Bundle and presentation
A comprehensive bundle is what may set one manufacturer's card above another's. It's safe to presume that almost all cards based on a certain GPU will perform within a few percentage points of one another. Then how do you decide which card to plump for ?. One rather obvious method of differentiating your product from the competition is to have it look different. Gainward has certainly tried to make the 1200 XP look a little different, but so have other manufacturers. We've seen both ASUS and MSI produce individual solutions that try to woo the customer on aesthetics alone.
Another feature, if we can call it that, is having a comprehensive accompanying bundle, because spending in excess of £300 should reward the buyer with more than pure hardware alone. Let's see how Gainward fare in this respect.
The box's graphics are identical to the FX 5900 Ultra's. The only obvious difference is in the card's name. Gainward FX PowerPack! Golden Sample 128MB Ultra/1200 XP. Quite a mouthful, isn't it.
The card may wow buyers on pure aesthetic appeal alone, but the bundle won't have many reaching for their credit cards. Adequate is one word that springs immediately to mind. InterVideo's WinCinema bundle saves it from being classed as mediocre. VIVO leads, a 50-page Quick Start guide, a MOLEX extender, a DVI-to-VGA dongle and a CD containing drivers, EXPERTool (Gainward's overclocking utility) and EXPERTBIOS completed the package. And much like the Gainward FX 5900 Ultra, no games were present in this bundle, either. We feel as if Gainward seriously need to revamp the software element of its graphics card packages. Other manufacturers now include quality titles as standard, Gainward should think about doing the same.
