Gainward GeForce4™ PowerPack! Ultra/750-8X XP Golden Sample
The second of our Gainward cards on test is the all-singing, all-dancing Ultra 750XP Golden Sample. How does this differ from its stable-mate and is it worth the price premium ?. Let's find out.
The box is pretty much standard and doesn't give away what's special about the card. It features the same 128MB found on the 650XP Gainward as well as the VIVO functions. Looking at the card itself may give us a better insight.
This Gainward is a little larger than its brother. The bank of capacitors on the right demand a little extra board real estate. The cooler, though, is exactly the same as found on the previous Gainward. Looking at the dimensions of the pretty heatsinks, we can gather that Tiny BGA RAM is employed here - the narrowness gives it away. Tiny BGA RAM is usually found on more expensive Ti 4xxxx cards so its presence here shows that this is a high-performance solution. Although we cannot tell for definite due to the epoxied heatsinks, it appears as if the RAM is natively rated at 3.3ns (606MHz); far beyond the 513MHz that it operates at. The same Philips 7108AE encoder/decoder is found here, too.
Just as one would expect here. We have the same matching BGA heatsinks on the back. I wonder when some manufacturer will employ some sort of cooling, be it passive or active, on the back of a video card. The back of the GPU does get pretty hot when in action.
Nothing new here.
Here is where this particular card excels. Gainward have often bundled their very highest specified cards with add-ons. To give true flexibility to video editing, a Firewire card and 4-pin-to-6-pin lead is supplied. This allows one to receive a DV signal from high-end camcorders, external hard drives et al. The card comes equipped with 3 ports thereby giving your PC true Firewire (1394a) support if it doesn't already do so - a nice touch.
I won't bore with the details of the software package as they're exactly the same as the Gainward 650XP. Please refer to its page if you wish to refresh your memory. The leads feeding into and out of the card are a little different. Gainward have decided to keep the colour-coordinated approach this time. As with all Golden Sample cards there's a guaranteed overclock via the supplied EXPERTool sofware. I'd have been more impressed if the guaranteed overclocks were hardwired to the card via a custom BIOS.
That's not all, folks, there's more.
A pair of Stereo 3D glasses are included and work reasonably well. Being a little heavy for my liking, they're not a feature that I would rank highly. You really need to get used to the image being drawn. I'd prefer a standard CRT or TFT display. The accompanying adapter was required for hooking-up the glasses to the back of the card. It's all very well built, has a number of useful adapters, extras, and decent software. This card is clearly aimed at those that want more than just a basic card.
