Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack! Ultra/650-8X XP Golden Sample
Gainward are no strangers to the video card market. Symbolised by a fantastic number of video cards for any given GPU, Gainward probably have the greatest number of video cards currently available. Let's have a look at the Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack! Ultra/650-8X XP Golden Sample . That's quite a mouthful. Try saying that with a few tipples down you.
The 8x compliance is a little muted on this particular card. Gainward tend to use the same packaging for one GPU.
Using the same base PCB colour as the MSI cards, Gainward usually differentiate their products with their in-house cooler and RAMsinks. The cooler feels a high-quality affair. It's also sturdily mounted unlike a few of the coolers on other cards, and the air produced by the quiet fan is fanned out towards the RAMsinks. The RAMsinks are aesthetically pleasing and mounted on well to the 64MB of TSOP RAM on the front. It was difficult to make them budge at all. The design is clutter-free and the card is exactly the same size as a reference Ti 4200. Once again, even though this isn't the highest specified Gainward Ti 4200, we still see video encoding / decoding via the capable Philips SAA7108AE chip - it's quite popular in this particular roundup, and is better than the other Philips chips specified on some cards.
The back contains the remaining 64MB of memory housed under the impressive RAMsinks, giving us a total of 128MB of standard TSOP RAM, another popular choice in this test.
Very similar to a number of other cards here.
To give us the requisite connections, Gainward have decided to bundle a single cable ( with internal wires) that connects to the S-Video connection on the back of the card but offers the same video in-out (composite) and S-Video in-out as some of the other cards. Now becoming standard, a DVI-to-VGA adapter is present here.
In terms of software, Gainward supply a rather old game in Serious Sam (original). The driver CD contains Gainwards 'Golden Sample' overclocking Expert Tool. Golden Sample cards reputedly use the finest components and yields thereby allowing Gainward to guarantee an increased core / memory speed. In this particular case the base speed is 250MHz core / 513MHz memory. Overclocking, with safety, using the Expert Tool option, gives us a guaranteed speed of 270 MHz core and 540MHz memory. I can't see why Gainward don't hardwire the speed in the form of a modified BIOS. It would sure look good in benchmarks.
InterVideo's WinCinema is designed to help you get the most out of the added functions of the Gainward card. WinDVD 4 serves as the DVD software player, WinProducer 3 allows you to capture, edit, and burn (write) video clips to various standards. WinRip 2 serves as a multi-purpose audio / mp3 manipulation tool. Gainward bundle one of the better software suites for the VIVO functions on their cards.
