Have the GeForce4 Ti4x00 been the best cards for a while?

[Jonny M]

I am of the opinion that the nVidia Ti4x00 range have been the best we've had in a while in terms of coping with new games / running old ones at a nice speed, and generally lasting for ages.

Although it looks like the Radeon 9500 Pro / 9600 Pro will fill this "mid-range" gap, the GF4 Ti's were certainly some of the best cards we've had recently.

[sputnik found]

i still have my Geforce 4 Ti4200 64Mb and it does me fine. I have had it for well over 1yr too. Hell of a lot better then my last video card tho, i have a Kyro II 64Mb AGP. Quailty.

[Austin]

GF4TI still rock and even the slowest 4200 is on par with Rad9600PRO and FX5600ultra in pure 3D speed, so long as you avoid DX9 and medium to high AA+AF. For £60-75 the 4200 are being given away and will tide you over nicely until the real mid-range DX9 cards arrive. The 4400 and 4800SE are 10-15% faster while the 4600/4800 are 10% faster still.

When the GF4TI were introduced they were amazing though simply enhanced GF3's. The enhancements were significant though ... speed, improved AA, '2D' image quality, standardised TVout and dual display. The slowest 4200 was still decently faster than the top GF3 (GF3TI500) and had bags of o/c'ing room in it (often beating a 4400 which was £100 more) ... the 4200 were half the price of the what GF3TI500 had demanded just a few months before.

With the GF4MX (enahnced GF2) nVidia saturated the markets ... until ATI totally blew them away with the 9700 series which are still VERY comparable to todays top cards from both ATI and nVidia. Too bad ATI discontinued the unprofitable 9500PRO and have mudded their reputation with the awful 9000-9200 and 9600PRO (slightly slower than 9500PRO) and 9800SE (9600PRO speed).

[garath]

Was very satisfied with my Ti4200 untill all the Directx9 games started rolling out, then it was time for a card change, but upon comparing 9500 and 4200, i feel that the 9500 results in sharper and more well defined graphics than the G4.

[kamz]

I think 9500Pro was a real beaut! Hope ATI release more carsd like that!!

[chrisf6969]

I've had my GF4ti4600 for about a year and half. It plays everything great. I've only recently been pondering gettting a 9800 pro because of the soon to be released titles like HL2 and possibly Doom3. (and I've got 3Ghz with dual channel DDR just waiting to power some high resolution AA gaming with all the eye candy on)

The ti4200 is still king of the price performance category even a year after its release.

The only thing it sucks in is 3dMark2003 which is such a waste of benchmarking time. But thats a whole other can of worms.

[kamz]

I have no prbs with Nividia cards at all, have owned 420mx, 4200, Ti500, 480mx...even loved my GF2 Ultra

However my Rad 9700pro and than 9800Pro have been nothing short of awesome, I really noticed pic quality when coming from Nvidia.

Now I have a 9800pro and an all-in-wonder 8500dv in other machine and am happy.

Was thinking about 5900 ultra but the recent HL2 performance graphs, and worries over new det50's have told me to stick with the 98.

I am not ATI or Nv biased, I know Nv will sort their stuff out, and they make the most awesome Athlon boards in Nforce2! But for the mo up to HL2 and Dm3 it seems ATI will have won this battle.

But as they say the war is not over

err...to make a point 4200 is awesome, if you only play CStrke etc you don't need anything else.

Try and dig out a 9500pro or 9700 on forums for price/performance of the gods!

Stick with 9800pro for high end.

Oh...any decent all-in-wonder if you like lazing with the remote, watching telly on PC, some gaming and the occasional video-editing