LOSTCIRCUITS

Confessions First

The clear winner in terms of performance and features in this review is the V8460 and the integrated copper heatsink puts that card into a league of beautée by its own anyway. Cousin Mick used to say: "She was practising the art of deception ... You can't always get what you want". It is hard not to be enamoured with the V8460 Ultra Deluxe, even if it only serves as a showcase but it is like with really classy women, they come at a price (Grin)....

".... But if you try, sometimes, you get what you need"

This is really the take-home message about the V8420. The GeForce4 is an incredibly powerful AGP adapter, and one thing where ASUS cards have always stood out above the competition has been the 2D quality since, in contrast to some other 3rd party manufacturers, there were no corners cut with respect to the output filtering. Again it is going to be a tough choice between the GeForce4 Ti4200 and the ATI RADEON 8500, same price, almost identical performance.

Confusions at last

All of the above is very valid or was valid until ATI released the RADEON 9000 and 9000Pro series. While I don't have either of these cards currently in my hand (there was simply no way to carry it back from the S. Francisco Event on top of everything else), the price point of $129 for the RADEON 9000Pro is a serious challenge for even the GeForce4 Ti4200 regardless of the fact that the 9000 series does perform slightly worse than the R8500 / Ti 4200. Availability is, however, another factor coming into play here and again, supply does not match the demand with either card.

Suffice it to say that there is no way one can go wrong with the V8420 and neither with the V8460, pure or Ultra Deluxe, it doesn't really matter. The bean counters might as well wait another 3 months and another 3 months and another 3 months and .... another 3 moths

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