Introduction

Welcome to the world of Gainward, a world beyond your senses! Gainward is a world leading producer of high-quality, high-end 3D accelerators for the personal computer market. Gainward offers a full product line of value adding products targeting gaming enthusiasts as well as entry-level consumers. Founded in 1984, Gainward has grown exponentially in the channel, serving the system builder, distribution and retail markets with products that offer the highest in quality and customer satisfaction, thereby making the computing experience transparent to the hardware in the box. Together with Gainward we invite you to embark on the ride to the future...

Last year during the month of June, NVIDIA introduced their high-end GeForce 7800 series which only supported the PCI Express interface. The GeForce 7800 cards came actually in two different versions at the start by a GeForce 7800 GTX and less strong GeForce 7800 GT. The major change coming with the GeForce 7 series have been an increase in pipelines whereas the GTX features 24 pipes and the GT gotten 20 pipes. A bit later however NVIDIA released the optimized G71 chip, and with that the GeForce 7900 series saw the light featuring 24 pipes. Since then rumors gotten send out that NVIDIA would come also with an AGP part, but that rumor was fast put down by NVIDIA.

This year however NVIDIA released in February an AGP version based upon the GeForce 7800 chip. Somehow the AGP market is big enough and therefore NVIDIA saw the need to kick out a new product to bring em at the top of the performance chain in the AGP world. By releasing the GeForce 7800 GS AGP graphics card based upon the existing GeForce 7 series released previously NVIDIA made sure they can deliver top notch performance and an attractive upgrade path for all AGP system owners. Gainward took it one step further and designed an AGP card around the GeForce 7900 chip, the BLISS 7800 GS+ 512MB Silent.

Gainward BLISS 7800 GS+ 512MB AGP Silent

Gainward released more then one version of the GeForce 7800 GS AGP card, which differs quite a bit from the reference design. Gainward first came with a BLISS 7800 GS 512MB AGP design, which was clocked at the speeds of 425/1200MHz, as bit higher than the default speeds set by NVIDIA. The difference however wasn't really the clock speeds, but the core that Gainward used on their BLISS 7800 GS AGP. Gainward went immediately for the GeForce 7800 GT core and bridged it to the AGP interface, but keeping the 20 pipelines and 7 vertex shaders instead of going for the cut down G70 AGP core with only 16 pipelines and 6 vertex shaders.

This was followed quite fast with some more impressive version, namely a Gainward BLISS 7800 GS GLH AGP clocked at 450/1300MHz. Really not much difference with the normal version except being overclocked and still using the G70 core just like on the GeForce 7800 GT video card. And now it becomes even more interesting, NVIDIA did a design refresh on their G70 core by optimizing and going for a 90nm manufacturing process. This gave us the introduction of the GeForce 7900 series based around the optimized G71 core with 24 pipelines and 8 vertex shaders for both the GTX and GT version. Guess what, yeah indeed the G71 core is powering the Gainward BLISS 7800 GS+ AGP graphics card.

Features

• GeForce 7800 GS+ (G71 at 450MHz)
• 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 Memory (1250MHz)
• Memory Bandwidth of 40.0GB/s
• AGP 4x/8x Compatibility
• Integrated NVIDIA TV Encoder (S-Video)
• PC99 DB-15 Analog Connector
• DVI-I Connector for Analog/Digital Display
• Integrated Silent Cooling Solution

So, what did we receive from Gainward in term of package? Gainward is shipping the BLISS 7800 GS+ AGP Special Edition in a very eye catchy colored paperboard box. A meanly green colored box, green/black which are the main colors of Gainward. The box is the same for all versions made by Gainward, but the difference, which you might have noticed is the Special Edition sticker and the GS+ abbreviation at the top of the box. What you will notice as well is the Golden Sample indication, which generally means that it is an overclocked version.

The Gainward box comes with some plastic shrink wrap around it. So we had to remove the plastic covering first. This is an extra protection to the package as a hole and also makes sure that the package has not been opened yet. The box itself details very clearly the product that you are buying as well as the main features, that it is an AGP card with high performance 512MB GDDR3 memory. One other thing we can't skip to mention is that you can choose a free game on the Gainward website.

Turning the BLISS 7800 GS+ Golden Sample box around we find out even more details on the product enclosed. The back of the paperboard package lists all the features of the BLISS 7800 GS+ graphics card and what is included in the package. Further checking the box reveals also some more information on the sides that might come in handy upon purchase of the BLISS 7800 GS+ AGP, like the system requirements. All these add up in the first impression of the Gainward package, a very detailed and professional box. The box alone will certainly persuade and attract some of the interested souls...