(Albatron, Asus, Gigabyte, Gigabyte, MSI, Sapphire)
Introduction
Albatron - Medusa Ti4800SE
Asus - V9280S Ti4200-8X
Gigabyte - Maya II GV-R9500 PRO
Gigabyte - Maya II GV-R9700 PRO
MSI - MX440S-VTD8X
Sapphire - The Beast AIW 9000 PRO
On the horizon
Features table
Performance results
Verdict
fast 3D graphics card (01/05/2003)
The first thing you notice about the Medusa Ti4800SE from Albatron is the amount of cooling that has been added to the board. Not only does the GPU have a huge copper heat sink on top of it, but there are heat sinks on both sides of the board for the BGA memory too.
It's good to see that Albatron hasn't used the thermal pads so often used by other graphics card manufacturers on the contact points of the cooler and memory heat sinks, but instead has used a good layer of thermal paste.
The Medusa Ti4800SE card is based on the Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4800SE and built on a blue GeForce 4 Ti4600 PCB. The Ti4800SE GPU is nothing more than Nvidia's GeForce 4 Ti4400 core with 8X AGP support, running at the same clock speeds as a standard Ti4400. So the core memory is clocked at 275MHz and the 128MB of 3.3ns BGA DDR memory is clocked at 550MHz.
But the Albatron Medusa Ti4800SE has a trick up its sleeve. The combination of loads of cooling and the Ti4600 PCB allows for some serious overclocking. In our tests it ran stably with a core speed of 335MHz and a memory speed of an amazing 650MHz.
There are three output ports; standard 15-pin VGA for CRT monitors, DVI digital output for LCD displays and S-Video for connection to a TV or similar device.
Bundled with the card are an S-Video-to-RCA converter, RCA and S-Video cables, an informative manual, driver CD and a DVI connector. The software bundle comprises the WinDVD movie player and full versions of two games, Motocross Mania and Serious Sam.
Buy Albatron Medusa Ti4800SE securely online at a bargain price
£130 + VAT
Albatron: 01908 305 163
