Home Archive Forum About

Leadtek Winfast A250 UltraTD GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB

by Len "Viking1" Hjalmarson

Article Type: Review
Article Date: April 19, 2002
Product Name: WinFast A250 Ultra TD
Category: Hardware - Graphics
Manufacturer: LeadTek
Files & Links: Click Here

Graphics Evolution

Roughly two years ago NVIDIA introduced their GeForce line of video accelerators with integrated transformation and lighting. The gaming world has not been the same since.

The first of these boards sported either 16 or 32MB of main memory and on 3DMark 2000 with a 1 GHz CPU generated 4840 3DMarks at 1024x768 and 16-bit color depth.

GeForce2 GTS arrived not long after, and improved performance on the same system by at least 33%. The GeForce2 series topped out with the GF2 Ultra, with 64MB of main memory and running nearly 8000 3DMarks on a 1 GHz class CPU.

GeForce3 arrived in 2001 with a great deal of fanfare. The programmable pixel shaders and vertex shaders of GF3 and DirectX 8 fame offer developers greater flexibility than they have ever had in the past. Furthermore, anti-aliasing has become a standard rather than an extra.. most gamers demand some form of anti-aliasing while playing their favorite games.

While GeForce3 was revolutionary, GeForce4 is evolutionary, building on the features while improving the speed and efficiency andmemory bandwidth. On February 6th in San Francisco NVIDIA launched the latest technology. Arriving in at four major variants, from the flagship Ti4600 with 128MB to the GF4 MX variant with 64MB.

The clock speed for the flagship Ti4600 product is now 300 MHz, up from the 240 of the previous GeForce3 Ti500. Memory speed has increased to 325 MHz from 240, while memory bandwidth is up more than 25 percent. The flagship product also doubles the raw memory of GeForce3 to 128MB.

The physical changes are in memory technology, anti-aliasing, and the addition of a second vertex shader unit. Two vertex shader units will improve performance in games that use more complex lighting and alpha effects (like smoke and clouds and transparency). Furthermore, improvements in Z-buffer and occlusion technology result in much greater efficiency in the actual rendering process.

The GeForce4 is more than 25 percent more efficient at ignoring textures that will be masked (occluded) in the final scene. Anti-aliasing has never quite lived up to its promise with NVIDIA. Typically the performance penalty has been 25-30 percent, but that was only with very basic anti-aliasing. Accuview is a new anti-aliasing option which uses more texture samples per pixel for greater accuracy. Anti-aliasing as a whole has been streamlined, and is much more efficient, creating much less performance penalty than with the GeForce3 series. In fact, Quincunx anti-aliasing, which is equivalent to 4x, can now be performed at the same speed as 2x, which itself has been improved and has less penalty than with GeForce3. Good news!



The Leadtek Winfast A250



Leadtek GF4 Ti4600

The Leadtek Winfast A250 follows the basic NVIDIA reference design, much like boards from Gainward, Visiontek, and ASUS. The difference is cooling. Leadtek has taken an unusual approach to the problem.

Underneath the huge fan and heatsink combination resides the NVIDIA NV25 , also known as GeForce4 Titanium. The GF4 Ti core is running at 4600 speeds of 300 MHz.

Surrounding the graphics core is 128MB of BGA DDR SDRAM, in an 8 x 16MB configuration lining the front and back of the card. The DDR SDRAM runs at a default clock speed of 650 MHz.

Leadtek provides a single DVI-I monitor port. As DVI-enabled digital flat panel LCD's are becoming more common the inclusion of a DVI connector is almost expected. The connector can be used to power standard HD-15 analog LCD's.

All three ports (HD-15, S-Video, DVI-I) can be used together with NVIDIA's nView multi-monitor software, allowing nine possible multi-monitor configurations with this card. nView is one of the best and easiest to use multi-monitor implementations out there, and very flexible to configure.



GeForce4 to the MAX

When you pick up a standard Ti4600 you’ll notice that the board is quite light. Pick up this card, and you’ll immediately be impressed by the amount of metal you are holding. The Leadtek board weights easily twice that of the standard Ti4600 cards, thanks to the nasty heatsink included. The heatsink itself is aluminum, and lines both the front and the back of the board. Obviously engineered with care, the heatsink covers both the NV25 core and all eight of the BGA RAM chips on the board.

Mounted on the heatsink, two 40mm fans keep the air circulating. As a result, the total active cooling is much greater in area than on any other Ti4600 out there. Also as a result, this card is quite a bit noisier than other Ti4600 units. Overclockers are rarely greatly concerned with noise, however, and in my custom case with two intake and three outlet fans, the total sound level did not increase. If you want the best cooling power available for the GeForce4, it’s hard to consider anything other than the Leadtek A250.

This card is built for the speed, so I used the NVIDIA Coolbits registry hack to access the clock and memory speed settings (an easier way for most users is to download NVTweak utility). From the default clock speeds of 300 / 650, I was able to clock my board up to 330 / 750 and still maintain stability. In comparison, the VisionTek Xtasy topped out at 320, 700.

At this overclocked speed, the Leadtek A250 is running its core at 10 percent over stock speed, while the memory is running more than 20 percent over stock. I have included benchmarks of the A250 running in default and maximum overclocked settings.


Test System Configuration and Benchmarks

  • Mobo: Abit KG-7
  • CPU: Athlon XP 1900
  • RAM: 512 MB Corsair PCI 2400
  • HDRIVE: IBM Deskstar 60GB, ATA 100
  • Sound: Creative Audigy
  • OS: WIN ME with DX 8.1
  • Video: NVIDIA Detonator XP (27.51) driver


3DMark 2001 Chart

As you can see, the Leadtek A250 at default clock speeds is nearly the same as the Visiontek board. At default settings the A250 card is about 22 percent faster than the GeForce3 Ti500 (this is measured at 1024x768@32).

At higher resolutions, the GeForce4 pulls further ahead, with the A250 achieving 32 percent over the Ti500. The difference is even more pronounced with anti-aliasing modes enabled.

3dMark 2001 Accuview FSAA

The difference anti-aliasing makes in our modern simulations is very impressive. Anyone running the later 3dfx boards, or the GeForce2 or GeForce3 generations knows that 4x FSAA is a stunning improvement.

But with GeForce2 and even with GeForce3, anti-aliasing was a very costly improvement.

Finally, this is changing. The difference is obvious in the chart above. Under 3DMark 2001, the GeForce3 Ti500 scores a weakly 3910 with Quincunx FSAA. Furthermore, the quality of the textures is lost under GeForce3.

Even at the default speeds of 300MHz for main clock and 650MHz for memory, the GeForce4 Ti4600 improves performance by 60 percent. At overclocked speeds of 330 and 750, the Leadtek A250 pulls off a whopping 75 percent boost over the GeForce3 Ti500.



In-Game Tests

One of my questions coming into the testing was that of image quality. I have heard that GeForce4 improves image quality in standard 3-D acceleration, as well as running FSAA modes.

I found it difficult to discern a difference in image quality in IL-2 Sturmovik. It could be that it will require more DX8 support to discern fine differences in quality. IL-2 Sturmovik already looks incredible under the GeForce3 Ti500.

Running the new Accuview FSAA mode, however, compared to the old Quincunx mode of GeForce3, there was no question. Terrain textures in particular were more crisp, and clouds had a finer more wispy appearance. With the last generation, I had abandoned anti-aliasing in favor of higher resolution. With GeForce4 I can finally use high resolution (1280x1024) with anti-aliasing enabled.

The Comanche 4 Benchmark



Novalogic's Comanche 4 DX8 Benchmark

Late in March 2002, Novalogic completed their DX 8.1 benchmark using Comanche 4. This is the first full combat flight simulation benchmark to be made available until the 1.04 version of IL-2 Sturmovik is released this week. [Written prior to the release —Editor]

The score result is an averaged frames per second number.



Conclusion

While the Leadtek Winfast A250 clocked slightly higher than the VisionTek Xtasy Ti4600, it is hard to justify the increased cost. Personally, I would buy a standard reference board rather than spend the extra for the Leadtek (though you have to admit, it has the looks of a killer).

In terms of features, Leadtek is not the strongest board on the market. The Gainward Ultra 750/XP has a second DVI connector and comes with 3D glasses. Rumor has it that Creative Labs is about to release a Ti4600 product with twin DVI connectors that will be priced below the Gainward board. If you don’t need any of these features, consider a board from eVGA or PNY.

While comparing GF4 boards to one another brings me to the conclusion that the purchase should be made based on needed features rather than potential overclocking, comparing GF4 to the GF3 generation is another ball game entirely. The GeForce4 is a substantial improvement, particularly for those virtual pilots who want to run with FSAA. If you are running the GeForce3 generation, particularly if you are not running the top of the line GeForce3 Ti500, and if you can afford the upgrade, the Ti4600 is a great investment.



Graphic Card Resources

Articles:
Companies:

 Printer Friendly

© 2014 COMBATSIM.COM - All Rights Reserved