|
Posted: April 24, 2002
Written by: Davey McWatters
MSI GeForce4 Ti4600
Performance
As you can see from the benchmarks, the card performs wery well. The benchmarks are designed to show you how well the card performed speed wise. Now, we will look at how well the other features of MSI’s top of the line graphics card perform.
The VIVO features of the GeForce4 Ti4600 cards are all very much the same. It works very well though. Using a Sony video camera, I was able to easily transfer data from the analog camera to my computer in seconds. There are many upon many quality adjustments you can make depending on how you want the video to look. MSI includes WinProducer with their card, which is nice; however, if you prefer you can use Windows Movie Maker, which comes free with Windows Me or Windows XP. If your television has video outputs, you can record your favorite shows to your computer and watch them anytime you like. Be careful doing this though, video files use up enormous amounts of space.
Video out is also a nice feature added to the card. I ran the included s-video cable to my TV and used the TV as a second monitor. It works well; however, many TV’s are low resolution and don’t look nearly as good as your monitor. You wouldn’t want to use it as a second monitor for very long. I also played a DVD on my computer with it running to my TV and it looked surprisingly good compared to what the Windows desktop looked like on the TV.
Conclusion
MSI has been in the graphics card industry since back in nVidia’s TNT2 days. This will be the first time we at Tweak3D have ever looked at one of their cards, and we like it a lot. Not only does it offer par performance with other GeForce4 Ti4600 based cards but it also comes with features such as VIVO and a very complete software bundle. It appears that MSI has directed this card toward a spectrum of users from the hardcore gamers to the amateur video editors.
While the box comes full of everything you actually need, it would be nice to see MSI have included a DVI to VGA adaptor and a composite cable. Those two items would make the card as complete as most users could ever wish. The software bundle includes everything you need from full version games to video editing software.
Most users who purchase a GeForce4 Ti4600 based card are going to be gamers looking for the best performing card available. MSI’s card offers outstanding performance in games available today. While antialiasing is now possible, 4x can lower your frame rate drastically. Most of the time the game will still be very playable at 4x antialiasing, some users just prefer to go to 2x or none at all and keep their high frame rates. I prefer image quality, antialiasing does make the game look much nicer and with Accuview it is now a reality to use 4x on many of today’s titles.
MSI has designed a card that will compete heavily with the top names in the graphics card market. It offers something for every user and then some. If you are in the market for a new video card and have $350-400 to spend certainly, don’t look over MSI’s card. It offers performance that can compete with other GeForce4 Ti4600 based cards as well as offers a vast variety of features to play with. Good job to MSI’s R&D team for finding out what consumers want and making them available in this card.
Pros:
- Great Performance
- Good Overclocking
- Nice Features
- Great Bundle
Cons:
- No composite cable included
- Expensive (applies to all GeForce4 Ti4600 based cards)
Total Score: 9.5/10
Update: MSI has informed me that they now include DVI to VGA adaptors with all of their Ti4400 and Ti4600 based cards. Here is a picture of the included adaptor:
Home
|
|