Introduction
The Velocity 4400 was the first
commercially available video card that utilizes the
Nvidia TNT chipset. With the flood of cards coming
equipped with TNT chipset it wasn't surprising that
STB would have their board out first. If you recall,
the STB Velocity 128 was one of the first cards that
was released using the Nvidia Riva 128/ZX chipsets.
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Technology information
The V4400 looks just like the
reference board. The only real difference on this
board might be the size of the small heatsink equipped
on the TNT processor itself. You have probably all
seen the specs of the TNT. I don't think it's necessary
for me to waste your time by putting all the information
in this review. However, if you are interested in
the specifications please click here to go to Nvidia's
site and read it all yourself. The main things
to know about the TNT is you can run OpenGL and Direct
3D at resolutions up to 1600x1200, it can run games
in 32 bit color, and has amazingly kickass 2D that
rivals or beats the Matrox Millenium II /G200 cards
with resolutions of up to 1920x1200 true color using
the board's 16 MB SDRAM.
Installation
Unlike the Riva 128, the TNT
boards (including the V4400) have a rather simple
installation process. However, some steps remain.
As before, you should disable any video shadowing
or caching, make sure you have an IRQ assigned to
VGA, and on the AGP boards you should set the aperture
size to 256 MB in your BIOS as well. Boot up, install
drivers, restart and go wild.
Features
The Velocity 4400 features a
standard reference design w/ heatsink, as mentioned
above, has 16 MB SDRAM, a 250 MHz RAMDAC. Also keep
in mind that the AGP boards support AGP 2x, something
that most people are still not very familiar with.
The included software bundle may appear to be a bit
shabby to gamers, but this card wasn't designed only
for gamers. This card makes an excellent professional
card as well. Here's what you get:
