Specifications

The list

NVIDIA® GeForce 4 Ti 4200 GPU
128MB high speed DDR video memory
Core Clock: 250MHz
Memory Clock: 444MHz (7.1GB/sec bandwidth)
4.0 Billion texels/sec fill rate
113 Million vertices/sec setup
Dual 350MHz RAMDACs
On-board TV-out support up to 1024x768 resolution
DVI Output
NVIDIA video processing engine (VPE)
High-quality HDTV/DVD playback
nfiniteFX II Engine
Accuview antialiasing subsystem
nView display technology for powering multiple displays
Full acceleration for Microsoft DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3 ICD
Lifetime warranty

First impressions

VisionTek Xtasy Ti 4200

Ti 4200 64MB Reference Board

For the Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4200, VisionTek chose to use an Orb-style cooler for cooling the GeForce4 Ti 4200 GPU. In comparison, the Ti 4200 reference board implemented the same cooling system from the GeForce2 Ultra.

Since the card is intended for the value market, VisionTek chose not to implement Philips MPEG encoding chip for the Xtasy Ti 4200. However, the board still offers TV-output support. In addition to the TV-out connector, the Xtasy Ti 4200 also features a DVI output connector.

One little bonus that our Xtasy Ti 4200 board shipped with was 128MB of 4.0 nanosecond memory manufactured by Samsung. At 4ns, this means our memory is officially rated for 250MHz operation. VisionTek could have utilized cheaper 4.5ns memory to keep costs down and still stayed within NVIDIA’s specs for the Ti 4200, so finding 4ns memory was a pleasant surprise for us. As a result, we’ve essentially got a 128MB Ti 4200 board that follows the same clock speeds as the 64MB Ti 4200 cards. We’re unsure if VisionTek plans to eventually implement 4.5ns chips on its 128MB boards, by default the 128MB Xtasy Ti 4200 operates at 250MHz core/444MHz from the factory.

Overclocking

With its 4ns memory, we were eager to see how high we could overclock our Ti 4200 card. Therefore, the first component we overclocked was the DDR memory. After moving slowly at first, we eventually cranked the memory slider on the Ti 4200 all the way up. Much to our delight, the Xtasy Ti 4200 ran without a hitch! The Xtasy Ti 4200 core itself was nearly just as cooperative, we were able to overclock the GPU to 310MHz -- just 5MHz shy the sliders’ 315MHz maximum, and the same clock speed we’re able to extract out of our GeForce4 Ti 4600 cards. Not a bad overclock for a $200 card huh?