Review of the Creative Geforce 4 Ti4400

Introduction

Shopping a new graphics card can be frustrating. There seems to be new models popping up every month, and the names seem to be more and more complicated. The choices are vast. The top line of ATI cards is named 8500LE/8500/8500DV. Nvidia has the Geforce4 line of cards named Ti4200/Ti4400/Ti4600. Nvidia has also got a series of cards called geforce4 MX420/MX440/MX460. But it's fair to say that the MX chip isn't really a Geforce4 chip, it's more comparable with a Geforce2 chip.

Relying on different forums on the Internet, can also be a huge task. There are so many different users, and equally many advise. The problem here is to filter out the users that say "this is best, because I've got it" which seems to be the majority of users, and the ones that really knows what it all about.

The best thing to do is to search for reviews on the Internet, comparing the various card models. This is what we have done and the clear favourite among these, are the Nvidia GF4Ti line of cards. These cards are clearly the fastest 3D card on the marked, but there are still 3 models to choose for.

These are:

- Ti4200: Not yet public available. Therefore not a choice.

- Ti4400: Available in Norway with a price starting at NOK 2700,- ($300)

- Ti4600: Available in Norway with a price starting at NOK 3500,- ($390)

As you already know, we will take a closer look at the Creative Ti4400 card. This card is a bargain compared to the other brands available in Norway. But as this review will show, low price doesn't necessary mean low performance.

The card looks like this:

It's equiped with a standard VGA, a Video out, and a DVI. But no DVI-VGA adapter.

The memory modules are made by SAMSUNG and are rated 3.6ns. This correspond to a DDR speed of 2x1000/3.6=555MHz. This is just enough for the rated speed of 550MHz, which is the default memory speed of the Ti4400 cards. No heat sinks are attached to the modules. Luckily Samsung produces quality memory, overclocking should therefore be possible.

Test systems:

We installed the latest official drivers from Nvidia 28.32, rebooted, and the system where up and running. The first thing we noticed where the sharp and crisp picture. Nvidia obviously changed something, because the quality is comparable with the Matrox G450, which is still regarded by many as the king of 2D quality.

Overclocking

We where able to overclock the Creative Ti4400 to a speed of 305MHz on the core, and 650MHz DDR memory.

Anything above 305MHz on GPU would result in a lockup of 3Dmark2001se, higher memoryspeeds resulted in graphic flaws in the 3Dmark. This is done with the stock cooling, and is a little over default Ti4600 speed. Of course overclocking the Ti4600 may yield even higher scores, because they are fitted with higher rated memory modules.

Performance

Modifying

The fan fitted to the card is extremely noisy. We could not believe how bad it was until we stopped the fan! The system the card was first installed in was quite noisy, and the UPS-unit was blowing right next to the test system. But this fan really outperformed all other fans in the room with regards to the sound level. Something had to be done.

The first thing to do was of course to remove the stock fan. This is done quite easy with a pare of pliers. Just remove the center pin, and push the clip out from underneath the card, like this:

Even though the new RAM modules fitted to these cards don't generate as much heat as the previous versions, we wanted to make sure this was not a limiting factor. We therefore installed heat sinks on these as well. To ensure proper contact between the heat sinks and the ram modules, the heat sinks was split in two as shown on the image.

Fitting the GPU fan was a little tricky. The push pins supplied with the Crystal Orb where to big to fit in the holes. We therefore used this method to connect the fan:

The final result of the modification was quite successful, and eliminated the horrible noise from the original fan.. We added an 80mm fan above the graphics card to supply proper air circulation on both sides of the card ( Similar to this ). This ensured proper cooling of the the added memory heat sinks without adding to much noise. This is how the card looks after the modification

With this setup we where able to push the card to the impressive score of 317MHz on the core, and 690MHz DDR on the memory. The card where not able to run at AGP speeds exceeding 91MHz, and therefore limited the FSB speed of our test system. But the final 3Dmark2001 where quite respectable landing at 12291 (Compare link ).

CONCLUSION

The creative Ti 4400 is a great performer at a reasonable price.

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