Albatron nVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 AGP 4X 128MB DDR

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Xtasy

Banned
Nov 23, 2001
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For those of you who can't overclock well, make sure your agp bus is at default 66mhz. Raising it on a geforce 4 is limiting overclocking, i noticed that raising the agp by 10 to 15mhz lowered my overclocking by nearly 20 to 40mhz. As for the albatron ti4200p turbo overclocking better than ti4400, i think it is because albatron used high quality components, ie. hand picked ti4200 chips, better batches of 3.3ns samsung bga ram, etc... It is the only logical reason why the majority of ti4200p turbos oc well.
 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
399
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Originally posted by: canadianpsycho
Originally posted by: cheap
Would've bought this in a second if only it had support for 8x agp since I have 8x agp main board and I might as well take advantage of it. All these manufacturers are sure taking their sweet time to make som 8x agp GF4s. Hell, even MSI's 4200 8x board is nowhere to be found, even though it's on their web site. The only thing you can find right now are those sh!tty mx440 8x boards.

8x AGP is worthless. Performance gain is so slim there's no point in worrying about it. it's like saying an ATA 133 Drive is faster then an ATA 100...


Can you provide me with a review comparing the same identical GF4 cards one at 8x AGP and another at 4X AGP or is that just your opinion? I know there's very little change between 2x and 4x, but so far I don't think there are any reviews testing 8x agp GF4 performance yet.
 

canadianpsycho

Diamond Member
May 23, 2001
3,417
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Originally posted by: cheap
Originally posted by: canadianpsycho
Originally posted by: cheap
Would've bought this in a second if only it had support for 8x agp since I have 8x agp main board and I might as well take advantage of it. All these manufacturers are sure taking their sweet time to make som 8x agp GF4s. Hell, even MSI's 4200 8x board is nowhere to be found, even though it's on their web site. The only thing you can find right now are those sh!tty mx440 8x boards.

8x AGP is worthless. Performance gain is so slim there's no point in worrying about it. it's like saying an ATA 133 Drive is faster then an ATA 100...


Can you provide me with a review comparing the same identical GF4 cards one at 8x AGP and another at 4X AGP or is that just your opinion? I know there's very little change between 2x and 4x, but so far I don't think there are any reviews testing 8x agp GF4 performance yet.



Here you go. Approx 1-2 fps. The MX is OC'ed only to match the clockspeed of the newer MX. I like squeezing the extra few fps out of any system... BUt not significant enough to pass up a good deal on a decent non 8x card.
 

spacelord

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2002
2,127
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Albatron Ti4200P Turbo is great card.

wow, it looks like I need to push mine further. I only have mine running at 303 / 610.. Its time to push the 700 mark!
 

TheHippo

Member
Jun 14, 2002
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This is the video card I have, I got it from googlegear also and its a great card, no problems, runs great with counterstrike, warcraft 3 and max payne...although I am not overclocking it...
 

chizow

Diamond Member
Jun 26, 2001
9,537
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Originally posted by: ScrewFace
How do you get the memory so high on a Ti4200? On my Ti4400 I can only get 315(630)MHz stabily.:Q

This card borders on "black market" by nVidia standards. nVidia has always frowned upon card makers straying from their reference specs, but as we've seen with Golden Samples etc. in the past, it always happens. Card makers look to differentiate their product and hand-pick RAM etc. to boost their card's speed.

This card is no different. Honestly, other than maybe the BIOS, a few capacitors, and the default voltage settings, this card is no different from a ti4600 or ti4400. Its printed on the same 6 layer extended PCB found with ti4400's and ti4600's and also uses faster 3.3ns BGA RAM than the RAM found on the standard ti4200's.

I ordered one from NewEgg and its been humming along in my comp since Friday at 310/650. I just bumped it straight to those settings in Rivatuner because I knew it would be stable at those speeds. I know it can go faster, but I haven't had the time this weekend or week to push it higher and be able to stress test it.

If you are itching to buy a new card today , you can't go wrong with the ti4200 turbo. However, if you can wait a month or two, I'd wait for the 9700 standard (not pro) and see how much that thing costs. I wouldn't wait for the 9500pro, its a badly neutered 9700 and lacks the features that make the 9700/pro truely shine.

Chiz

 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
399
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Originally posted by: canadianpsycho
Originally posted by: cheap
Originally posted by: canadianpsycho
Originally posted by: cheap
Would've bought this in a second if only it had support for 8x agp since I have 8x agp main board and I might as well take advantage of it. All these manufacturers are sure taking their sweet time to make som 8x agp GF4s. Hell, even MSI's 4200 8x board is nowhere to be found, even though it's on their web site. The only thing you can find right now are those sh!tty mx440 8x boards.

8x AGP is worthless. Performance gain is so slim there's no point in worrying about it. it's like saying an ATA 133 Drive is faster then an ATA 100...


Can you provide me with a review comparing the same identical GF4 cards one at 8x AGP and another at 4X AGP or is that just your opinion? I know there's very little change between 2x and 4x, but so far I don't think there are any reviews testing 8x agp GF4 performance yet.



Here you go. Approx 1-2 fps. The MX is OC'ed only to match the clockspeed of the newer MX. I like squeezing the extra few fps out of any system... BUt not significant enough to pass up a good deal on a decent non 8x card.


Tnx for the link. A few thoughts though: Threoretically AGP8x will provide twice the bandwidth of AGP 4x to the card. T&L GPU heavily relies on a fast AGP bus for fast pumping of polygons into them. It could be that none of the games benchmarked had implemented a good way to use T&L GPU for lightning and transformation of polygons making AGP 8x worthless since there's not much data is being shuffled back and forth on the bus that way. Theoretically, if you think about it, 8x card will wipe the floor with 4x card in a good game wich makes heavy use of T&L GPU for lightning and transformation which in turn adds a shitload more traffic on the AGP bus, especially in scenes with extremly high poly counts. In fact, I suspect most developers make minimal use of T&L GPU because it might be worthless with slow AGP bus, they just go ahead and calculate all the light and transformation via CPU and save themselves a trip on a slow 4x AGP bus, that's why there's not much diffeerence between AGP 8x and 4x but I could be wrong.

I'm real close to getting this card seeing those 8x vs 4x benchmarks though, however, it would be real nice to see benchmarks on IL-2 Sturmovik. That flying sim pushes insane ammount of polygons and brings even latest cards to their knees. Who knows maybe 8x with full T&L support would make more difference there.
 

Solema

Golden Member
Jul 30, 2002
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I believe the reason that AGP 8x isn't much faster is that GPU's send the majority of the data they process to and from the memory on the video card, and thus the little data that is sent over the AGP bus only affects a slight increase in performance. If games start to come out that use more data than can be fit into 128MB of onboard RAM then we will see AGP 8x make more of an impact. I don't really think that is going to happen, though.
 

rjcoolpix880

Member
Apr 18, 2002
163
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Originally posted by: TheHippo
This is the video card I have, I got it from googlegear also and its a great card, no problems, runs great with counterstrike, warcraft 3 and max payne...although I am not overclocking it...

Since when has counterstrike had good graphics:)
 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
399
0
0
Originally posted by: Solema
I believe the reason that AGP 8x isn't much faster is that GPU's send the majority of the data they process to and from the memory on the video card, and thus the little data that is sent over the AGP bus only affects a slight increase in performance. If games start to come out that use more data than can be fit into 128MB of onboard RAM then we will see AGP 8x make more of an impact. I don't really think that is going to happen, though.


If you want to use T&L proccessor on video card for lighting and transforming your polygons, you have to first dump them all into video card via AGP bus, then you have to retrieve them back into main memory and continue on working on them doing whatever you got left to do with them before you're ready to draw them. This was one of the complaints about T&L hype back in time saying it's basically useless to use cus you have to send stuff to it through a slow bus and might not win any time as opposed to using standard pc CPU for calculations. That's why I think we might see the picture change if we test some benchmark that's extremely high on polygons and is geared towards using as much T&L GPU as possible, but I could be wrong.
 

IFORGOT

Member
Jul 28, 2002
35
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I swear this forum is to make me save money, not spend more of it. Anyways, I bit the bullet and ordered it.
 

Solema

Golden Member
Jul 30, 2002
1,273
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Well I am not entirely versed on the pros and cons of the AGP 8X bus but I do know that it makes nearly no difference NOW. Maybe Doom III will use it better (Anyone running the Doom 3 Alpha on a Radeon 9700Pro with 8X AGP Mobo?) who knows.
 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
399
0
0
Ok, you guys win, I ordered this card :) So long TNT2 :) (no joke, was still using it)
 

spreee02

Junior Member
Sep 7, 2000
18
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well i got a voodoo3 and i have a duron 600 overclocked to 880. i can barely play any of the new titles smoothly... if they even work at all. nba live and nhl 2003 dont even work with voodoo3. should i get this card or wait till christmas time to get a new card? btw... I'm not really planning on upgrading the duron unless i really really need to... i'm a poor college student.
 

PullMyFinger

Senior member
Mar 7, 2001
728
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0
Spreee02,
I would definitely wait till Xmas or even after the holidays to upgrade your video card. We're only just now seeing 4200's w/ 128M at the sub $150 level. Wait till the new ATI's (9500 and 9700 non-pro) and maybe the NV30 start to populate the shelves, then you'll see the current GF4 prices plummet, maybe a 4200-128 for <$100, but that's just my speculation. BTW, if you want to upgrade that Duron, I've got an XP1500 that needs a new home, PM me and we'll talk about price (cheap).
 

TekDemon

Platinum Member
Mar 12, 2001
2,296
1
81
Isn't this really just a Ti4600 marked as a Ti4200??

Looks like Albatron followed the Ti4600 design for everything, but bought the cheaper Ti4200 chips which were A3 anyway and slapped them on...

Stupid naming seems to be all that's different to me lol
 

chizow

Diamond Member
Jun 26, 2001
9,537
2
0
Originally posted by: TekDemon
Isn't this really just a Ti4600 marked as a Ti4200??

Looks like Albatron followed the Ti4600 design for everything, but bought the cheaper Ti4200 chips which were A3 anyway and slapped them on...

Stupid naming seems to be all that's different to me lol

Yep, its a misnomer. The only other differences would be the BIOS and perhaps default voltage draw, but nothing you can't tweak. :)

Chiz

 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
399
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0
Crap, mine doesn't even come close to those speeds in review posted in this thread up top and over here:
http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/medusa/ti4200p_3.htm

Bummer :(

Only at 670mhz memory it already locked up just on a test, at 666 it passed the test, at 295mhz core it also locked on a test. I set it to 290/660 and tried to run 3dmark2001 and it locked up on me. Set it to 280/660 and it got a bit further but then got a crash in win2k with memory dump. Goddamn overpriced junk, was kind of hoping for review speeds. Will test some more.

EDIT: Tried demo in 3DMark2001 at 275/650 and it seemed fine, did notice though a screen blink a few times. Gonna have to test core and and memory some more seperately but don't have time for it right now. Set it to 270/645 just to be safe until I will have some time to run intensive benchmarks on memory and core seperately.
 

GtPrOjEcTX

Lifer
Jul 3, 2001
10,784
6
81
Originally posted by: IFORGOT
I swear this forum is to make me save money, not spend more of it. Anyways, I bit the bullet and ordered it.

care to share your results with the card?
 

PullMyFinger

Senior member
Mar 7, 2001
728
0
0
Originally posted by: cheap
Crap, mine doesn't even come close to those speeds in review posted in this thread up top and over here:
http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/medusa/ti4200p_3.htm

Bummer :(

Only at 670mhz memory it already locked up just on a test, at 666 it passed the test, at 295mhz core it also locked on a test. I set it to 290/660 and tried to run 3dmark2001 and it locked up on me. Set it to 280/660 and it got a bit further but then got a crash in win2k with memory dump. Goddamn overpriced junk, was kind of hoping for review speeds. Will test some more.

EDIT: Tried demo in 3DMark2001 at 275/650 and it seemed fine, did notice though a screen blink a few times. Gonna have to test core and and memory some more seperately but don't have time for it right now. Set it to 270/645 just to be safe until I will have some time to run intensive benchmarks on memory and core seperately.

Cheap,
Give us some info on your system and setup. What cpu, memory, fsb overclocked?, what Det's, etc. Hopefully somebody will have a tip or trick for you so you can get some more speed out of that card.
 

SharkyTM

Platinum Member
Sep 26, 2002
2,075
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Originally posted by: PullMyFinger
Originally posted by: cheap Crap, mine doesn't even come close to those speeds in review posted in this thread up top and over here: http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/medusa/ti4200p_3.htm Bummer :( Only at 670mhz memory it already locked up just on a test, at 666 it passed the test, at 295mhz core it also locked on a test. I set it to 290/660 and tried to run 3dmark2001 and it locked up on me. Set it to 280/660 and it got a bit further but then got a crash in win2k with memory dump. Goddamn overpriced junk, was kind of hoping for review speeds. Will test some more. EDIT: Tried demo in 3DMark2001 at 275/650 and it seemed fine, did notice though a screen blink a few times. Gonna have to test core and and memory some more seperately but don't have time for it right now. Set it to 270/645 just to be safe until I will have some time to run intensive benchmarks on memory and core seperately.
Cheap, Give us some info on your system and setup. What cpu, memory, fsb overclocked?, what Det's, etc. Hopefully somebody will have a tip or trick for you so you can get some more speed out of that card.

Agreed, try using both the BRAND new Dets and the old ones. If you have a not-so-great board, that might be the problem, as well as PSU issues. I had AGP instability issues with my GF3 until i switched from a 300watt generic to an Enermax 650watt.

SharkyTM
 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
399
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0
Originally posted by: PullMyFinger
Cheap,
Give us some info on your system and setup. What cpu, memory, fsb overclocked?, what Det's, etc. Hopefully somebody will have a tip or trick for you so you can get some more speed out of that card.


Ok, I tweaked it some more and here's my results: Turns out I couldn't get GF4 4200 core high enough because memory couldn't even handle 645mhz!!!! For some reason memory would be stable at low GPU core speeds, I guess cus GF4 GPU wouldn't push it too bad at slowers speeds, but the moment I uped that GPU to 275mhz memory gave up at those speeds. So once I figured that out, I clocked memory back down to 600mhz (3.3ns memory which comes with these turbo boards is about 600mhz speed) and started testing GPU speeds first in 5mhz increments and checking how it holds up in 3dmark2001SE. At 300mhz it finally locked up within 5 seconds of benchmark or so, so I set it to 295 and everything is fine. Then I started upping memory from 600mhz. Jumping by 5mhz increments it messed up the picture in that dragon benchmark and then locked up couple seconds later at 630mhz. I wanted to squeeze every mhz out of it so I backtracked by 1mhz and it is rock solid at 295/627. Still, I'm dissapointed memory didn't overlcock very good like they said in reviews. High core speed is of almost no use when now days it's the memory that's a bottleneck in video cards, especially if you also want to use anti-liasing or high res textures. 700mhz on memory would be freaking amazing for FSAA.

BTW, you asked for my specs, here they are:

*AMD AthlonXp 1600+ at 1.75 GHZ which is about 2100+ rating (gotta unlock this sucker and see how high it can actually go with higher multiplier)
*256megs of 2700 Samsung DDR ram,
*FSB at 166mhz, PCI and AGP bus is not overclocked and come out to even 33/66mhz
*EPOX 8K9A KT400 mobo
*Windows 2000

At first I used 40.72 drivers but they were a bit buggy with 3DMark2001, causing rainbow textures and some hud anomalities which made it hard to figure out if it's from overclocking or not so I went to 30.82 which I ran for a long time on my TNT2 and know that these are very good drivers without a single problem so far.

I got about 9000 score in 3dmark2001, no aa, no aniso filtering, is that good? In reviews they're getting like 11000 with this card at default core/memory speeds with XP 2400+ cpu.

BTW, anybody know of any other good video card benchmark which can push video card a lot harder than 3dmak2001? It's kind of old and only seems to push video card to the limits in that nature test where I was getting about 27fps, everywhere else my fps was usually 70+
 

chizow

Diamond Member
Jun 26, 2001
9,537
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Hmm..thats a bit strange, what are your case temps like when 3dmark locks up on you? Bout to hit the sack, but those scores seem pretty low, I'm at around 12,000 3dmarks with a similar cpu speed...rig specs are in my sig.

Chiz
 

Solema

Golden Member
Jul 30, 2002
1,273
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Do you have fast-writes enabled in the motherboard's BIOS? Also I have heard people that OC their processor via FSB and Memory speeds lost overclockability in their Ti4200's versus if they were running the CPU at normal 133/133. Try de-clocking your CPU back to normal and then OC'ing the card, just to see if it is able to hit higher speeds. As it stands now it seems that your card should OC more than it is. Heck my stock VisionTek 4200 hits 315 core no problem.
 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
399
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Originally posted by: chizow
Hmm..thats a bit strange, what are your case temps like when 3dmark locks up on you? Bout to hit the sack, but those scores seem pretty low, I'm at around 12,000 3dmarks with a similar cpu speed...rig specs are in my sig.

Chiz

Temperatures are the same, about 31c, it locks up like immideatly after couple to ten seconds.

Tnx for the tip Solema, will check that when I get home, but my guess is that those people have overclocked their PCI/AGP. If your fsb isn't 133 or 166, AGP bus gets overclocked.