Several weeks ago I reviewed two competitive video cards based on nVidia GeForce4 MX440 from Abit and MSI. After receiving some positive feedback (it seems that most users liked the idea to present two comparable products in the same article) I decided to continue this good practice. So that you will be able to see today in action two video cards based on nVidia Ti 4400. Once again these cards are manufactured by Abit and MSI, but the difference is important: the target market segment. These two little toys are quite expensive, and the performance you can expect from them is also high. Let’s review the cards, Abit Siluro GF4Ti and MSI G4Ti4400-VTD.

Under the glass

Last time I started the article with Abit due to the name advantage, this time I will start with MSI. First I must say that both cards are shipped in quite large boxes and both display the companies' desire to provide a quality package.
In the MSI package you can find the card, the quick user's manual, a Y-type adapter with composite/S-video - inputs/outputs, an S-video cable, and the MSI CD set. The manual is high quality; it describes the hardware and software installation, the BIOS update procedure and several troubleshooting advice. The Y-type adapter is also good quality; all the metallic contacts are golden to lower the contact noise. The MSI CD set consists in nine CDs with various software and games. You can find Aqua Nox, Sacrifice, No One Lives Forever, MSI Games Collection, MSI Multimedia CD which contains various MSI utils and drivers and WinProducer/Coder. Quite frankly I was not able to check every program on every CD, but without any doubt MSI bundled a lot of toys with G4Ti4400-VTD.

The layout of MSI G4Ti4400 is very close to the nVidia reference design. The first thing which can be remarked on G4Ti4400 is the GPU cooler. Its design is not very common, but that's something quite normal for MSI, all MSI video cards tested until now had special coolers. The idea behind this cooler is very simple; the fan pushes fresh air inside the heatsink in a process that looks very much like the car breaking system ventilation.:) The MSI solution is elegant, but we will see later how efficient it is.
Now it's more important to describe the video card features: MSI G4Ti4400 has a DVI output and S-video plus composite video inputs/outputs. As you probably remember from my last review, GeForce4 MX440 video cards did not come with a DVI output, which wasn't very nice for users looking into the future.

MSI G4Ti4400-VTD

The DVI output is handled by a Silicon Image Sil164CT64 chip and the video input/output support is achieved by Philips SAA7108E. Overall there are no remarkable things in MSI G4Ti4400's design, except for the interesting cooler design. Let's see what we can expect from Abit.

The Abit package is also high quality, but it includes only one CD with drivers. It seems that the Abit philosophy is a little different. The card is targeted to overclocking market and for enthusiasts the amount of shipped software may not be so important. There is also a Y cable, a composite extension cable and a S-video cable. There is a little difference here between G4Ti4400 and Siluro GF4Ti: Siluro has no video input features, only TV out capabilities. In the Abit package you can also find a DVI to 15-pin VGA adapter which is quite useful for dual view display. From most point of views the MSI manual and the Abit one are comparable.

Abit Siluro GF4Ti

From the first look it’s obvious that theoretically Abit Siluro GF4Ti has a small advantage over MSI G4Ti4400-VTD: the memory heatsinks. The GF4Ti GPU heatsink is common for Abit boards: not very large, but strong enough to handle serious overclocking tasks. Abit thought more to overclocking and also added heatsinks for memory chips. Actually, there are only small differences between the two cards, in fact except for the different PCB color, the circuit board is the same. The electronic components used are quite the same and there is only one point which can be remarked by the end user in the card's behavior. Abit Siluro uses a different chip for video out/in functions, more precisely Conexant CX25871. Further tests will reveal which chip is better from the point of view of video output quality, Philips or Conexant (from the features perspective the answer is obvious: Philips, due to video in). Unfortunately you will see that it was quite hard to decide which one of the two chips produced a better quality.