My GF4 Story - and Leadtek 4400 a breeze to OC!

[stultus]

I got my GF4 in ahead of my other new parts, so I figured I'd pop it in and see how it worked.

Day 1: no OC'ing. T2 and JK2 don't have stellar improvements, but I'm probably CPU limited now.
Day 2: Got really pissed at XP/refresh rate issue. You buy a damn near $300 card and you expect it to WORK.
Day 2, 3AM: Finally solve issue after trying 5 "tweak" programs and 3 driver versions (including hacked ones). Ended up using reference drivers (28.32) with an uncompressed nv_disp.inf file and nvreffix.
Day 3: Installed coolbits. Did a slight OC on mem and core.
Day 4: Got bored, so dragged everything up to 4600 levels (300/650). Not a peep out of my vid card. Rock stable through hours of T2 and JK2.

So, my question: Why would anyone buy a 4600 if these things are so darn easy to OC? Right out of the box, I just set it for 4600 and it's humming along nicely. And my case has atrocious cooling compared to the rest of you guys 🙂

So, anyone looking to get a 4600 - don't bother.

I'll probably take the whiny fans off of this card and attach a 80mm Panaflo L1A to it and see if I can maintain 4600 levels... and then I'll go higher 🙂

 

[memories2002]

yes yes but why is it that you do not realise that a ti4600 would go even higher than its stock speed ? the oc potential of the 4400 and 4600 would be similar, and thus the difference would be maintained anyway. if you wanna overclock and compare, overclock BOTH and compare !

Deepak V.

 

[Rio Rebel]

memories, you make a very good point. However, this statement is a false assumption:


<< the oc potential of the 4400 and 4600 would be similar >>



You can't assume that all cards overclock at the same ratio, especially since the higher-rated cards are often pushing the maximum that can be achieved.

I like your point, though - too often people get carried away talking about something being "just as good" as its higher rated counterpart by overclocking it, yet it is never mentioned that the higher rated part can probably gain from being overclocked as well, albeit probably not as much, so the comparison isn't fair.

That doesn't even get into the downside of overclocking, which most people here pretend doesn't exist. 😉

All that being said, I'd still buy the 4400 over the 4600, given the price/performance ratio.

 

[stultus]

Yes, but I have also read how the 4600s are being pushed to about the max that they can achieve. Sure, some people can push them higher with modded cooling (and yes, probably a few at stock cooling, too), but my point is that out of the box with nothing special the 4400 can hit 4600 levels... and then some. So for the average college student out there like me who's trying to figure how much better the 4600 is than the 4400, I'm saying not much if you don't mind OC'ing. And I haven't pushed my card to see how high it can go yet... I'm sure it can do more.

Just saying that I'm glad I didn't pay $100 more for a 4600. Everyone else has their own opinion on if it's worth it for the bit higher that 4600s can OC to, but I'm just giving mine 🙂

 

[Bozo Galora]

you are correct, it is stupid to pay more for a Ti4600, since they are at the ragged edge as it is, and O/C
little. However they have released a new stepping for the Ti4600 GPU, the "A3", so this may change the
equation, at least for the core.

 

[rgowen]

For me, I doubt I will really bother o/cing my GF4 Ti4400 because in all my benches, I did not see enough of an improvement over the already high scores. Am I really going to notice the difference between 100 fps and 110 with everything maxed? Not really, so why put the extra strain and heat on it. I noticed the same thing when o/cing my 1.6a Pentium 4 chip. The difference between 2.13 and 2.4 in benches is not that big. I guess it just sounds nice to say you have a cpu running at this speed or a videocard running at that speed.