VisionTek launches Ti4600 in Europe
The present pinnacle of graphics card touches down
Thundering into the European hardware market today is leading American graphics card manufacturer VisionTek with its GeForce4 Ti4600. Having established two regional offices (in the UK and Germany) this February, the company has launched its GeForce4 Ti4600 product borrowing heavily from NVIDIA's reference board design. In fact, a cursory evaluation of both reveals no striking differences. This is no bad thing though, because as we reported last month, the Ti4600 is the fastest graphics card ever produced, towering over its siblings and rivals alike. VisionTek director of business development Dirk Schunk described the launch as "only the beginning," citing the company's continued relationship with leading European retailers as a stepping stone to market dominance. He may have a distinct lack of consumer interest to deal with though, as the VGA/DVI/S-Video 128Mb, 650MHz DDR-driven Xtasy GeForce4 Ti4600 will retail for €549 (roughly £340) from day one, and there is still a distinct lack of games capable of harnessing the board's advanced capabilities. In fact, this writer's own experience of the Ti4600 indicates that in modern PC releases - such as Aquanox and Medal of Honor : Allied Assault - features that push the vanilla GeForce 3 to its fullest are few and far between. Nevertheless, the Ti4600 is not the only card VisionTek plans to ship. The moderately slower (but inevitably overclockable) Xtasy GeForce4 Ti4400 is due to join its big brother on store shelves shortly for the princely sum of €449 (£275), along with two MX based cards, the Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440 (€199 / £120) and the Xtasy GeForce4 MX 420 (€169 / £105). The Ti4400 represents the best 'bang per buck' as it were, outpacing older GeForce 3 based cards with tweakable headroom, and offering a reasonable saving over the meaty Ti4600. Related Feature - GeForce4 Ti4600 review
