The card
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Manufacturers have now realised that the physical appearance of a card plays a small yet significant part in the overall buying decision. Like most manufacturers, ABIT, too have ditched the generic PCB colour and infused some of their own. The blue looks good. This card is manufactured using a 6-layer PCB board as opposed to the 8-layer on the Ti 4400 / 4600 cards. The lower speeds of the core and memory respectively allow a less rigorous design. Some of you who take a keen interest in the graphics card industry will know that the Ti 4200, unlike the Ti 4400 and Ti 4600, is available in two different incarnations. The difference is based on the amount of equipped on-board memory. ABIT have both a 64MB and 128MB Siluro Ti 4200 in their ranks, we were supplied with the former. I must note that the Ti 4200 128MB cards have a slightly slower memory clock (usually 444MHz vs. 500MHz for the 64MB version). Talking about memory, let's have a closer look at the RAM powering the Ti 4200.
This is an interesting one. The memory is provided by Hynix in the form of 8 x 8MB modules, giving us 64MB in total. A quick rundown on specifications tells us that the Siluro Ti 4200 64MB operates at 250MHz core and 500MHz (DDR) memory. In the past we have always seen NVIDIA and brand-name manufacturers use memory with a higher native speed rating than the specifications require. 4ns memory is specified to operate at exactly 500MHz DDR. Compare this to the MSI Ti 4200 I reviewed recently. It used Hynix memory but one with a faster internal rating of 3.6ns. We wait to see how this affects overclocking performance.
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