Rare Geforce 4 Ti4280 PNY AGP 8X Graphics Card

[SirTheo60]

Alright, so I was going through my Grandfather's old computers, and was scrapping them for parts, when I come across this beauty:

A PNY Geforce 4 Ti4280 AGP card.

Now initially, I did what everyone does, checked out ebay to take a look at what it was worth. 

It came up with the same exact PCB but different cooler and memory size. Now the one listed on the card stated 64MB based on the sticker, which also said that it was a Geforce Ti4200. The one listed online, that looks exactly the same (minus the cooler) lists 128MB.

I was confused. So I plugged it into a rig, and booted it up, and the BIOS detected 64MB. I took a second and booted into windows 7. Oddly, in GPU-Z it stated it had 128mb... I am at a loss. So I dug around some GPU databases, and found that during the Geforce 4 generation PNY only produced a 64mb Ti4200. No mention of a 

PNY 128mb Ti4280. The PCB matched the other online, but no one else had it. Anyone have some insight into this card? Any idea what it is, and why it shows different memory in bios then the OS? And why does it have heatsinks on both side, and is miss marked as a ti4280?

[KeemoSabe]

I would believe the PCB, this is a TI 4280 and it's 128 mb .

[SirTheo60]

But, why is it not marked on any GPU reviewer site, as ever existing. Even the PNY database lists only a 64MB variant listed as a TI 4200.

[KeemoSabe]

41 minutes ago, SirTheo60 said:

But, why is it not marked on any GPU reviewer site, as ever existing. Even the PNY database lists only a 64MB variant listed as a TI 4200.

I was able to see people posting TI 4280 as the card but specs sheet shows 4200 with 128 mb 

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=69565 

 

 

There is a lot of possibility, marking, hardware, driver etc.. It  would also help if we can see what's under the heatsink. You can simply count  the VRAMs and tell if it is indeed a 128 mb or 64 mb. But as I see, it's a 128mb card. 

 

[SirTheo60]

Update: 

I googled the UPC number G4TI4200A8B3DO-MAHAA, just to see what would come up, and this was the only result in all of google:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/uber-hot-pny-geforce-ti4200-64mg-agp-poss-128mg-79-at-bby-dead.1014564/page-23

Some forum from 2003. On that page, and the next, the individual talks about his experience getting one of these cards, when he was supposed to get to get a PNY TI4200, but instead got this weirdly blue colored (the others were purple PCBs) Ti4280. Apparently a company called Albatron, produced them, in 64mb and 128mb variants, and as a result of PNY not able to keep up with demand to supply Best Buy specifically, bought some from Albatron, and slapped their own GPU cooler on there. Also it appears that some mix and matching was coming out of the PNY factory, because people would buy 6-10 of these cards and occasionally get a 128MB variant in a box marked for 64MB, then return the rest. Everything else was the same. Apparently these Albatron cards were the best OCers for the GeForce4 Generation because of the quality of the PCBs Albatross put out (reading this from a few tech reviewers forums). 

 

I saw some guy saying you would never need more than 64MB of VRAM for gaming, and that 128 was overkill... laughable now, wonder if we look the same way at 8GB of VRAM being too much, when 10 years from now, we will have 4-8TBs of VRAM.

[SirTheo60]

And as far as counting the VRAMs... The small rectangular heat sinks you see in the picture are soldered onto the chips... I was surprised... figured it was an adhesive. Saw someone mention it in a reviewer site saying they attributed the better OCs to the better VRAM cooling with direct VRAM cooling using soldered on heatsinks and that the other cards offered by other brands with beefier GPU coolers were not better overclockers, because they would give up cooling the VRAMs.