Abit's Siluro GF4 Ti 4600

Abit's interpretation of the Ti 4600 theme comes in a silver-heatsink-encrusted look with a stunning black finish. Perfect for that night on the town with an AGP card in your pocket. RAM coolers both front and back threaten to shatter the overclocking taboo: Be naughty. Move that slider. Move it. You know you want to.

Abit's Siluro GF4 Ti 4600 Beyond the heatsinks and the different colors, the Abit card isn't too terribly different from the PNY. Like the Verto, the Siluro uses the Conexant video encoder chip and a single Silicon Image TMDS transmitter. Physically, the most notable difference is the Siluro's mini-DIN video out port, which is designed for use with Abit's splitter cable. The splitter provides both S-Video and composite outputs.

Abit applies thermal paste between the GeForce4 Ti GPU and the Siluro cooler, like so:

As you can see, the paste was applied evenly. If I had to pick nits, I'd say the paste was perhaps a bit thick, but it's still much thinner than any TIM.

Abit includes all the necessary goodies with the Siluro, including a DVI-to-VGA converter, the video out splitter cable, and both S-Video and composite extender cables. Because the Siluro uses the Conexant chip, it's not capable of video capture, so no video input cable is provided. Abit's software CD includes all the right stuff, including drivers, DirectX, an NVIDIA BIOS flash utility, an electronic copy of the manual, DVD player software, and couple of unique utilities. The first of these utilities, 3Deep, allows for better control of color and gamma in 3D games. The second, Graphic Max, is Abit's overclocking utility; it's two sliders and nothing special. The Siluro manual includes basic install instructions and surprisingly lucid explanations of NVIDIA driver settings, including Direct3D and OpenGL options.

I should mention something about Abit's SiluroDVD software, which is simply a rebadged version of Intervideo's WinDVD. I installed a version of this software on my own PC, and it nearly nuked my Win2K install. The system wouldn't boot. Only a very lucky Usenet search saved me from having to reinstall everything. Somehow, one of Intervideo's DLLs was causing crashes during the boot process, and the fix was to rename or delete it. The fix worked, but I was just a few moments of frustration from giving up. So be careful when installing SiluroDVD or any other version of WinDVD.

All in all, Abit's Siluro GF4 Ti 4600 is a nice package. It includes everything you'd need and expect, plus some extras like the video extension cables. However, be aware that the Abit card comes with only a one-year warranty and no toll-free technical support. Abit relies laregely on its distributors and resellers to handle end-user support, so you'll want to buy from a trusted source.