60 odd quid to spend on a GFX card

[Stoo]

better specced ram?

[Trickle]

The 64 meg version of the Ti4200 used to have faster 4ns ram than the original 128meg Ti4200. However with the AGP8X versions all 128 Ti4200's had ram as fast making the difference between them and a Ti4400 slim - hence you never see 4400's discussed now.

Some manufacturers like gainward brought out 'Gold' versions. Gainward was especially annoying as it brought out different uprated versions some with, and some without the faster ram.

Even the original slow ram 4200's would overclock to 500mhz (4ns rating) and often up to 540-560+, hence why it was still a good card. However the 64 meg cards (and todays 8x 128meg cards) would generally do 600mhz+ which is close to stock 4600 speed.

Add to that, there wasnt too much difference in gpu potential of a 4200 and 4600 + all the benchmarks and most of the DX8 era games not requiring >64meg and you had a very powerful mid range car. The final clincher being the price. You could get them for £100-110 16 months ago.

One or two games like Jedi Knight2, some mmorpg's liked the extra 64 meg - however the extra critical ram speed of the 64 meg card almost made up for this so it was still an overall better card than the 128 even at £35 less. We were told at the time that 128 meg games were just round the corner... but as you can see this year that never transpired. You had to be running 4XAA and 1600x1200 for the extra mem to be really critical. Not until the 9700 was there a card that could handle the old DX7/8 games at that anyway.

[Austin]

Yep, the original 4200_128MB used 250/444 clocks while the new 4200-8X_128MB uses 250-500 clocks which is the same as the 4200-64MB and 4200-8X_64MB. However don't be fooled, the 64MB was only 2%ish faster and WAY slower when more than 64MB was required ... so basically although the 64MB was a good card and could often get to 600mhz RAM speed it was still not a good idea as it wasn't as fast as clock speeds made it sound, the 128MB version was only £10 more even back when it came out so it made sense to pay more. There was a perf hit from having only 64MB of RAM even before a game began needing more than 64MB, and the perf hit when more RAM was req'd was huge putting a 4200_64MB o/c'ed to 300/600 down to comparable speed to a stock 4200_128MB @ 250/444. You certainly didn't need 4xAA or 1600x1200 to benefit fromt he 128MB. There are several reviews but here's my favourite...

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1643

[Trickle]

I remember that review. Their overclocked results are bad and miss representative of what everyone was finding.

Also a correction to my post above - the ram speed on the current cards will be <4ns not exactly 4ns as I stated.

[Austin]

4.0ns is almost always found on the 4200_128MB and should in theory be good to 500mhz. 3.6ns was used on most 4200_64MB and is the most likely to be used on 4200-8X too (inc 128MB) technically good to 555mhz but many found around 580-600mhz not undoable. All you can do is use small steps and find your own card's limits anyway. HOWEVER beware as some manus strayed from the official clock speeds, namely Gainward's non Golden Sample, AOpen and EVGA. Now on to more info on how the GF4TI4200 cards o/c'ed and performed...

Reviews from when the 4200 was first launched:

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/20...0/index.x?pg=1
4200-64 has only a 1.5% advantage over 4200-128.
O/C 4200-64 to 275/550, reached 300/580 but a little unstable.

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/...ti4200-03.html
4200-64 (simulated 4200-128 o/c to 250/500) has a 6.5% advantage over 4200-128 (250/444) but bear in mind the simulated 4200-64 has 128MB. This tells us the 6.5% the 4200-64 should have from the extra clock speeds doesn't bear fruit in practice where it's more of 1-2%.
O/C 4200-128 to 310/550.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1619&p=1
O/C Gainward4200-128 to 330/540.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardwa...oc/default.asp
4200-64 has a 1% advantage.
O/C 4200-64 to 285/600 which was benchmarked and showed a nice increase except for Commanche4, it was still slower than the 4200-128 at default speed (250/444).

As mentioned previously, the 4200-8X_128MB should mean no compromising as you should get the full and important 128MB along with fast RAM chips for a fast default speed as well as being capable of a good o/c.