ABIT is making a play for the high performance graphics market with a new cooling system that it claims will allow you to push performance of a GeForce4 Ti4200 chip up to the level of a Ti4600. The company has just completed a European tour extolling the virtues of the Siluro GF4 Ti4200 OTES, which will be available on 23rd September, and expects a UK street price for the card below £150, so you get Ti4600 for about half the price.
It works like this. OTES (Outside Thermal Exhaust System) uses some of the ideas from notebook cooling systems, although it clearly doesn"t steal them wholesale, because it"s patent-pending. It uses a vacuum to seal the Ti4200 on a copper base, then a 7,2000 rpm fan to cool the system. This of course just gives you a cooler card, so in order to actually deliver the extra performance Abit is shipping overclocking tools with it.