The NVIDIA Ti-4600 Rules

Instead of publishing what everyone else has published on NVIDIA's
new GeForce4 series, I thought I'd take a slightly different
approach. You can check out every other gaming site for the latest
3D benchmarks and
comprehensive
reviews, and you can easily find the appropriate
marketing
materials on the Web. Regurgitating those facts would be
somewhat pointless. For the most part, I agree with just about
everything I've read - and have now seen, first hand. Beyond
framerates and full-screen antialiased games, there has to be
some kind of practical reason to upgrade your video card every so
often. “Will this make my computing experience more complete?” In
a word: yes. No matter what video accelerator you currently have
in your system, the GeForce4 is a step [up] in the right
direction. Here's an “Average Joe” review of the Ti-4600.

I've been sold on NVIDIA chipsets since the original TNT card. I
used to be a die-hard Matrox man, but turtle-pace OpenGL and
DirectX performance drove me away. You know my feelings towards
ATI; their technology, while strong, has been continuously plagued
by buggy software and infrequent driver releases. Of my card, I've
always asked one very important thing: good 2D performance. NVIDIA
has yet to disappoint, and the GeForce4 Ti-4600 is no slouch.
Remember, even though you're not playing a game, Windows is a GUI-guided
OS. Images are always being displayed and rendered on your
screen. The more video memory you have, the more your screen can
handle (higher resolutions, higher color depths, larger
wallpapers, etc.). Windows XP offers a plethora of user interface
bells and whistles, too - including window transparency and alpha-blending.
A good video card can make that experience less painful.

My current desktop is aligned with: a 1.0Ghz PIII; 512 MB 133
SDRAM; ATA-100 7200 RPM Western Digital hard drive; 1600×1200x32;
and a 19″ CRT monitor. Other system components are relatively
inconsequential as far as the following “benchmarks” go. You're
going to have a bottleneck somewhere; if you're like most people,
your video card is the weakest link. Does Web page content pop up
instantaneously once it's loaded? Do you have to sit there and
wait for the screen to refresh itself every time you open or close
a new application? Believe it or not, your video card could be
negatively impacting these processes. You'd be surprised at how
much difference a second or two makes. “Point. Click. Bam.” That's
the way it should be. Drivers play an important role in the speed
and efficiency of day-to-day “video” operations, too. I've been
using the “leaked” 27.42 Detonators for a few weeks now with no
problems (knock on wood).

This evening, I swapped my 3D Prophet II Ultra 64MB (GeForce2) for
the NVIDIA Ti-4600 reference card. Since they're both using the
same unified driver set, all I needed to do was… nothing. Apart
from switching the cards, that is. Before I removed it, however, I
was sure to make note of a couple of number sets. Now, I'm the
type of guy who can tell when something is one pixel off… when
objects move slower or faster on the screen. I'm nutty that way. I
scoured the Web for trustworthy, understandable, unique, timely,
applicable 2D benchmarking utilities. Furo stumbled upon
Blt
Testing, and I remembered Stardock's
XPBench tool. I knew I needed
to quantify the changes for the rest of y'all. However, please
understand that certain affected Windows features aren't normally
benchmarked. I'll explain this in a bit. Er, byte.

“The Windows function called 'BitBlt' is used for displaying the
results of software rendering, or for software decoding of video
playback. Any software-driven animation will see the performance
benefits of a fast BitBlt. [It] is one of those functions that
you will wait for. If it's slow, video playback will be choppy,
Flash animation will look bad, Photoshop will be less perky, etc.”
On a fresh reboot, the BitBlt average on my GF2 was 156.3 fps
[183.6 MB/sec] compared to 157.3 fps [184.3 MB/sec] on the GF4. No
notable increase. Since the utility hasn't been updated in quite a
while, I'll assume that the law of diminishing returns may have
applied in this instance. A faster processor and larger L2 cache
would have certainly yielded a larger discrepancy in numbers. That
said, I launched a few of my favorite Flash movies full screen in
IE on the GF4, and found much fewer frames were dropping. Then,
when I went to browse for some photos in Explorer, the thumbnails
were refreshing at least twice as fast as they were before the
upgrade. I can't prove it, but I know how my system “feels.”

Next, I gave XPBench v1.03 a whirl. “At this time, [it] checks
for the following: (1) Does the driver support constant alpha
blending (this improves the performance of fade effects as an
example); and (2) Does the driver support per pixel alpha blending
(window shadows make use of this).” If you skin your Windows
applications, these are important numbers. The overall Layered
Windows score for the GF2 was 157, versus the GF4 score of 230. At
100% visibility, the GF2 weighed in at 44, and the GF4 held strong
at 62. It gave me the option to submit and compare the data to
other systems, but I skipped that step. Watching the test run live
was testament enough. Everything else constant, I feel this data
is relatively reliable. And, again, things are definitely “going
faster” on my screen.

nView is a godsend even for those of us who only have one monitor.
Through it, I can set up different profiles with different
“features” turned on or off. The wizard can step you through the
options if you'd rather not use the five tabs. Enable window (and
child window) spanning across monitors, application position
memory, dialog box repositioning, and set up hot keys for common
Windows routines. When you right-click a program's title bar, you
can quickly access the nView tools (send the window to another
monitor, virtual desktop, make it transparent, etc.). The most
interesting part of this utility is the ability to turn on
transparency when you're moving a window. Imagine being able to
see one spreadsheet chart underneath another without batting an
eyelash. That's how easy it is with nView. And if you don't like
it, you don't need to run it.

In the past few hours, I've only hit a couple of glitches. I was
rifling through the Recycle Bin and it wasn't redrawing the scroll
bar area properly. I cannot duplicate this snafu. Nor can I
duplicate the small (non-standard) crash I received when I closed
a browser window; Guru3D was
still loading data. These could easily have been caused by the
reference card, the unsigned drivers, a combination of the two,
Windows itself, etc. I'm not in the least bit concerned; this is a
rock solid video card. If you're not a serious gamer, I think
you'd be content with a GeForce4 MX. If you're wanting the most
bang for your buck, go with a full-fledged GeForce4 Ti product.
128 MB of video RAM is nothing to sneeze at; every OpenGL and
DirectX application believes in the old adage: the more, the
merrier. Trust me; you'd be hard pressed to find a better,
cleaner, faster, more “affordable” AGP video card.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that every
Lockergnome issue is uploaded to a permanent URL on the Web, even
though we distribute the same content via e-mail. If you wish to
link
to this review, be my guest. We've always made the Web link
available to everyone at the bottom of every mailing. That, and
if you're looking for the lowest GeForce4 prices, look no further
than the co-branded Lockergnome Price
Grabber. That's all for now. I'd love to hear what you think!

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