NV25
NV17 - February 2002
The GeForce 4 Ti is out and all hardware and gaming sites are literally chafing with glee ! nvidia is really keeping the pressure on and always researching more neat stuff in the mysterious depths of its keeps for engineers. This new emperor (king doesn't cut it anymore) is the current master of performance. And all kneel to swear allegiance, while publishing the sacro-saint benchmarks that prove without a doubt that the GeForce 4 does indeed blow every other card out of the water - including GeForce 3 cards.
The GeForce 4 builds upon the memory management advances of its predecessor, as well as engraving technology improvements, to deliver yet more boosted performance. The Ti line is very powerful, with two pixel shaders (GF3 had only one), like the X-box has. In addition to that, memory management and algorythm improvements give the ti4600 the possibility to deliver almost 250fps in Quake 3 at 1024. In Max Payne and Star Wars : Jedi Knight II, the Ti line is continually close to 100fps, even at 1280x1024. The Ti4200, the "smallest" of Ti4 series, is more powerful than the high-end GF3 Ti500 and beats it in all benchmarks.
More caution must be taken when considering the MX line. The chip on these cards is an improved GeForce 2 MX, and not at all a GeForce 4 chip. That means that, although the GF4MX will improve performance over the GF2MX series, it will not deliver cut-down GF4Ti performance, but improved GF2 performance. The main issue is that none of the GF4MX chips are DX8-compatible. Taking this into account, the MX460 is a true contender, delivering results that are quite close to GF3Ti cards. The MX440 delivers also, but the MX420 is to be avoided at all costs. Any GeForce 3 card does better than the MX420, and GeForce 3 cards are less expensive.
| 4600 | 4400 | 4200 | |
| RAMDAC | 350 Mhz | 350 Mhz | 350 Mhz |
| Transistor count (millions) | 63 | ||
| Technology | 0.15 micron | ||
| Frequency | 300 Mhz | 275 Mhz | 250 Mhz |
| Onboard RAM | 128 MB DDR | 128 MB DDR | 128 MB DDR |
| Memory bandwidth | 10 400 MB/s | 8 800 MB/s | 8 000 MB/s |
| RAM bus width | 128 bits | ||
| RAM bus frequency | 325 Mhz DDR | 275 Mhz DDR | 222 Mhz DDR |
| Pixel fill rate | 1,2 GPixels | 1,1 GPixels | 0,9 GPixels |
| Texel fill rate | 1,6 GTexels | ||
| Triangle count (millions) | 25 | ||
| Render pipes | 4 | ||
| Pixel per Clock (per pipe) | 2 | ||
| Z-buffer | 24 bit |
| 460 | 440 | 420 | |
| RAMDAC | 350 Mhz | ||
| Transistor count (millions) | 57 | ||
| Technology | 0.15 micron | ||
| Frequency | 300 Mhz | 270 Mhz | 250 Mhz |
| Onboard RAM | 64 MB SDR/DDR | ||
| Memory bandwidth | 8 800 MB/s | 6 400 MB/s | 2 656 MB/s |
| RAM bus width | 128 bits | ||
| RAM bus frequency | 225 Mhz DDR | 200 Mhz DDR | 166 Mhz |
| Pixel fill rate | 600 MPixels | 540 MPixels | 500 MPixels |
| Texel fill rate | 1,6 GTexels | ||
| Triangle count (millions) | 25 | ||
| Render pipes | 4 | ||
| Pixel per Clock (per pipe) | 2 | ||
| Z-buffer | 24 bit |
| The GeForce 3 | The GeForce FX |