GeForce4 Ti 4200 Preview

Mike Chambers writes "Hi All, I've completed a preview of NVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti 4200 graphics chipset. Although the preview contains your typical benchmarks, it's centered around game play and antialiasing image quality. Here's a list of the games involved - Quake 3 & Team Arena, IL-2 Sturmovik, Nascar Racing 2002 Demo, Jedi Knight 2, Serious Sam 2, Max Payne Demo, Comanche 4 Demo, Dungeon Siege and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2002 Demo. Since antialiasing image quality, especially Quincunx and 4XS, was an important aspect of the preview, all of the screen shots were saved in high quality PNG format. For those Slashdot readers that are avid gamers, you might want to check this out."

Comments

I'm happy with my old 32mb card

[HaggiZ]

Time and time again these fantastic new sound/graphics/whatever cards are released, and almost always targetted towards gamers. Is it just me? Am I the only one happy with the quality I get out of my current card and the games available for it? The graphics are done well in most games to offer a fantastic and believable escape into the games. And in the end it all comes down the the gameplay anyways.

That being said, I'm not against the new developments. It certainly does look like an awesome card, just seems to me that this particular market segment could almost be bled dry and these cards may have to find something else they are useful for to continue to survive. I dont have a deep enough understanding of the market or those in it to be able to make a serious call on it though.

I remember reading a long long time ago about developments that were looking at moving cycles across to other processors (i.e., big nasty graphics cards) that could be used to offset workloads when they weren't being fully utilised (99% of the time you aren't game playing). Anybody know what happened?

Re:I'm happy with my old 32mb card

[MisterBlister]

Time and time again these fantastic new sound/graphics/whatever cards are released, and almost always targetted towards gamers. Is it just me? Am I the only one happy with the quality I get out of my current card and the games available for it?

Well, there's no reason to get a GeForce 4 now unless you're a software developer or really need those extra 5 FPS in Quake3 (305 FPS instead of 300 FPS)... GF4 (and GF3) do offer significant advantages over older cards, but since the development cycle for high-quality games is about 3-4 years, compared to the development cycle of new graphics cards (6 months - 1 year), the game engines are always lagging behind. Nothing out yet even really takes advantage of what the GeForce 3 has to offer -- until Doom3 is released, anyway.

The best thing to do is just ignore these new card releases, and let other fools buy them just to be 'l33t'. In a year or more when you can actually buy games that will use GF4 features, the cards will be much cheaper than they are now...

Re:I'm happy with my old 32mb card

[Moonshadow]

I hear you. My outlook on most new hardware is that its immediate usefulness is in driving down the prices of the currently average hardware. At the time, I'm still running on a 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000, and it can handle most games just fine. Some of the newer ones cause it to choke at times (Jedi Outcast, Yavin) but it has served me quite faithfully.

That said, I'm upgrading to a low-end GeForce4 tomorrow. The Voodoo just doesn't cut it for more heavy-duty stuff, and it has no native MPEG decompression abilities, rendering DVDs a bit choppy at times. Also, it has no TV out - a feature "standardized" in cards just recently, and IMO, a necessary feature when used in conjunction with a DVD drive. Hence, an upgrade. There will always be people who have a) the money, and b) the desire to have the "latest and greatest", and they are the ones who fuel these new products, although at $200 it's not a bad price. I'm sure that companies take the fact that second and third generation hardware sells better...but it's not second or third generation if there isn't new hardware to succeed it.

Pfeh...I need sleep.

Re:Hey

[awptic]

What the hell gives you the idea a game would need to be open source for it to run on linux? There's quite a few good games for linux: castle wolfenstein (which I own), quake3, all the ones that were ported by loki, and the upcoming neverwinter nights (which is sure to be a big hit), to name a few. Get a clue, it's this kind of thinking that discourages game developers from porting to linux in the first place.

Re:the need for ... high fps?

[Judecca]

But, somebody on one of the forums said that since the entire game is rendered in 3D, the FPS is quite irrelvent (the frame does not actually refresh, but each element on the screen moves at its own pace)

In time every element moves at is own pace, but the framerate is when those elements are updated on the screen. The rendering of this game is no different than that of UT2003, or any 3d FPS. They all use time based systems, so they don't run slower on old machines, only with a lower framerate.

Ever single update the entire screen is redrawn from scratch. Seems pretty insane, but thats how its done. The rasterization process takes a ton of triangles and turns them into 2D for your flat screen hundreds of times in a second. The reason for this is every time the 3d coordinates change, they will change the shape of the 2D scene you're seeing on your flat monitor.

Re:Finally, 128MB on a GeForce 3/4

[StompmotS]

128MB on GF3 doesn't make much of a difference compared with 64MB on today's games. http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020418/v gacharts-01.html

Super nice!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good preview. The GF4 generation GPU is mighty strong, and I disagree with those people that are saying that they don't need a GF4. I have bought a GF3 Ti200 recently and I don't plan to update anytime soon, but I am already envy of those guys that can afford a GF4 and a cool plasma 34" screen.

Get a grip dudes. Even if you don't like it, GF4 IS progress. What I am worried about though is the competition. Will ATI have the power to respond with an equally good video card ? if it doesn't and NVIDIA stays the only player in the graphics card market, we are doomed, and open source OSs especially.

Re:Holy cow

[Shiny Metal S.]

Oh wow... you got a Hercules card? Man, I was thinking of upgrading my text adaptor to one of those but I don't know if my old orange-phosphor CRT could handle it.

Funny, but just FYI I do have a working Hercules and I'll tell you something: it displays 80x25 text mode as fast as your GeeForce78 5000000 (or whatever is c00l today), i.e. much faster than I can read. I use it in my web/mail/ftp/dns server with 500MHz AMD K6-2 and 256MB of RAM. The advantage is that the 14" monitor is in size (the depth) between the smallest new 14" CRT I've seen and 14" LCD (something in the middle). Works great. Very low power consumption (the card and the monitor). Total cost: $0. Great for servers where you need a display but you don't want to waste a lot of space and power.