Overclocking

Given the size and complexity of the Leadtek WinFast A250 Ultra TD's cooling solution, there were high expectations concerning its overclocking potential. The GeForce4 Ti 4600 has proven to be only a moderate overclocker so far, with most topping out at about 5% on the core, and 10-15% on the memory. In Leadtek's case, however, their novel cooling solution seems to have paid off as the core was able to hit a 15% overclock. The additional cooling did little to help the memory speeds, however, and the DDR wouldn't overclock higher than 10% with any degree of stability.

Even if Leadtek's unique heatsink design isn't the overclocking monster we expected, it's still a great-looking piece of work that performs at least as well as the stock cooling NVIDIA uses. This is also in line with previous testing, which demonstrated that the new BGA memory runs cool to begin with and doesn't benefit as much as the GeForce4 Ti core from additional cooling hardware. Far apart from the cooling benefits is the look of the A250 Ultra TD, and we'd bet there isn't a gamer alive who wouldn't mind showing this bad boy off at the next LAN party.

Conclusion

For gamers who absolutely have to own the fastest card and don't care how much it costs, the Leadtek A250 Ultra TD is a card that will satisfy your cravings now and has more than enough power in reserve for upcoming games. This is a killer combination that is difficult to beat, assuming you've got the money.

Even if you don't have the budget for a Ti 4600 card, the GeForce4 Ti 4400 or even 4200 lines are substantially cheaper and still offer excellent performance. The GeForce3, great as it was for its time, is going to vanish pretty quickly as the GeForce4 Ti continues to build up steam. This is a great time to jump aboard the GeForce4 Ti train, and Leadtek has just the ticket with their excellent WinFast A250 Ultra TD.

Pros:

• Fabulous Speed
• Ability to enable 4X FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering
• Excellent Card for Future Gaming

Cons:

• Expensive
• Cooling does little for Memory Overclock

Ratings: