Features comparison
The price is the cheapest that I found online when consulting all the major vendors' price lists.
Memory denotes the amount of RAM on-board. It also states what form the RAM takes. TSOP (Thin Surface Outline Package) is the older style of RAM. It's being superceded by BGA (Ball Grid Array) RAM for card that require RAM speeds in excess of 600MHz DDR. The Albatron Turbo and Gainward 750 both feature BGA RAM.
Core / Memory show the actual speeds as identified by RivaTuner. It seems as if the 8x AGP cards have benefited from a boost in memory speeds. NVIDIA's site now refer to the total memory bandwidth as 8GB/s (7.1GB/s for 4x 128MB Ti 4200s) for 8x AGP Ti 4200s. That derives down to a memory speed of 500MHz. The previous incarnation of Ti 4200s, when equipped with 128MB of RAM, ran at 444MHz DDR. Here we see 513MHz, 13MHz faster than the official specifications. It seems as if every manufacturer is artificially inflating their memory speeds.
The ABIT OTES and Albatron Turbo go a step further by validating their Ti 4200s' memory to 553MHz. The core speeds for all but the OTES are 249.8MHz. ABIT go the extra mile by having a standard 274MHz core speed. The 274/553 clocks of the ABIT OTES are the basic, default clocks for a GeForce4 Ti 4400. They must have some confidence in their cooling ability or pre-select Ti 4400 cores from TSMC. Gainward do pre-guarantee speeds of 270MHz / 540MHz respectively with their Expert Tool.
Cooling ratings were given on the basis of just how much attention each manufacturer has devoted to extra cooling on their Ti 4200s. The provision of beefier coolers, RAMsinks, and overall design played a part in this subjective rating.
| Card | Price | Memory (MB) | Core/Mem | Cooling |
| ABIT OTES | £153 | 128MB TSOP | 274/553 | B |
| Albatron 8x AGP | £128 | 128MB TSOP | 250/513 | C |
| Albatron Turbo | £145 | 128MB BGA | 250/553 | A |
| Asus | £146 | 128MB TSOP | 250/513 | C |
| Chaintech SE | £151 | 128MB TSOP | 250/513 | B |
| Creative | £95 | 64MB TSOP | 250/513 | C |
| Gainward 650 | £146 | 128MB TSOP | 250/513 | B |
| Gainward 750 | £166 | 128MB BGA | 250/513 | B |
| Leadtek | £136 | 128MB TSOP | 250/513 | B |
| MSI | £145 | 128MB TSOP | 250/513 | B |
| PNY | £138 | 128MB TSOP | 250/513 | C |
| X-Micro | - | 128MB TSOP | 250/513 | C |
Noise rating was a subjective measure. I stopped the CPU fan for a minute and listened to the sound of the fan(s) from the various cards. The overall sound and pitch were taken into account when assessing each card. The Leadtek surprised me with its quietness - you could barely hear it from a few feet away. The ABIT OTES is for those who consider a Delta 80mm fan at 12v is to be standard cooling.
Encoding / decoding was done by Philips on each and every card. The various chips are specified as follows:
SAA7104E - Only TV-Out / Video-Out. Max resolution is 1280x1024
SAA7108E - Video-Out and Video-In. Max resolution is 800x600 on both counts.
SAA7108AE - Video-Out and Video-In. Max resolution is 1280x1024. The best of the Philips chips on this test.
The bundle rating took into account the amount of software, how recent the software is, and the overall ease of use.
| Card | Noise | Encoding | Bundle | DVI-to-VGA |
| ABIT OTES | E | Philips SAA7104E | B | Yes |
| Albatron 8x AGP | B | Philips SAA7104E | C | No |
| Albatron Turbo | C | Philips SAA7104E | C | No |
| Asus | B | Philips SAA7108AE VIVO | N/A | N/A |
| Chaintech SE | C | Philips SAA7108E VIVO | B | Yes |
| Creative | D | Philips SAA7104E | D | No |
| Gainward 650 | C | Philips SAA7108AE VIVO | B | Yes |
| Gainward 750 | C | Philips SAA7108AE VIVO | B | Yes |
| Leadtek | A | Philips SAA7108E VIVO | B | Yes |
| MSI | C | Philips SAA7108AE VIVO | B | Yes |
| PNY | B | Philips SAA7104E | D | Yes |
| X-Micro | B | Philips SAA7108E VIVO | B | No |
I've made mention of the fact that some cards feature VIVO (Video-In and Video-Out) functionality afforded by the higher specified Philips encoders/decoders but we must not forget that all the cards on test here have the ability to output to a television and have the ability to power dual PC screens through NVIDIA's Twinview technology.
I was eager to test just how easy it was to record an incoming source on a VIVO-equipped card. With that in mind, I decided to use a S-Video signal sourced from the output of another video card (Radeon 9700 Pro) located in a second PC. Using the VIVO software bundled with the X-Micro card (PowerDirector), capturing the source was simple on the test X-Micro card. The picture below shows a S-Video feed with 3DMark 2001SE being captured, recorded, and compressed into MPEG-2 High Resolution format. You can just about see that 45.9MB of hard drive space has been taken for around 90 seconds of video at 800x600.
It's all intuitive and easy to use. I've not used this particular software before but had no problems of any note. As most decent camcorders use S-Video / DV Out, the VIVO function on certain cards provides a basic but usable capturing system. The Philips 7108AE won't compare with, for example, a dedicated Firewire / Premiere 6 setup, but it's fine for what most of us will use it for. TV-Out was crisp on all of the cards - a shade below what the Radeon 9700 outputted, but watchable anyway.
