Geforce4 cards w/VIVO function...

[homerpez]

Is anyone familiar?

I know it's a little late, because I suspect Fedex just delivered my Gainward Geforce4 Ti 128MB 4200 card today (yes!)... but is anyone familiar with these type of cards?

I'm planning to totally replace my "old" ATI AIW Radeon board (the 32MB)... I eventually got to the point where "any" capture solution would do. I never used the TV tuner since I got Digital Cable, I only use S-Video patch cables no matter what I'm capping from...

And I wanted a kick-butt card to play games on...

And this Gainward card has both!

But I'm wondering about the VIVO chip in it... does it have any major caveats? Weaknesses? (I haven't heard of any problems or weaknesses, but I've only read so much)...

Just wanna know what I'm getting into, and maybe the info will help others too. Thanks!

[homerpez]

Never mind, I'LL write the review!

Get this card!!!!!

The 3D performance is like nothing I've ever seen... and this is just the 4200 chipset...

I actually found a card that can play Grand Theft Auto 3 without slowdown! The thing even made WINDOWS go faster... must be the texture memory...?

Driver install was... well... Gainward is funny, or something. I had to click "next, automatic, next" plenty of times to get everything to show up, but eventually my XP machine found everything OK, and everything worked good out-of-the-box.

The VIVO function was almost EXACTLY like the AIW Radeon setup. I literally just plugged in the dongle, plugged the S-Video into "IN", and audio into my "LINE IN" on the soundcard, and done!

Quality is equal to, or better than, what I saw in the ATI card... seems to be able to cap the same formats, etc too (though V-Dub made me re-specify everything, I was able to get exactly the setup I used before).

I did notice that CPU usage with V-Dub and Huffy went up like maybe 5 to 10%, but still nothing to panic about... and the quality was top-notch.

If there's a problem with this, it was the (damn) dongle. I can barely get it to stay in the socket on the card. I don't know whether it's the way teh plug is shaped, or where it site in the back of my computer, but I had to SHOVE the thing in there, and kind of hope for the best...

"Thumbs Up". Like anyone cares..

[Thorn]

Yep, I just got this card too and have just capped again (with virtualdub and huffyuv). I also thought the CPU usage was a little higher, but thought I was imagining it. Anyway, I agree with your review (including the dongle problem... It's just a strange custom connector). The only problem I've had is that my computer no longer reboots or shuts down properly, it just goes into a blank-screen semishutdown state and I have to reboot it and/or manually shut it off. Other than that, it's a great card. I haven't tried overclocking beyond the recommended OC settings, but I've read numerous reviews with the gpu up to 330MHz and the memory up to around 560MHz.... I'm going to hold off on that unless I get a better case fan to make sure I don't melt anything.

[homerpez]

I haven't found the need to overclock, though it did come with a utility...

Did you try newer drivers? That sounds like a serious problem you would have addressed...