With both ATI and SiS boasting 8X AGP compatibility for their videocards, nVIDIA was not to be left behind in the ancient world of 4X AGP. The NV30 would rectify this situation, but with the delays its release was not expected until February 2003, leaving an awfully large gap for ATI and SIS to take advantage of.

Never one to sit out on a marketing battle, Nvidia have incorporated 8x AGP technology into the GeForce4 GPU, and the "band aid" solution has actually worked quite well.

Albatron's updated Ti4680P-Turbo lives up to the reputation set by its older brother, the original Ti4200P Turbo. With a stock speed of 250 MHz core and 550 MHz memory it's already faster then most stock Ti4200's on the market, and with the sheer overclocking potential of the Ti4680P Turbo its performance is higher then the rest as well.

This gain is mainly thanks to the 8 layer PCB (the same as used with the Ti4600) and faster 3.3ns BGA DRAM. The test sample we played with had no problems running at 305 MHz core, and 695 MHz memory, which is well above Ti4600 levels!

The package of goodies that comes along with the Albatron Ti4680P Turbo are what you would typically expect from a "value" card such as this; all the necessary cables for the S-Video output, a few games, DVD software and of course the driver CD and users manual. It would have been nice for Albatron to also include a DVI to analog converter as well. Perhaps that will change in the future.

The Albatron Ti4680P-Turbo is still somewhat of a mystery in terms of pricing as it was released in the last few days of December '02. Looking back at the previous version, I think it would be safe to expect that it will be a bit more expensive then the average Ti4200 with 8XAGP. Your best best is to check here for pricing as the Ti4680P-Turbo will hit the retail channels shortly.

If you plan to overclock the Albatron Ti4680P-Turbo, you'll find it is a willing participant, thanks in part to the unique copper GPU heatsink and higher-end PCB. If overclocking isn't your game, that's okay too - the Ti4680P Turbo should be faster then most Ti4200's out there because it's already clocked higher by default.