Difference: VisionTek and PNY GeForce4 Ti4400?

visiontek is a terrible company. They OEM cards, period. This means you are going to get a stock board with reference drivers (not good quality, and the worst performance).

Your best bet would actually be to go with a LeadTek. Or if you can't do that, GainWard or Inno3D (a subdivision of InnoVision).

I disagree with you on the quality of Visiontek. They are excellent quality boards and are one of
the best sellers in the U.S.

  <b><font color=green> You get what you pay for. <font color=green></b>  

Here is a new review from <A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q2/020522/index.h..." target="_new">Tom's </A> you would be interested in.

  <b><font color=green> You get what you pay for. <font color=green></b>  

Funny how they are the biggest retail seller of video cards in North America (based on revenue). Their cards overclock quite well, even though their cooling isn't fantastic. I also agree with OldBear, either Leadtek or Gainward. I really haven't heard much about Inno3D, so I won't recommend or derecommend that card.

You've been spreading around FUD already as shown <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&..." target="_new">here</A>. for an inexperienced comp buyer, this is not good. Please be more respectful.

My firewall tastes like burning.  

According Tom's hardware PNY GeForce4 Ti4600 have bad image quality.

i have always been satisfied with visiontek cards in the past...do you have any experiences to relate that makes u think that they are terrible?

I have a GeForce 2 Pro by visiontek (though I don't use it anymore) that is terrible.

Actually I've been looking for a way to sell it.

I don't consider myself an inexperienced comp buyer. I've sunk over $3,000 into my current PC which I started building about a year ago.

There's a GeForce 2 MX (their brand name is Tornado) in my parents computer. I installed it and have had a chance to use it some and I was very impressed. 3D Mark 2000 (which was pretty current during the time the GF 2's were released) came bundled on the driver disc (along with a couple of other good things, don't remember exactly what).

It looks like their american site is down for maintenance at the moment (www.inno3d.com), but their german one appears to be up (though I believe it is updated less frequently) www.inno3d.de

I have a GF2MX by Inno3d and was very happy but I wanted something a little faster so I got a GF2 GTS-V by visiontek and been very very happy with it. Had no problems and it even over clocks very very well. I think VisionTek is working very close with nvida.

I wasn't aware visiontek offered any utilities that allow for overclocking. How did you manage to overclock your's?

If you know of a way via tweaking the drivers, please tell how.

Some chip clock speeds are supposedly read only and built into their BIOS

You can use the coolbits registry hack or download one of the many overclocking utilities.

My firewall tastes like burning.  

Could you tell me where I can find these please?

Go to guru3d.com or go to <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1268&p=5" target="_new">here</A> for the registry hack. RivaTuner is good. THat's what I use.

My firewall tastes like burning.  

The test you're referring to noted that almost all of the GF4 cards tested had "slighty unsharp" to "unsharp, ghosting" image quality at 1600 x 1200 with an 85Hz refresh rate. So its not like you're going to get a lot of improvement. I have a PNY Verto TI 4400, and I run everything at 1024 x 768 @ 85Hz and I am very happy with it.

--Sean

Good grief...

Once again you are attempting to offer a 'definitive' answer to a topic you do not seem to have a good grasp on? I followed your other post about ATi going under as well, and I would like to recommend that you sit back and read a bit more before offering trying to offer advice. BTW: Just because you spent a lot of money ((~$3000)) does not mean you know what you are talking about, quite often it is the opposite.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by uomdeacon on 05/28/02 12:06 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Whether or not reference is a good thing depends completley on how good the chipmaker makes the reference design. Visiontek is very reliable as a gfx board manufacturer because they consistently build High Quality reference design boards. The older Geforce 2 and 3 cards didnt have a perfect reference design. The 3 was pretty good though and thats when Visiontek really took off and their sales were incredible. With the Geforce 4 the reference design is almost impossible to improve upon except possibly for adding a couple interesting overclock features and extra heatsinks like leadtek and asus have done. So, as according to most reviews Visiontek GF4 cards rank right at the very top of quality graphics cards. Its pretty much the best money can buy.

I personally own the Visiontek TI 4600 and have installed many many other Visiontek GF4's for customers and friends and they all perform beautifully. I wouldn't trade this card for 5 of any other brand, i'm incredibly happy with it. I very highly recommend Visiontek over PNY for the origional poster. PNY has the least experience of gfx card makers and doesnt have the QA of Visiontek. Visiontek aslo uses better quality parts in their boards which produces a higher quality 2d image according to everything i've seen and read.

When the reference design is really good, a reference board is what you should get. I'm all for Visiontek's goodness in being faithful to a proven design without adding in extras and crap that raise the price and cause more bugs.

edit: forgot to mention, everyone uses reference drivers anyhow cause they're the best and fastest and most up to date. So...yer argument more than falls apart, if you can call it an argument.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the empires state building, along came goblin, wiped the spider out<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by williamc on 05/28/02 02:06 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

What monitor are you using? You can find a big difference if you have a good monitor.

Most overlooked truth in graphics. The Monitor DOES matter. Is why all quality tests must be done on the SAME EXACT monitor, not even two of the same model qualifies for a quality test. Monitors vary greatly. I personally recommend Trinitron technology monitors.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the empires state building, along came goblin, wiped the spider out