Bundle and specs.
Gainward's midrange hardware has always been impressive, from the RAMsink-clad cards to the stylish coolers. The same, though, cannot always be said about the bundles. Gainward's approach has often been to lump in a generic card bundle. The Golden Sample surely deserves more, right ?.
The face that launched a thousand cards. The Gainward GeForce FX 5700 Ultra Golden Sample Ultra/960 Dual-DVI 128MB, to give it its full title, isn't Gainward's highest-specificed FX 5700 Ultra. That honour falls to the watercooled CoolFX version, with 520/1000 inflated clock speeds. I don't know about you, but I'd expect more than 20MHz extra core speed above the fan-assisted review card.
Our review sample was missing the VIVO cables that are present with all Gainward VIVO-equipped models. It's another generic affair, I'm afraid. Gainward usually bundles in WinCinema, the multipurpose media package, and it will do so with retail examples, not just WinDVD. The driver CD contains the 52.16 driver set, Gainward's EXPERTool v3.11 overclocking utility that, if installed in Enhanced mode, raises the card's speed to 500MHz/1000MHz for 3D work (300MHz/1000MHz for 2D), a video capture driver, and DX9.0. Hardware-wise, 2 DVI-to-VGA dongles are necessary, as is the passthrough power cable.
Gainward informs us that shipping cards will have the increased core and memory speeds hardwired via a custom BIOS. The EXPERTool applied those clocks at startup on our card. No great shakes.
