Trident XP4 Preview - A Cheap GeForce4?

Final Words

Without hardware in hand, there's not much we can say about the XP4 other than we're just going to have to wait and see. Obviously there's much more to making a successful GPU than a nice set of specifications on paper, everything from yields to a solid driver team can impact how well a GPU actually makes it in the real world. Here's what we know about the XP4 as of now:

The XP4 will be on store shelves in October for the holiday buying season. Production silicon is currently in qualification, which should last another few weeks at the most. According to Trident, the driver is presently at 90% of their performance target (the 80% of a Ti 4600 mark). If Trident can attain their performance target, the XP4 T3 would be great competition for the GeForce4 Ti 4200 and the Radeon 9000 Pro at a much lower price, but we're understandably skeptical. Trident has also told us that they are committed to a 6-month product release schedule, and that in less than 6 months we should start hearing about the XP4's successor.

What remains to be seen is how Trident's unique shared pipeline architecture impacts performance in real-world tests and in the coming weeks, that's exactly what we plan on finding out. We'll keep you posted on how things do turn out with the XP4 once we get our hands on some working hardware…