ABit Siluro GF4 Ti4200
Abit Siluro GF4 Ti4200 video card
The ABit Siluro GF4 Ti4200 OTES video card is made on a dark-brown or blue PCB, as many other Abit video cards are. Two makes of this video card came to our test lab simultaneously- the Abit's Moscow office tore a blue board from their hearts :), while a brown board with a shining copper bracket came from Taiwan. We couldn't find any other fundamental differences between them.
The superficial resemblance with other accelerators ends with the textolyte color. The video card is in many ways based on the original nVidia design, but there are some eye-catching essential differences. First, it is the OTES turbine. The second is the twofold strap that takes two slots on the rear case panel. By the way, this may hinder installation of the board inside the case where stiffening ribs are fitted between the openings. Prior to buying an OTES video card, take a look at your PC case - what if the board doesn't fit inside it?
On the keeper strip there are three connectors - one for plugging in a DVI monitor, one for D-Sub 15 pin and one S-VHS for plugging in a TV-set. As you can see, with this combination it's not possible to connect two LCD panels. On the other hand, it is a Ti4200 and it is very unlikely that owners of $150 video cards might wish to plug in two expensive 17"+ LCD monitors.
In the shipment bundle there is an adapter for plugging in a second monitor. We won't dwell on it, it's quite a standard thing, except the milk-white color. What is more, with Siluro GF4 OTES you can't connect a TV-set through a composite input without a special adapter. Besides the mentioned connectors, on the strap there is an opening for releasing the circulating air off the PC case. On the board there a Ti 4200 chip with A3 stepping manufactured on the 26th week of the year, which is about in early June.
The 64 MB DDR memory on 8 chips is soldered on both sides of the PCB the same way as it in the original design, four on each side. The memory is made up of Hyundai-Hynix chips with the access time 3.6 ns, which is approximately equivalent to 275 MHz (550 DDR). Repeating it that the cooling and ordinary blowing of memory are not organized at all, but that is a serious shortcoming for such a video board, since Ti4200 seems to be extremely popular with those who are after overclocking and saving some extra bucks.
One of the things that make the Abit board stand out from the reference design is that the D-Sub and TV-Out connectors are carried over to the child board that is linked to the main one with a pin connector. It's remarkable that the original wiring for the connector is placed under the cooler and is simply not used. That hasn't affected the 2D quality, anyway it's just here where we can't vouch for the whole line. This issue is specific to each video board. The child video board is screened from below and on the whole is made very well.
Retail bundle
The video card that we received comes bundled in an ordinary cardboard box. The cover is emblazoned with light colors and Maya themes, in particular, it is the world's famous picture with allegedly an astronaut's figure. For us it's pleasant to see that Abit has finally done away with nonstandard triangular boxes in which Siluro GeForce 3 used to be shipped.
The retail bundle is traditionally minimal. All in all, the company is trying to keep the ~150$ price down by cutting down on the bundled software where the games set is minimized. For Russia, this is surely a definite plus. In any case, Ti4200 is definitely not a top-end product, and saving on whatever items is just to the point.
The card comes bundled with the following:
- The video card itself;
- Card -> Composite+SVHS splitter;
- Composite Cable;
- SVHS Cable;
- DVI to D-Sub 15 adapter;
- Drivers CD;
- User's documentation.
It's worth mentioning that all the bundled cables and adapters have a rather tricky design and are made of semitransparent flexible plastic. As is always the case, we recalled the Jobbs' products. In our opinion, it looks quite impressive.
The menu appearing upon the bundled CD auto-play
The drivers CD comes bundled with the following software & utilities:
- The default WHQL-certified driver (based on Detonator 30.30);
- SiluroDVD which in fact turned out to be a modified WinDVD;
- DirectX 8.1;
- User's Manual in English;
- ABit Graphic Max software (a weak tool for tweaking the chip and memory clock speeds);
- nVidia NVFlash (BIOS flash update);
- Acrobat Reader;
- 3Deep )a utility for image calibration to make the software & games display more effective)
What is curious is that after installing the rated drivers you won't be able to install ABit Graphic Max. On the VGA Utilities tab only one software is accessible:
I couldn't find any intelligible notes describing how to invoke the utility and why it is disabled (greyed-out). For our tests, we installed the most recent reference detonator. Comparative tests have shown that the bundled drivers are far more slower, especially in Doom III E3 Demo.
TV-Out
The board is equipped with the by now classical GeForce chip Philips 7104 that is also not free of serious shortcomings despite being a universal solution.
Among the flaws is that the maximum resolution of image displayed on TV is restricted to 800x600; moreover, the displayed image has several artifacts typical of that chip (like borders around the image, sometimes the image is displaced with the color transfer inadequate) as well as the system may run unstably under voltage drops. For example, a powered-on fridge may easily re-set the image which can be restored only upon a complete PC reboot. Another shortcoming is that image display is impossible without a splitting adapter. In all the other ways, the TV-out runs flawlessly.
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