Just when the Geforce3 Ti500 was the top dog only what seems like a few months ago, now has come the time to step down and hand over the leadership to the new Geforce4 Ti4600 series. Visiontek as many others have released their own Ti4600 version of the Geforce4 chipset card hoping to spark the interest of those demanding the best, and only the best in speed and quality. Things change as time flows and the new BGA memory packaging featured on the Visiontek Ti4600 marks no exception. Made by Samsung and rated at 2.86ns it runs at only 2.8V neglecting the need for any cooling to be used due to the low heat levels when in operation. The Philips SAA7108 TV In/Out chip sits firmly in the middle section of the card near the bracket providing the video in capabilities of the card. On our sample casd the heatsink is Nvidia's own design instead of something far fetched from the likes of Thermaltake or similar, this does not automatically make it any worse but certainly different from the designs we've grown used to over time. This doesn't render this cooler any worse, in our tests it proved to fulfill its requirements at stock core speed and even beyond.

At first view it is impossible to neglect the size of the card exceeding that of previous Geforce3 Ti500 cards. Why this acts in favor of making the card look more muscular and therefore powerful it does raise another issue that may impose a problem. Due to its length people with smaller cases and some motherboards (namely as for example the Epox 8KHA+) could face disappointment upon installation. It would be wise to check prior to purchase whether the DIMM slot clips or indeed any other obstructs could get in the way of permitting the card to be seated properly. We have covered such guidelines more in-depth in our installation section. On the connector side we get the standard HD-15 and DVI plus SVHS OUT for all those big screen gamers who consider a game a non game unless it is played on a TV screen. A quality VIVO cable is supplied to round off the goodies list.

All Ti4600 cards from Visiontek and others are clearly positioned as the elite of 3D graphics you can buy for the PC at this present time. It would be pointless installing such a card in a machine with a sub 1GHz processor, for most in the process of buying a new graphics card of this caliber it's a matter of already owning a supa dupa fast CPU but now wanting the fastest PC graphics money can buy. If you may associate yourself with this kind of situation then the chances are you'll be impressed at what the Visiontek Ti4600 can do. The 2.86ns RAM will have some headroom for overclocking and so will the core, but for this you may want to consider putting on a more heavy duty heatsink. At this moment in time there is no real competitor for the Ti4600, ATI with its Radeon 8500 simply cannot keep up. For now at least it's the king of the silicon hill, a leader of the pack if you will. At the eod of the day this card looks, feels and seems impressive even before you install it, the question is are you the right person to own one in a justified way? If you're gamer then definitely yes, if you just do spreadsheets or similar then although you're bound to be impressed in the occasional game, yous money can be well spent elsewhere.

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