The Search for SUMA

It started here with what looks to be a translation from Russian of an XBitLabs news item. That led to a little more XBit looking.

It wended its way here with some benchmarking.

Finding out what it did was easy. Finding out where to buy got rough.

A Korean company named SUMA has put out a video card called the S/U/M/A Platinum GeForce 4 Ti 4200SE-P. This is a special edition Ti4200 which really is special for two reasons:

  • It uses either 64 or 128Mb of 3.3ns RAM.
  • The 128Mb version uses the upper-end nVidia reference board design.

    In short, a Ti4200 on steroids. The memory is actually faster than the standard Ti4400 specs.

    Apparently this company is mostly an OEM, but does sell under their own name. Their products have been reviewed every once in a while by major review sites, and have generally been well received.

    Unfortunately, this company seems to be better at making cards than selling them.

    They have a website of sorts, but it doesn’t look terribly well put together or updated.
    They do have a page for where you can buy their products, but . . . .

    The company listed for the U.S.doesn’t sell video cards anymore. Clicking on the two other North American distributors just gives you a 404. The South American distributor just has an old card available.

    There is only one place on Pricewatch which sells anything by them: AToZPC.com. Here’s their contact page. They only sell a GeForce2 MX from them, but at least they may have contacts.

    Europe fares a bit better. This French reseller sells current product for the company, but not this one (the Ti4200 they are selling is a different model equipped with 64Mb of 3.6ns RAM).

    The one Danish place doesn’t have it either, but at least they have a current GF4 from them,

    The company has a site in Russia which lists them, but whether their dealers actually have them is unknown.

    What To Do

    1) See if they’re the OEM for someone else The Ti4200 card the French site is selling with 64Mb of 3.6ns RAM has the same RAM as the MSI 8870-030. Maybe it’s the same card.

    However, this SE-P card is so radically different from what nVidia wants that I sort of doubt a major player would sell it. But I could be wrong.

    2) Contact those who at least sell something from them Maybe if enough people send notes, it might persuade them to stock the card. Can’t hurt to try.

    3) Contact the company itself Here’s the sole email contact. Again, they aren’t exactly masters of marketing, but a couple minutes to write an email can’t hurt.

    Ed

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