Thoughts on Albatron Ti4200 Turbo

[compudog]

I'm putting together a list of hardware for a new upgrade. One of the things that must go is my Asus V7700 Ultra (GeForce 2). I like what I have read about the Albatron.

Here's what I'd like to get;

GA-7VAXP or MSI KT-4 Ultra
AMD Athlon XP (2000+ or better) ...depends on how much I drop on the video
512MB PC2700 (or 3200) DDR
Albatron Ti4200P Ultra
WD Spec. Ed (JB) 80 GBChieftec/Chenming Matrix Aluminum Tower
Antec 350 (Already have this)

I'll be using most of my old stuff (CD/RW, CD-ROM) I may spring for a DVD drive if budget permits ($600-$700)

I'd be very interested in any thought or experience the AT community has with the Albatron. If I drop $185 I'd like it to be worthwhile.

(Edited for grammar)

 

[bikinistud]

The vid card sounds good and I have that card pinned down to wether I will either buy it or wait for a radeon 9500pro. But one note is that you may wait to buy all this because tommorow, AMD is supposedly going to drop prices on their processors. If that is true you may want to try and get a T-Bred rev. B. If you go that route, make sure you get a rev.B.

But your future rig sounds sweet

 

[pcmax]

Do a search on Albatron, you will find what you need.

 

[XtremeG]

Love mine currently @ 300/650.

 

[BowlingNut]

cant say much about the vid card, but i see your considering the kt4 ultra mobo

i have the kt-4 ultra and i love it. if you're a modder the red pcb is always cool, not to mention is oc's like a biatch (agoia 0213 y @ 1.70 locked, 2x256samsung pc2700 @ddr333 2-2-5-3-1t, ultra, fastwrite, fast r2r turnaround, stock voltages from an enermax 350wt ps). i could probably get my fsb higher if i unlocked the proc but i'm a little hesitant cuz its so damn small and i dont have any magnifying glasses around here.

 

[kgraeme]

Just out of curiosity, why would you choose the Albatron at $185 over the ASUS v8420 Deluxe for $206? They both have 128MB at 3.3ns and can be overclocked to 4600 levels, but the ASUS card has VIVO capabilities.

 

[Soulkeeper]

It's probably the best Ti 4200 card out there (the albatron ti4200p turbo that is)
as far as an enthusiast/overclocker card is concerned
i might get one but i just don't feel like buying anything anymore
nothing seems good enough anymore
maybe i just lost my thrill for life....

 

[Soulkeeper]

kgraeme maybe he just doesn't want the vivo features, also the cooling on the albatron card is much better

 

[kgraeme]

Originally posted by: Soulkeeper
the cooling on the albatron card is much better

Is that through firsthand experience, or just gleaned from reviews? I ask because I just ordered the ASUS. Of course, there's a good chance I'll replace the HSF setup on the card with the passive cooling from Zalman.

 

[pcmax]

kgraeme, please report what kind of an overclock you get out of the ASUS. They seem to be all over the board in overclockability in the reviews, just curious to see what a non review site card will do.

 

[kgraeme]

Well I'm still getting the system reconfigured around it. I bought it because of some choppiness in Mafia with my old Radeon 64 and I'm finding that while this card is certainly faster, the game still stutters. Solving that is more important to me than overclocking at the moment, but do you have any preferences for testing the overclock?

 

[pcmax]

I found the UT2003 benchmarks really tested whether the card was stable or not. It would give me artifacts when just about everything else would run fine including 3dmark 2001se. If you don't have the full game the demo has the benchmarks too. Otherwise 3dmarks still does a decent job. As far as Mafia, I'm not sure what's going on there, it runs fine on my 4200 at 1280x9xx with 2X AA and I actually put it on my wife's computer which has a P3-933 and a Radeon 64mb VIVO, don't remember what res, and it was actually was running pretty decently.

 

[kgraeme]

Well, I cranked the core to 275 and the memory to 600 and it ran fine. I don't know the benches, but there was no artifacting problems, and no crashing.

BTW, the Mafia problem was my old MS forcefeedback stick.

 

[fluxquantum]

i assume you are talking about the turbo, not ultra. here is a nice review. albatron turbo

 

[jackwhitter]

how is the 2d quality of the albatron turbo?

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: jackwhitter
how is the 2d quality of the albatron turbo?

The gap in 2D parity has been largely closed with all gf4 cards. From reviews and different posters, you'll get excellent 2D with any make/model. 2D looks great on my Albatron Turbo, much better than my GF3 and probably better than my old V5 (but then again, I am now running on a 19'' LCD and DVI )

Chiz

 

[jackwhitter]

no, i can tell u from personal experience that some brands r not as good as others.. chaintech was noticably blurrier. it hurt to look at my screen @ 1280x1024 on a 19" monitor.

 

[compudog]

Wow! Thaks for all the insight into the Albatron. I have still not made my purchases yet (waiting for nForce2...) Anyway here's why I am going with the Albatron; 1) Very good reviews all over the place, 2) I don't need (or really want) VIVO, 3)Price for performance. My budget is close and I really don't want to overshoot by much. I have waited a long time to nake this upgrade and I want to make the best choices. I trust and respect the AT community and the things I read here. So, here is my new hardware list

Leadtek WinFast K7NCR18D-Pro Motherboard (nForde2)
AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (waiting a couple of weeks helps!)
2 - 256 MB PC2700 DDR (for DualChannel DDR support of nForce2 chipset)
Albatron Ti4200P Turbo (HERE)
WD Sp. Ed. WDJB800
Chieftec Aero Tower (HERE) On it's way!! This way I am committed to finally doing something!

Again, thanks for the thoughts and experiences!

 

[chizow]

Looks like a winner bro, enjoy it

Also, make sure to coordinate your purchases if they are from different places so they arrive b4 the weekend, nothing worse than waiting for your CPU to arrive with all your components sitting in boxes. Only thing I wouldn't wait on is memory, if you see a good price on the stuff snatch it up b4 it goes up!!!

Chiz

 

[pcmax]

Nice choices, you will like it.

 

[DDDavey]

Some Albatron's have VIVO...are those good cards as well I assume?

 

[spacelord]

Albatron 4200 Turbo is excellent.

overclocks like a dream.

 

[mamisano]

Forget the P-Turbo, get a Radeon 9500Pro or 9700. I just returned my P-Turbo to Newegg because it only OC'd to 290/635...much worse than all the reviews I have seen. I now have a Radeon 9500Pro for only $15 more at stock speeds it is only 300 points slower than the Overclocked P-Turbo in 3DMark2K1 and is faster in UT2003. Can't wait to overclock it

Oh yeah, all tests show the 9500 Pro beating even the Ti4600 with AA or AF is turned on.

 

[DDDavey]

Originally posted by: mamisano
Forget the P-Turbo, get a Radeon 9500Pro or 9700. I just returned my P-Turbo to Newegg because it only OC'd to 290/635...much worse than all the reviews I have seen. I now have a Radeon 9500Pro for only $15 more at stock speeds it is only 300 points slower than the Overclocked P-Turbo in 3DMark2K1 and is faster in UT2003. Can't wait to overclock it

Oh yeah, all tests show the 9500 Pro beating even the Ti4600 with AA or AF is turned on.

There's only one 9500 I see, and it's $198. Is that the one you're talking about?!? Ughh, that's a bit more than I want to spend

Specs:

ATI RADEON 9500 PRO 128MB DDR DVI AGP RETAIL
Specifications:
Chipset:9500 PRO Visual Processing Unit
Engine clock: 275 MHz
Memory:128MB of double data rate SDRAM
Memory speed: 540 MHz
Eight parallel rendering pipelines
Four parallel geometry engines
128-bit DDR memory interface
BUS: AGP 8X support
OS Support: Windows® XP, Windows® 2000, Windows® Me
Ports; VGA + DVI + S-Video
Retail box (see pics for details) Model#: RADEON 9500 PRO 128M



What's the difference in the regular Albatron and the Turbo?

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: DDDavey



What's the difference in the regular Albatron and the Turbo?

Not much anymore from my understanding. Well, PCB design is different along with heatsink and 3.3ns BGA Ram, but apparently there have been "bad" batches as of late with a few reports these cards aren't getting much more than normal ti4200s and definitely not up to ti4600 speeds. Can't say I can really recommend this buy anymore, as time has passed, its price is pretty much the same, and there are competing parts out around the same price with better performance.

Run another search on Albatron here and the gen. hardware forum and you'll probably see a few people wondering why the OC speeds were teh suck now. (My guess is cheaper parts are being used now that the card has set a reputation for itself and they are scaling back production on these in anticipation of GF FX).

Chiz