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NVIDIA GeForce4 - NV17 and NV25 Come to Life

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  • NVIDIA GeForce4 - NV17 and NV25 Come to Life



    The past couple of launches from NVIDIA have been of products that have never really surpassed their predecessors by more than 10 - 20% initially. The gaps eventually extended beyond that but never has an NVIDIA launch been as exciting from a pure performance standpoint as today's launch of the GeForce4. Many situations placed the GeForce4 Ti 4600 anywhere from 20% to over 50% faster than the GeForce3 Ti 500, and that's without even turning on anti-aliasing.

    The GeForce4 is not only capable of quite a bit in today's games but it will be a serious contender in titles that will be hitting the streets in the coming months before the end of the year. The improvements to the architecture of the GeForce3 have definitely given the GeForce4 a decent boost in performance, and coupled with more efficient management of die space (removing some portions of the die, optimizing others) NVIDIA is sitting on a very impressive GPU.

    The GeForce4 is easily the crowned victor of the Unreal Performance Test 2002, at least for the next few months; it's featureset is made complete by improved AA performance and nView.

    As a multi-monitor solution, nView is excellent; it is everything ATI's Hydravision is, and it's even easier to use. The fact that NVIDIA is integrated nView in all of their cards indicates their belief in the technology and it actually is a very useful technology that can greatly improve productivity.

    We can't feel more than a little disappointed by the GeForce4 MX however. The $99 GeForce4 MX 420 will be a good replacement for the current GeForce2 MX, and the $149 GeForce4 MX 440 may be justifyable but the $179 MX 460 makes very little sense to us. Even the 440 could use some more justification in order for it to make perfect sense to the user that does care about gaming. Our recommendation is to stay away from the MX 460 and wait a few more weeks for the GeForce4 Ti 4200; pay the extra $20 and gain full DirectX 8 pixel and vertex shader support as well as two additional rendering pipelines.

    The GeForce4 Ti 4200 is the perfect example of a product that would have never seen the light of day had it not been for competition from ATI, which clearly reiterates the point that competition definitely helps an industry, especially when it's competition between two capable firms such as ATI and NVIDIA.

    ATI will not have anything spectacular to respond to the GeForce4 with immediately, however they are very confident that their next part will be improved in every way imaginable and thus very impressive. The usual complaint about drivers is the first thing that comes up whenever the words ATI and potential are used in the same sentence but from what we're hearing from developers, it seems as if ATI is much more responsive now to driver problems than they've ever been in the past.

    For now, the GeForce4 has been the first NVIDIA GPU in recent history to hit the market in such an impressive fashion. The GeForce3 was exciting but it offered limited performance gains; the Ti 500 gave us another performance boost but nothing too impressive. The GeForce4 however is not only improved architecturally but its raw power boost translates into some serious performance gains even today, not to mention all of the feature improvements such as accuview AA and nView multimonitor support.

    From the standpoint of the competition, ATI seems relatively unimpressed with the GeForce4's specifications from what we've heard. Whether or not this means that the supposed R300 core is just that much better is up for speculation...
    According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless...

  • #2
    Do you seriously think we haven´t been there reading it ourselves hours ago?



    rubank

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    • #3
      I wasn't. Thanks for posting it
      Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by rubank
        Do you seriously think we haven´t been there reading it ourselves hours ago?



        rubank
        No one forced you to read this!

        And for thouse of you that did not know here is another one http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardwa...e4/default.asp
        According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless...

        Comment


        • #5
          If you want even more look over at 3dchipset:

          日本で一番人気! 海外取引所なら「バイビット」 入金ボーナスあり 新規顧客の皆さまを対象に特別キャンペーン実施中 バイビット口座開設はこちら


          They have listed a whole bunch of previews.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Guru


            No one forced you to read this!


            No, and I didn´t since I already had, but I clicked your topic in hope of an educated opinion on the matter and just got a lengthy meaningless quote without any comment.

            A link is quite sufficient if you don´t have anything yourself to say.

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            • #7
              Did anybody else notice that onthe 4600 there is a spare fan header? I wonder if they had plans for active cooling on the RAM or something?

              I would link to a picture, but Im sure everybody is out reading the reviews by now anyway.

              Seems quite impressive. Only half the bandwidth of the GXXX if the 19.2GB/sec rumor is true though.

              Ali

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              • #8
                have a look at


                they show a leadtek with 2 fans and some serious armour plating

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                • #9
                  Gah!!!!! I get tired of saying this: Fans are NOT ACTIVE COOLING!!!!!!!
                  Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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                  • #10
                    What´s wrong with an active fanny..?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Although I'm no big fan of nVidia, this looks pretty sweet
                      "That's right fool! Now I'm a flying talking donkey!"

                      P4 2.66, 512 mb PC2700, ATI Radeon 9000, Seagate Barracude IV 80 gb, Acer Al 732 17" TFT

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                      • #12
                        I think the GF4 is the card I have been waiting for. Now if only the price would come down.

                        Regards MD
                        Interests include:
                        Computing, Reading, Pubs, Restuarants, Pubs, Curries, More Pubs and more Curries

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by CHHAS
                          Although I'm no big fan of nVidia, this looks pretty sweet
                          Sorry CHHAS,

                          but I don´t agree. The trees are simply ridiculous, as is the hand holding the knife. And the joining of different objects is as ugly as always. The cut-and-paste look.
                          But I guess it´s not just nVidias fault.

                          rubank

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                          • #14
                            That picture sucks

                            Everything is so flat, the vines of the tree are single polygons and flat like sprites, so are the groups of leaves. The walls are very flat and don't react to the light correctly. The corners are far too sharp for the worn surfaces they are trying to depict. The paths are blurred out and are completely flat. There actually doesn't appear to be ANY advanced rendering used on this at all.

                            And don't even start on the grass.
                            80% of people think I should be in a Mental Institute

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                            • #15
                              I read in both Hardocp's and Digit-life's previews that the 2D was very good. Hardocp said that it was better than the Radeon 8500 and that he would keep the Ti 4600 in his box, and Digit-Life said that the quality is comparable to G400/G450(!).



                              Offcourse this is a reference sample, but I don't think the Gainwards will have lesser quality. And as nView is supposed to be just as good or even better than Hydravision...well the only thing not going for the Ti's is the price.

                              I really do not like nvidia, and I will probably never buy an nvidia board. But I'm not sure on this one.

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