Creative TI4200 64MB 4x
Creative are no strangers to the video card market. With their emphasis on relatively low-cost cards that are quickly out to market, often based on the reference design, Creative tend not to modify their cards unlike some manufacturers. Creative outsource the manufacturing of their cards to MSI, so it's of no real surprise to see both MSI's and Creative's cards looking alike in both aesthetics and features.
This is the only 64MB card on test. Creative do have a 128MB 8x AGP card in their lineup but we were unable to get our hands on one in time. We should be able to demonstrate what difference an extra 64MB of memory and 8x AGP make in our suite of benchmarks. The box is a muted, understated affair. Let's delve inside.
You'd be forgiven in thinking that the PCB is the colour that MSI usually use in their cards - only the Creative symbol on the GPU heatsink gives the game away. The cooler is actually quite a stylish offering. Like a few others, it helps cool the RAM by channeling the air out from the heatsink and over the RAM modules. The heatsink is securely fastened on by two pushpins. A see-through plastic covering helps the channeling effect.
The back of the card is bare. It seems as if this is a Ti 4200 based on the minimal cost approach. The Creative is exactly the same dimensions as a standard, generic Ti 4200.
64MB of TSOP RAM is provided by Hynix. With no covering it's far easier to calculate the internal frequency.
A rating of 3.6ns gives us a theoretical operating frequency of 555MHz. With that in mind it should overclock comfortably past its default speed of 513MHz. Time will tell when we push it in the overclocking tests.
There's no provision for any kind of video-in with the Creative. The Philips SAA7104E chip only has the ability to output signals with a resolution of 1280x1024. The card feels well made in every respect.
Thankfully NVIDIA chose to include inherent DVI support on the GeForce4 Ti series of cards. That's why the back of all the Ti 4200s here have HD15, TV-Out (Video-in in some cases) and a DVI connection for the increasingly popular LCD/TFT screens.
The Creative Ti 4200 ships with a mediocre bundle. A brief quickstart guide, a little adapter that plugs into the back of the card and offers S-Video and RCA connections, a utility CD with no bundled software DVD player, and a couple of older games in Rage Racer and Incoming Forces completes this underfed bundle. This kind of bundle may have been fine a couple of years ago but in relation to what some manufacturers have bundled in this test, it's positively poor.
