X-bit labs

SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 Review

Category: Video

by FastSite

[ 05/21/2002 | 12:00 AM ]

We reviewed one of the first mass graphics cards on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 chip. This is a solutionfrom Korean SUMA Company. It is a stylish, well-mounted product offering excellent image quality and highoverclocking potential. Learn more about this worthy representative of GeForce4 Ti440 famiyl!

Table of contents:

• Closer Look
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Max Payne
  
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
  
• 3DMark 2001
  
• Quake3 Arena v1.30
  
• Performance
  
• Overclocking. 2D Image Quality
  
• Conclusion
  

SUMA appeared one of the first companies to start shipping mass graphics cards based on the new NVIDIA GeForce4 MX and GeForce4 Titanium chips. That is why no wonder that one of the first reviews devoted to mass products on the new chips from NVIDIA is devoted to SUMA solution.

Today we will discuss SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 graphics card. We will evaluate its performance, overclocking potential and features, will compare it with other graphics cards from the same price category.

One of the solutions to compare SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 will be SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 based on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500. This is exactly the solution the new GeForce4 Ti4400 should replace in the graphics market.

Closer Look

The retail version of SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 graphics card is shipped in SUMA's traditional transparent silver-colored plastic box. The package includes a user's guide, a CD-disk with the drivers and utilities, a few stickers with SUMA logo, S-Video-to-RCA converter and a CD-disk with demo programs showing the highs of NVIDIA GeForce4 live.

The card sticks to NVIDIA's reference design and is made on a black PCB, like all other SUMA graphics products:

 

As you may have already guessed the card is based on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 graphics chip and is equipped with 128MB DDR SDRAM by Samsung featuring 3.6ns access time:

   

The working frequencies also comply with those recommended by NVIDIA, that is: 275MHz for the chip and 550MHz (275MHz DDR) for the memory.

Although NVIDIA claimed that GeForce4 Titanium chips feature a built-in unit for TV-signals forming, GeForce4 Ti4400 based cards are nevertheless equipped with the TV-chips from some third manufacturers. SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 features with CX25870 chip from Conexant (we have already come across this chip in our reviews of NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 and Ti200 based products, see our Video section for details):

All in all, SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 looks just the same as NVIDIA reference card, with only one single exception: the cooler. The chip on SUMA card is hidden under a very unusually looking cooler:

 

The peculiar thing about this cooler is its fan blades. They are not angled, but straight and blow the air onto the heatsink ribs due to centrifugal force. This construction proved surprisingly quiet and at the same time pretty efficient: the reverse side of the PCB just behind the chip didn't get any warmer than on the reference graphics card equipped with a big "brandname" NVIDIA cooler.

Testbed and Methods

We tested the following graphics cards together with SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400:

• SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE. This graphics card is equipped with 64MB DDR SDRAM working at 500MHz (250MHz DDR). The chipset works at 240MHz. We included this solution in our tests because our today's hero, SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400, was intended to replace the Ti500 SE cards. At present these cards cost about the same money, so if we compare their performance we will be able to say if it makes sense for the owners of GeForce3 Ti500 and slower cards to buy GeForce4 Ti4400.
• ATI RADEON 8500. This card is equipped with 64MB DDR SDRAM working at 550MHz (275MHz DDR). The chip is working at 275MHz. We included this graphics card into our tests as it is the fastest solution from the alternative graphics chip maker, ATI :) The comparison between SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 and ATI RADEON 8500 will be even more interesting if we remind you that today ATI RADEON 8500 based graphics cards cost less than GeForce4 Ti4400 based one in general and SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 in particular.

Our testbed was configured as follows:

• AMD Athlon XP 2000+ CPU;
• MSI K7T266 Pro2 v2.0 (VIA KT266A) mainboard;
• 2x256MB PC2700 CL2.5 DDR SDRAM by Crucial;
• Fujitsu MPF3153AH HDD.

Software:

• Detonator 28.32 driver for Windows XP for NVIDIA based graphics cards;
• Version 6.13.10.6052 driver for Windows XP for ATI RADEON 8500;
• Windows XP;
• Max Payne;
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter;
• 3DMark 2001 SE;
• Quake3 Arena v1.30.

We ran these applications in the following modes:

Max Payne

Quality mode implied the highest graphics quality: disabled full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, 32bit texture and frame buffer.

In the Max Payne test we used benchmark mod and PCGH's Final Scene No1, which are described in detail on the 3DCenter web-site.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Quality mode: "Quality" graphics quality settings, 32bit color modes.

Extreme Quality mode: "Quality" graphics quality settings, 32bit color modes, we ran "GFX: Extreme Quality" add-on before each test.

For this test we utilized standard "The Grand Cathedral" demo.

3DMark 2001

Keeping in mind that all these graphics cards belong to performance segment, we ran the tests with the level of detail set to "High Detail". As for the settings, we used 32bit frame buffer, 32bit textures and 32 (24) bit Z-buffer, D3D Pure Hardware T&L.

Quake3 Arena v1.30

All tests were run with the highest graphics quality settings, with tri-linear filtering and texture compression enabled. The frame buffer and the texture color were set to 32bit.

We tested with a standard four demo included into Quake3 Arena 1.30 patch.

Performance

Dragothic test loads the graphics cards heavily with both: geometric calculations and textures, as the animated dragon in the test uses vertex shaders and most of other scene objects are covered with 3 texture layers.

GeForce4 Ti4400 from SUMA is an indisputable leader here in all resolutions, and ATI RADEON 8500 runs nearly neck and neck with SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE in all modes except 1600x1200. In this resolution ATI RADEON 8500 appeared the slowest of all, which is most likely to have been caused by insufficient optimization of the Direct3D part of the graphics card driver for high data transfer rate via AGP bus.

Overclocking ensured a significant performance increase for SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 and ATI RADEON 8500, although they nevertheless failed to catch up with the leader.

The "geometric power" of GeForce4 Ti4400 chip - two vertex shaders units and T&L - didn't get involved this time. And the leadership of SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 can be explained "only" by enhanced architecture of the memory controller and high working frequencies. Therefore, the overclocked SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE manages to get very close to GeForce4 Ti4400 working at nominal frequencies.

ATI RADEON 8500 looks really unimpressive against the background of this "generations gap". Only overclocking helps to push it closer to SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500.

In the hardest test, 3DMark2001, new SUMA graphics card appeared a leader, which is not at all surprising if we try to recall all the improvements made to the GeForce3 architecture before GeForce4 appeared (see our NVIDIA GeForce4 GPU Review). What really surprised us, however, was the performance of ATI RADEON 8500. In 1024x768 it performed simply excellently, then in 1280x1024 it dropped down to the level of GeForce3 Ti500, while in 1600x1200, it turned a total outsider. The diagnosis seems to be the same as previous time: unsatisfactory operation with the AGP bus.

Max Payne results are subject to great influence of the system in general and the CPU. That is why NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 and GeForce4 Ti4400 showed very similar results although the leadership still belonged to SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400.

ATI RADEON 8500 graphics card probably decided to make a few changes to this stable set of things: this time it lagged not so far behind the competitors in high resolutions as in the previous cases.

When we look at the results in Quake3 Arena, which sometimes exceed 200fps, we get the impression that this game and this benchmark have already become too simply for the today's top-list graphics solutions. However, the higher are the numbers the better you feel, right? :)

SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 again leads the race, GeForce3 Ti500 and ATI RADEON 8500 run almost equally fast behind it. Overclocking improves the performance of SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 quite tangibly, which lets the card get nearly as fast as GeForce4 Ti4400 working at nominal chip and memory frequencies.

ATI RADEON 8500 seems to have no driver problems in OpenGL: in Quake3 Arena it proves as fast as NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500.

SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 wins in all modes up to 1600x1200. ATI RADEON 8500, which falls behind the rivals in 1024x768, outpaces GeForce3 Ti500 in 1280x1024, and defeats GeForce4 Ti4400 in 1600x1200.

ATI RADEON 8500 owes its impressive victory to the fact that in Quality mode Serious Sam benchmark uses anisotropic texture filtering, which ATI chips can carry out nearly losslessly (see our ATI RADEON 7500 Graphics Card Review), which is far not the case for NVIDIA GeForce3/GeForce4 chips (see our Anisotropic Filtering Investigation: NVIDIA GeForce3).

In Extreme Quality mode all the graphics settings grow up to the maximum. The level of texture anisotropy also increases, which improves the performance of ATI RADEON 8500 even more.

Overclocking. 2D Image Quality

As for the 2D image quality, there are no complaints to make on our part: SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 provides excellent 2D image quality, like all other NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 based graphics cards designed according to the reference card.

During overclocking, SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 worked stably at 300MHz chip and 660MHz (330MHz DDR) memory frequency, which is even higher than the nominal for GeForce4 Ti4600.

Successful overclocking of the graphics chip from 275MHz to 300MHz is a very good result for a GeForce4 Ti4400 based graphics card, especially bearing in mind the generally low overclocking potential of NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium solutions.

The overclocking potential of the graphics memory on SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 also appeared very high despite the lack of heatsinks on the memory chips even. As you have just learned, we managed to overclock the graphics memory from 550MHz (275MHz DDR) to 660MHz (330MHz DDR).

We decided to find out what influences the benchmark results more: overclocked chip or overclocked graphics memory. For this purpose, we composed the following diagram showing the performance gains in all benchmarks at a time. Also we added the lines indicating by how many percents the memory and the chip frequencies grew up during our overclocking experiments:

The graph shows very clearly that, for instance, in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter the performance of SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 is limited by the graphics chip speed.

3DMark Nature benchmark is the one that depends most of all on the graphics memory bandwidth.

Max Payne results got limited by the CPU and overall system performance. That is why graphics card overclocking doesn't have much of the positive effect.

Summing up the conclusions made about each benchmark I can say that the cards on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 are very well-balanced solutions, which performance is not limited only by insufficient graphics memory bandwidth. On the contrary, in many benchmarks the performance is mostly limited by the graphics chip. The limitations like that tell most of all when anisotropic filtering is enabled or a lot of geometric data need to be processed.

All these facts indicate that graphics core overclocking is as important as graphics memory overclocking and shouldn't get less attention of yours.

Conclusion

SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 graphics card is a stylish, well-done product from a popular company offering excellent image quality and high overclocking potential.

As for its consumer features, SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4400 like any other NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 based solution defeats completely all GeForce3 Ti500 based predecessors, making them an absolutely useless buy, which was exactly what NVIDIA targeted its GeForce4 Ti4400 at. However, if you own a solution on NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500/Ti200 or ATI RADEON 8500, it will anyway make no sense to replace your card with a GeForce4 Titanium based one now. In any of the existing games your graphics card will not yield that much to the latest NVIDIA offsprings, and if you overclock it, your GeForce3 Ti500/Ti200 or ATI RADEON 8500 will be able to catch up with the today's leaders.

Highs:

• High 3D performance;
• Good overclocking potential;
• Excellent PCB mounting;
• Good 2D image quality;
• Efficient low-noise cooler.

Lows:

• No DVI Out for digital monitors.