GeForce 4 : Fresh Meat
PNY, ELSA and Gainward offerings on course
In light of yesterday's GeForce 4 launch in the Brussels Atomium (pictured), PNY and ELSA have both stepped forward to announce their latest products, based unsurprisingly on the NVIDIA GeForce 4 reference design. PNY got there first, "unleashing" their Verto line of GeForce 4 graphics cards, with low and high-end solutions. At the budget end of the solution, the Verto GeForce 4 MX 440 and 420 retail for $179.99 (£127 / €207) and $129.99 (£92 / €149) respectively. The 440 ships with a free copy of Grin's futuristic racer Ballistics - a fine piece of software to show off the card's abilities - while the 420 is bundled with ten 80-minute CDRs. Meanwile, the company's Verto GeForce 4 Ti 4600 and Ti 4400 cards make a slightly more compelling argument with their increased memory speed, DVI and ViVo support. At $399.99 (£283 / €461) and $299.99 (£212 / €345) respectively though, the free copy of Star Wars Starfighter shipping with the 4600 and the i-O Systems 3D specs shipping with the 4400 are just added stuffing. These are all US-facing products, but then so were VisionTek a month ago. Depending on the success of these boards, we may see domestic European releases shortly. On the other hand, ELSA find themselves in completely the opposite situation, having abandoned the US graphics card market in favour of concentrating on the business sector. Meanwhile, us Eurotechies can get our hands on four of their new graphics cards very soon. ELSA's flagship product is the GLADIAC 925VIVO, which as the name suggests is a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 with ViVo-based graphics card. The GLADIAC 925VIVO is very close to NVIDIA's own reference design, as is the GLADIAC 725TV-OUT (damn these capital letter marketing freaks). On the budget front however, ELSA have introduced GLADIAC 517VIVO based on the MX 460 and GLADIAC 517TV-OUT based on the MX 440. ELSA's is the first 460-based board we've encountered. And finally, although they did not deign to send us a press release, Gainward will be releasing an awesome new version of its Golden Sample board. In order to combat harsh market conditions which saw VisionTek driving down prices last year, Gainward hit upon the idea of a special, overclocked board to outpace the competition. Its GeForce 3-based offerings did well, and according to The Inquirer, Gainward's GeForce 4 Power pack Ultra/750 Golden Sample is the next big thing. Retailing for €500 (£307), the card is overclocked to boot. As the name suggests, the board will ship with 750MHz memory (that's 375MHz DDR), and from what we've heard, a core frequency of nearly 350MHz. We hope to have some of these boards in for testing shortly. Then after that, we can sell them all and live on a desert island for the rest of our lives, sleeping on top of a big pile of money amidst many beautiful ladies… (Count me in! -Ed)Related Feature - NVIDIA launches GeForce 4