X-bit labs

NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 64/128MB vs. ATI RADEON 8500LE 64/128MB

Category: Video

by FastSite

[ 06/21/2002 | 12:00 AM ]

Well, NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 based graphics cards, the best value and most affordable among allNVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium solutions, have finally started selling in the mass market. We decided tosee how fat are the 64Mb and 128MB versions and if they can compete successfully with their rivalsfrom ATI: RADEON 8500LE 64MB and 128MB. Check out this really exciting race now!

Table of contents:

• Closer Look
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• 3DMark 2001
  
• Codecult Codecreatures
  
• Dungeon Siege
  
• Quake3 Arena
  
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

Well, NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 based graphics cards, the best value and most affordable among all NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium solutions, have finally started selling in the mass market. GeForce4 Ti4200 is the slowest model in the NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium family (see our NVIDIA GeForce4 GPU Review):

Its core clock frequency is equal to 250MHz instead of 275MHz by GeForce4 Ti4400 and 300Mhz by GeForce4 Ti4600. The interesting thing is that almost all the graphics card manufacturers designed not one but two solutions based on this chip:

• NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200, 64MB 128bit DDR SDRAM graphics memory, 250MHz chip and 500MHz (250MHz DDR) memory frequencies.
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200, 128MB 128bit DDR SDRAM graphics memory, 250MHz chip and 444MHz (222MHz DDR) memory frequencies.

Let's try to figure out the highs and lows of both graphics cards:

• First, the chip working frequency. Both graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 work at 250MHz chip frequency, which is just a little bit lower than the chip frequency of the other family members. This fact makes us very optimistic about the performance of the GeForce4 Ti4200: it is expected to fall behind its faster brothers not so great as GeForce3 Ti200 used to fall behind GeForce3 Ti500 (NVIDIA made frequencies of GeForce3 Ti200 and Ti500 very tangible, so that their performance differed significantly).
• Second, the memory size and working frequencies. The graphics memory of the 128MB GeForce4 Ti4200 works at 444MHz, which is much lower than by GeForce4 Ti4400 (its memory works at 550MHz) and certainly far lower than by GeForce4 Ti4600 (650MHz). The memory installed on 64MB GeForce4 Ti4200 supports a bit higher frequencies 250MHz DDR (500MHz).
• And the last item, but not the least important of course, is the price. The graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 are cheaper due to the use of slower memory chips in regular TSOP-packages. And in case of 64MB version, the smaller graphics memory size also allows saving a bit. Both graphics cards on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 are designed on the same PCB, but it is different from what we saw by GeForce4 Ti4400 and Ti4600: new graphics cards are smaller and there are fewer electronic components on the PCB. All this made the production cost of the GeForce4 Ti4200 based graphics cards 1.5 times lower than that of faster models.

In this review we will try to evaluate the performance of 64MB and 128MB NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 based graphics cards. We will discuss the outcome of the graphics memory size reduction by 64MB, and will compare the performance of our today's testing participants with that of ATI RADEON 8500 based competitors also featuring 64MB and 128MB of graphics memory.

Closer Look

The 64MB graphics card based on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 is represented by SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4200 solution:

The graphics chip and memory of this solution work at the frequencies recommended by NVIDIA, i.e. at 250MHz and 500MHz (250MHz DDR) respectively. The card is equipped with DDR SDRAM chips from Hynix with 3.6ns access time.

128MB card on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 is presented by a solution from Gainward aka GeForce4 PowerPack! Ultra/650 XP:

The card is provided with Samsung 4ns memory chips working at 444MHz (222MHz DDR). The graphics chip works at the required 250MHz.

Since NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 graphics core works at the lowest frequency in the entire GeForce4 Titanium family, it would be fair to expect Ti4200 to be highly overclockable. As for the overclocking potential of the graphics memory, I wouldn't say the same thing, as it depends on the quality of the chips installed on the cards.

SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4200 card is equipped with faster graphics memory than its 128MB brother from Gainward that is why we used this particular card to see what GeForce4 Ti4200 is worth during overclocking. The maximum graphics chip and memory frequencies we managed to achieve during SUMA Platinum GeForce4 Ti4200 overclocking were equal to 320MHz for the chip and 620MHz (310MHz) for the memory.

Don't you think that a solution working nearly at the frequencies of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 (300MHz and 650MHz) for the twice as little money is a nice surprise? I, honestly, think it is. :)

To make the today's competition more exciting, we also included ATI RADEON 8500LE based graphics cards with 64MB and 128MB graphics memory onboard. These cards worked at 250MHz chip and 500MHz (250MHz DDR) memory frequencies. I decided to take LE versions of the RADEON cards for the following reasons:

• Firstly, ATI RADEON 8500LE based graphics cards are much wider spread than the "non-LE" versions.
• Secondly, the costs of graphics cards produced by ATI Company will never let them compete in terms of pricing with the value solutions on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200. The cards made by ATI partners are usually clocked at lower frequencies, i.e. they are assigned an "LE" mark. However, they cost considerably less, somewhere between $100 and $200, which is about the same as for NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 based solutions.

Graphics cards on ATI chips were not tested in overclocked condition, because ATI RADEON 8500 chip boasts very poor overclocking potential compared with NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 and because low-cost RADEON 8500LE are usually equipped with very poorly overclockable memory chips making any overclocking absolutely inefficient.

In this review we will also try to figure out how the increase in the onboard graphics memory by another 64MB (up to 128MB) influences the performance of ATI RADEON 8500LE.

Testbed and Methods

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 29.20 driver for Windows XP for NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 based graphics cards;
• Version 6071 driver for graphics cards based on ATI RADEON 8500LE chips;
• Windows XP;
• 3DMark 2001 SE;
• Codecult Codecreatures;
• Dungeon Siege benchmark;
• Quake3 Arena v1.27;
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.

We ran these applications in the following modes:

3DMark 2001

32bit frame buffer, 32bit textures and 32 (24) bit Z-buffer, D3D Pure Hardware T&L mode.

Codecult Codecreatures

We tested with all default settings.

Dungeon Siege

Quality mode: 32bit colour, maximum image quality.

+AA+AF mode: 32bit colour, maximum image quality settings. In addition we enabled 4x FSAA (HRAA 4x for GeForce4 Ti4200, SMOOTHVISION 4x Quality for RADEON 8500LE) and maximum level of anisotropic filtering.

Quake3 Arena

All tests were run with 32bit colour and texture depth. The graphics quality settings were set the maximum, with tri-linear filtering and texture compression enabled.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

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

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

Performance

As usual, we would like to start from synthetic tests from 3DMark2001 package:

In 1024x768 mode the graphics cards show similar performance, the only limitation here appears the CPU and the overall system performance. In 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 the performance difference turns out more tangible. However, we would like to take our time and not to make any hasty conclusions, because Car Chase benchmark is known as highly CPU dependent.

Here you can see much clearer that increasing the graphics memory doesn't have much of the positive effect on the performance. On the contrary, GeForce4 Ti4200 with 128MB of graphics memory appears even slower than its 64MB counterpart because of lower memory frequency.

For RADEON 8500LE the additionally 64MB of graphics memory improve the performance by 10%-15%.

As we have expected, the overclocked NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB managed to get far ahead of the competitors.

In the Lobby benchmark, in 1024x768 resolution, the CPU and memory subsystem limit the performance of the graphics card itself, however as the resolution grows, the performance difference increases as well.

Just like in the previous benchmarks, a 64MB GeForce4 Ti4200 proved faster than a 128MB version, and 128MB RADEON 8500LE outpaced its 64MB brother. It looks as if the data transfer via AGP bus is implemented much better on NVIDIA's solutions rather than on ATI's ones. Otherwise, it would be really hard to explain why GeForce4 Ti4200 is so indifferent to the graphics memory size, while by RADEON 8500LE the performance boosts up greatly as the memory size increases.

Have a look here: 128MB GeForce4 Ti4200 appears slower than 64MB version and the difference is exactly the same as the difference between their memory frequencies. RADEON 8500LE, on the contrary, responds highly positively to the increase in the graphics memory size and the higher is the resolution, the greater gets the advantage of the 128MB version over the 64Mb one. With twice as much graphics memory onboard, it transfers less data via the AGP bus than the 64MB version.

The leadership again belongs to the overclocked GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB.

The situation in NVIDIA's camp remains the same: overclocked GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB is the first, the same card working at the nominal frequencies won the second position and the last one is GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB.

ATI based graphics cards performed here just excellently. RADEON 8500LE 64MB is just a little bit behind GeForce4 Ti4200 and its 128MB brother seems to have acquired extra power together with the additional graphics memory. It outpaced GeForce4 Ti4200 having yielded only to the overclocked GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB.

In this relatively new test nothing changed, actually. NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB is ahead, the 128MB version is behind. ATI based graphics cards proved much slower than the leaders.

As usual, 128MB of slower graphics memory do not do any good to GeForce4 Ti4200, while RADEON 8500LE with 128MB memory manages to get slightly ahead of the 64MB one.

Enabling anisotropic filtering and full-scene anti-aliasing improve the picture quality in the game a lot, but at the same time cause a noticeable performance drop for all graphics cards. The remarkable thing about it is the fact that anisotropic filtering acts as a performance killer for GeForce4 Ti4200, while for ATI RADEON based solutions it is nearly free (see our Anisotropic Filtering Investigation: NVIDIA GeForce3 article and ATI RADEON 7500 Graphics Card Review for details). And at the same time, solutions from ATI are slowed down very tangibly by enabled full-scene anti-aliasing (supersampling), while GeForce4 Ti4200 from NVIDIA support faster multi-sampling.

Only in this test, which is one of the most complex ones today, large graphics memory allows GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB to surpass 64MB version. However, if it was even faster than an overclocked GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB at 1024x768, the advantage gets much smaller as the resolution increases. The reason is slower working frequency of the 128MB solution and more data that need transferring via the AGP bus, so that even the additional 64MB do not help.

128MB RADEON 8500LE is almost 50% faster than 64MB card here!

More MB of slower memory do not save GeForce4 Ti4200 in this test, because the results in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter run on GeForce4 depend much more on the chip frequency rather than on the memory frequency and size. That is why as we have expected, the leadership among the three GeForce4 Ti4200 based cards belongs to an overclocked 64MB version, while the solution with 128MB of slow memory closes the list.

The graphics card based on ATI RADEON 8500LE and equipped with 64MB graphics memory is a bit behind NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 and 128MB version is far ahead of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200. This test uses anisotropic filtering, which is a very easy task for ATI RADEON 8500.

Despite this fact, the first prize was still won by an overclocked NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200: the high working frequencies couldn't help telling on the performance.

In Quake3 Arena the graphics cards disposition remains the same: overclocked GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB is the first, then comes the version working at nominal frequencies, and then GeForce4 Ti4200 with 128MB. ATI based graphics cards lag slightly behind, however, the 128MB version manages to outpace its 64MB brother even here.

Conclusion

So, NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 is an excellent choice for those who look for fastness and functionality of NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium at a reasonable price. Now we have every right to state that GeForce4 Ti4200 is a new "top hit", which has come to replace the popular GeForce3 Ti200 solution.

Of course, the performance of GeForce4 Ti4200 is lower than that of faster and more expensive models, however, after spending a couple of minutes on installing a tweaker, you will be able to overclock it to the level of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600, which is the today's fastest graphics accelerator. I believe that overclocking fans will be very happy with this product.

As for the graphics memory size by NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200, 64MB vs. 128MB, there is no single answer, like for NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200, which simply didn't need any extra memory at all. The graphics cards with 128MB graphics memory are more widely spread today and the developers will certainly find a way to use this memory to their advantage. It means that very soon, within the life cycle of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 we may see new games requiring more than 64MB of memory. So far, all the benchmarks except Codecreatures, didn't request these 128MB of memory on GeForce4 Ti4200.

As for the graphics cards based on ATI RADEON 8500LE chip, there is only one answer here: with the 128MB of memory this chip receives a second breath and can outperform even GeForce4 Ti4200 in some cases although it was initially intended to compete with GeForce3 Ti200/Ti500.

Nevertheless, ATI RADEON 8500LE based graphics cards are slower than GeForce4 Ti4200 and attract our attention not by the performance but primarily by the peculiarities and features implemented in this chip.