Winfast A250/280 LE TD

[windog]

I have been offered a A250 @ £55 6 months old or I can buy a A280 for about £65 new. Whats the diff and which is better value

Windog

[Austin]

Winfast A250, what's that GF4TI4400 (A280=4600?)? Anyway £55-65 is a great price for those. For new comparisons the GF4TI4200 is roughly 10-15% slower than a TI4400 and come in around £80 (64MB) or £90 (128MB). TI4800SE are slightly inferior (most of the time) to the orig TI4400, they come in around £100 (64MB) and £120 (128MB). TI4600 and TI4800 are the same, roughly 10% faster than the TI4400/4800SE. It is well worth getting a 128MB card but anyway GF4TI are great none-the-less and even the lowest TI4200 can still cut it against the Radeon9600PRO and GF-FX5600ultra only losing out in DX9 and top AA+AF.

[windog]

Sorry Austin but no as far as I can make out they are both Ti4200

One is at Ebuyer, the other has been offered privately. I looked at www.leadtek.co.uk and couldn't make out what the difference was!

Windog

[Austin]

Okay the diff is the A280 has AGP8x ability, AGP8x even on an AGP8x mobo offers less than a 1% perf boost. However the AGP8x variant (4200-8X) offers faster clock speeds for the 128MB version, often meaning it o/c's past a TI4400/4800SE. The std AGP4x 64MB uses the same faster clocks but there is a perf hit even before games req more than 64MB gfx RAM. The std AGP4x TI4200 used slightly slower clock speeds and this in turn impacted it's o/c'ability, anyway diffs aren't huge, about 5% overall.

It certainly seems both are based around the TI4200 which is still a top notch gfx chip and still rec'd to many unwilling to pay the extra 50% decent DX9 cards demand.

So the AGP8x A280 is likely to be better (if both are 128MB) as it SHOULD use the faster 4200-8X clock speeds. I would personally avoid Ebuyer although many people seem to like them (they are cheap) ... but then the other card is 2nd hand and you don't know how much it has been o/c'ed etc. So it is very even, but the A280 has the slight edge. The card will still be as fast as a Rad9600PRO or GF-FX5600ultra which cost £130-150 but of course you lack DX9 and top notch AA+AF, nothing that's likely to be missed for 6-12 months. For £55-65 it's a steal, go get one!