Conclusion
So which GeForce4 is right for you? That decision is based on quite a few factors. The 4600 models offer the highest performance, but carry a hefty price tag that requires more than just a little enthusiasm from the prospective buyer. The 4400s, on the other hand, are much less expensive and only slightly slower.
The next factors might be appearance and feature set. A close look at the feature lists should be a great help there. While MSI bundles its cards with everything a user could wish for and more, this may be irrelevant if you already have everything you need. On the other hand, if you have a case window or just want a good-looking card, you may want to opt for one of the more elegant designs. Lastly, a card's noise level may end up tipping the scales in a favor of a certain product.
The competition in the shape of ATi has been relegated to playing performance catch-up for the time being. Although cards based on the RADEON 8500 are much cheaper than the big GeForce4 Titanium boards, they will soon find themselves competing with the smallest member of the GeForce4 Ti family, the 4200. This card will offer only slightly lower performance than its big siblings at a highly competitive price. Yet, as always, the competition isn't just sitting on its thumbs. Matrox has just announced its Parhelia, and within the next few weeks we should see some more announcements of new and very promising products.
In closing we would like to comment once again on the poor TV-output quality still offered by these cards. This is definitely a problem NVIDIA needs to address. The VGA signal quality also could also use some improvement, as it is nowhere near what one should be able to expect from cards of this price category. Let's hope that NVIDIA makes good on its promise of stricter reference designs.
