Category : Video Cards Manufacturer : Creative Labs
Posted by: Ben on 2002-03-20
Introduction
Introduction
A couple of weeks ago we took a look at the GeForce 4 440MX card from Creative. Despite being extremely fast in Direct X 7 games and cost effective to boot, many feel that it is not a 'proper' GeForce 4 card, since it lacks Pixel and Vertex shader technologies from even the previous generation of nVIDIA cards.
The beast we are looking at today it a totally different kettle of fish. The Ti-4400 features 128MB of DDR ram running at 550MHz, as well as a core running at 275MHz. Promising a peak performance of 1.12 trillion operations per second and 125 million vertices/second this puppy makes even the GeForce 3 Ti-500 look slow, and its not even the fastest card available! That honour belongs to the Ti-4600 which although identical to this card in every physical aspect, features RAM running at 650MHz and core running at 300MHz.
Inside the admittedly very stylish box you get:
-The card itself,
-TV splitter cable,
-Quickstart guide,
-Driver disk which also features a host of technical demos,
-E-Racer game,
-Incoming Forces game.
The card itself is massive. Not since the good old 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 have I seen such a behemoth. Matching it for impressiveness is the Creative chipset cooler, which has vents snailing out from a central core where the fan operates. Notice the lack of memory ram-sinks. Since the card has a huge 128MB of memory, the ram chips are on both sides of the card. This makes the installation of RAM-sinks slightly more hindersome, compounded by the fact that the new style nVIDIA memory chips are a lot smaller than their older versions. In my experience the difference RAM sinks makes is purely aesthetic. When the heat sinks on my original Elsa 920 GeForce 3 were removed, I found they were attached by the smallest dab of thermal epoxy on just two of the chips. After replacing the sinks with some arctic Silver adhesive, there was no significant increase in overclockablilty (all of 1MHz).
Here you can see the DVI port for nVIEW functionality. Also included is a TV-out port and a splitter cable. From this shot you will also notice a 3-pin fan header should you wish to fit a 3rd party fan such as a Crystal ORB or something similar. The 3DBlaster Ti-4400 costs £279.99 inc. VAT directly from them, probably meaning an online store price of around £250 ($340).
