Card inspection
XFX are a relative newcomer to the video card world. Competing against established runners, new entrants often have to go that little bit further to woo potential customers. The box cover portrays a powerful image. XFX are a subsidiary of the Pine Group.
A massive heatsink dominates the card. Cooling appears to be a primary concern. The heatsink is well attached to the GPU and front memory modules. The whole card gives off a Leadtek type of vibe. We're glad to see that thermal paste was used between the heatsink and GPU / memory. The fan is reasonably quiet in use; a decent design. The card conforms to regular Ti 4400+ designs, in so far as it's based on a huge PCB. Just hiding to the left of the heatsink is the Philips SAA 7108E VIVO chip. Providing both Video-In and Video-Out capability, but only at 800x600 on both counts, it's not the latest Philips' VIVO encoder/decoder. However, it should be good enough for most peoples' basic editing needs.
Unfortunately, the cooling is a one-sided affair. Given the attention paid on the topside, we'd have liked a total cooling solution. You can see the outline of the 7108E encoder / decoder chip on the right.
A total of 128MB of TinyBGA 3.6ns (555MHz DDR) RAM. That's as close as you can realistically get to the 550MHz specified DDR memory speed. All spick and span so far.
HD15, VIVO and DVI-I connections make their regular appearances on the back of the card. As a TFT user, a DVI connection is important for me. NVIDIA's TwinView software allows you to toggle with and between display modes.
The bundle is nicely colour coordinated. A DVI-to-VGA is included to allow dual concurrent HD15 connections. A 2 metre S-Video extension cable and an S-Video-to-RCA-Out extension lead complete the hardware package. The manual is just a basic reference guide; it's not as detailed as some of the larger companies' booklets. The excellent Power Director 2.1 Pro provides the necessary software for the VIVO functions, as well as 41.09 drivers, DirectX 8.1 and a couple of utilities.. Another CD provides the ever-popular PowerDVD 4.0 XP DVD software player. Just above average, we'd say.
