Geforce 4 Ti 4400 bites the dust

[Tea]

Last week I ordered a couple of GF4 Ti 4400s from Leadtek. Rectron (our Leadtek people) called me to say that they had no stock and did not expect to be getting any. Apparently, Nvidia have decided not to make any more Ti 4400 chips. This seemed a bit hard to believe, so I rang around. No-one had 4400s in stock, only 4600s and (sometimes) 4200s. So it looks like they were telling the truth.

I thought "Nvidia must be crazy to be dropping their best-selling high-end card" but maybe they are crazy like a fox. I called my customers and they both chose to cough up an extra $120 for a Ti 4600.

Still, I see that the Sparkle GF III Ti 200 is great value now: around AU$200 for the 128MB one with all the usual trimmings. (Ex tax, wholesale.) Compare to about $150 for a 64MB Gforce 4MX440, or $550 for the Ti 4600.

 

[CougTek]

Although the GeFarce 3Ti (all flavors) would normally be good values at the price they are selling now, because of the ridiculous price drop of the Radeon 8500 line, the later are a much better deal. With the latest CATALYST 2.2, the Radeon 8500LE out-performed the GF3 (except maybe the still expensive Ti500 in some benchmarks) and come close to the level of the GeForce 4Ti 4200. Combine that to the better 2D quality, DVI output and better overall set of features (MPEG-2 acceleration is still superior on ATI products than on NVIDIA's, a least on the GF3 line).

I haven't sold any GF4 Ti 4400, only GF4 Ti 4200 and Radeon 7500/8500 this year. For quite a while though, it was true that the GF 4Ti 4400 was a good value : Ti4600 performances (or close to) for more than 100$ less. But now they are too expensive compared to the Radeon 8500 for the little advantage they give.

 

[Tea]

I'm very wary of selling any ATI cards, except the Rage 128 8MB cheapie, because of all the horror stories I have heard about their drivers. Besides, it makes life really easy if all our cards (bar the 8MB ones) can use the same set of drivers. I care about reliability and compatibility far more than I care about performance. A card that doesn't work delivers zero FPS. People keep telling me that ATI have improved. The question is, have they improved enough?

 

[Jake the Dog]

since people keep telling you that ATI have improved and your still obvisouly skeptical then it seems to me that only you can answer your question by giving a few cards a go.

don't worry, you won't get burnt as ATI have improved dramamtically Tea. i suffered through some horrible RAGE128 AIW driver and O/S support grief some years ago but i tested and used a Radeon DDR a few months ago and it performed wonderfully in Win2k and XP.

 

[Tea]

Hmmm ... A fair point, Jake. I think I'll resort to St Augistine's prayer: "Oh Lord make me chaste. But not yet."

But does no-one have any comment/confirmation/refutation of the Ti 4400 being axed?

 

[Pradeep]

The current ATI drivers seem to be OK. Now the biggest problem occurs when upgrading them (I don't know if your customers do that). Upgrading the drivers requires you to uninstall the previous ones, it's not a good idea to just copy them over the top like you can with nVidia.

Unfortunately for the AIW 7500/8500, that means uninstalling the video drivers, uninstalling the MMC, etc etc, then reinstalling them over when the new drivers are present.

 

[CougTek]

But since the ATI replacement for the GeForce 4Ti lineup isn't the AIW, but the regular Radeon, you don't have to worry too much about it.

Tony, a quick look on my price lists dating from this very day tells me that I could still sell a 4400 from Microstar, Asus and EVGA, but it could only mean that my suppliers have made some reserves of them, not that NVIDIA necessarily still sells that flavor.

 

[Clocker]

The current ATI drivers seem to be OK. Now the biggest problem occurs when upgrading them (I don't know if your customers do that). Upgrading the drivers requires you to uninstall the previous ones, it's not a good idea to just copy them over the top like you can with nVidia.

Unfortunately for the AIW 7500/8500, that means uninstalling the video drivers, uninstalling the MMC, etc etc, then reinstalling them over when the new drivers are present.

Pradeep- I just put the new Catalyst drivers over-top of the original release. No uninstall of the old drivers was required. JUst download, double-click, reboot, and go...at least for me.

C

 

[timwhit]

I run a Radeon 7000 and I really doubt I will ever buy another ATI product after all the problems I had getting that to work. I have never had a problem getting a nVidia card to work. (unless beta drivers were being used).

I can't tell a difference in image quality anyways...

 

[Buck]

Sorry Tannin, I don't sell the Ti stuff. I usually sell the GeForce4 MX440-T from MSI.

I wish we could go back to cooler video cores and use heatsinks only, for speedy cards. I just don't like have those mini fans on the video cards. They never seem to last, especially with all of the dust they have to contend with.