Introduction
XFX GeForce4 Ti 4800-SE
We seem to be inundated with press releases showing how one company's range of video cards offer a better, more immersive, and realistic gaming experience. Cinematic effects, unlimited shader instructions, and photo-realism seem to be at the top of the agenda. However, DirectX8-capable video cards are still the backbone of NVIDIA's graphics card sales. The GeForce4 Ti series, updated recently to include 8x AGP operation, has been a profitable and successful series for the Californian outfit. Only the recent dominance shown by ATi has put a dampener on NVIDIA's sales.
NVIDIA will still claim that the GeForce4 Ti series is an effective performer for the games that you can currently buy on retail shelves. That's true in the main part, and NVIDIA's newest iteration of cards, stemming from the ill-fated GeForce FX Ultra, seem to push features before immediate performance.
Today we're looking at one of the very last GeForce4 series of cards here at Hexus. It's branded by a company that may not be immediately familiar to users. XFX, however, is a division of the Pine Group, a budget component / motherboard producer. XFX will produce a whole host of FX-based cards, so the Ti 4800-SE is a precursor of what's to come. What does it look and perform like ?, is it worth buying ?. Let's find out.
