Albatron's GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB

Albatron is the new kid on the block, and it's running against a lot of more established brands that have numerous GPU generations under their belts already. Our 64MB review sample comes on a blue PCB, which Albatron's CEO Jack Ko may have pinched on his way out from his former job with Gigabyte.

Being a new entrant is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, since they've really only existed in the marketplace for a few months, there's been no time to build up a negative reputation or have an image tarnished. On the other hand, Albatron has no brand recognition, though the odd name does seem to be getting a little attention on its own.

Switch heat sinks and Albatrons 64MB card looks a whole lot like Abit's Siluro, but the two cards do have a few key differences. For starters, Albatron uses Conexant's 25871 video encoder chip in lieu of one of Philips' offerings. The Conexant chip gives you support for HDTV, and NTSC/PAL resolutions up to 1024x768, though it too is limited to video encoding only.

Albatron specs a pretty wild looking heat sink on this card, but evidently forgot to apply a sticker to the fan mount. In fact, there are no markings anywhere on the card to denote that it comes from Albatron.

Yanking Albatron's heat sink reveals a nice layer of thermal compound. If I were feeling really picky I'd say there's probably just a smidge too much goo, but really I'm just happy I haven't seen one of those awful TIM pads yet.

Like Abit, Albatron uses Hynix memory chips rated up to 500MHz DDR. Of course, this doesn't mean that we can't run the chips faster than that, and we'll see just how much faster when we get to the overclocking results a little later.

Albatron's bundle is hit and miss, but we can give them a bit of a break since this is their first shot at it. Long cables are here, with a 71" composite and 69" S-Video cable. There's also an adapter to convert S-Video to composite, but not one to convert the card's DVI output to something a VGA monitor can work with.

Despite being a new company, Albatron's software bundle looks pretty dated. You get a driver and utility CD, and a copy of WinDVD, but the included games are Serious Sam (the first one) and Motocross Mania. I'm not even sure you can find games that old in the bargain bin at Wal Mart. In theory, I have nothing against game bundles, just as long as they don't end up costing me more money, or taking away from features that I'd use more. In Albatron's case, I would gladly sacrifice the games and even the copy of WinDVD for a DVI to VGA adapter.

The warranty for Albatron's graphics cards is a little complicated, but I'll try to simplify it for you. You're covered on labor for three years, but you only get free parts for the first year. In year two you may have to pay for parts, depending on the damage to the card, and in year three all part expenses come out of your pocket. Making you pay for parts in possibly the second, and definitely the third year of the warranty is behind the curve, considering that other cards we're looking at today cover parts for at least three years.