield for its GPU would be much greater. Not forgetting the product design can be simpler due to its lower power dissipation. All this helps to lower the cost of the Ti 4200.

The GeForce4 Ti 4200 is sold in two variations. The first is equipped with 64MB DDR of frame-buffer, which is clocked at 250MHz (500MHz DDR), whilst the other variant is outfitted with 128MB DDR of frame-buffer clocked at 222MHz (444MHz DDR). The GPU is fixed at 250MHz for both variants. Although the 128MB version has lower clocked memory, it will still be pricier than the faster 64MB variant. How would both versions affect games? That will be revealed later in the article.

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