CPU OVERCLOCKING has gotten to the point where just about every PC enthusiast is doing it. Back in the day, an overclocked processor had you riding the bleeding edge, even if you were only running a few percent faster than stock. Now, overclocked processors are everywhere, leaving many enthusiasts searching for a new frontier to conquer. Since the quest for higher gaming frame rates so often drives the overclocking itch, taking on graphics cards seems like the next logical step.

Software utilities that allow you to ramp up the clock speed of your graphics card have been around for years, but now Abit is upping the ante with the Siluro GF4 Ti4200 OTES, a graphics card that comes overclocked right out of the box, with a radical new cooling system thrown in for good measure. The card's Outside Thermal Exhaust System is unlike anything I've seen on a production graphics product, and it's Abit's latest stab at pushing the bleeding edge of system performance.

Is this factory-overclocked GeForce4 Ti 4200 really all that? Is OTES the shape of things to come for graphics cooling? We've examined the card, overclocked it, and tested its 3D performance and noise levels to find out. Read on to see what we found.