Gainward Packaging, a Golden Sample...

So, what did we receive from Gainward in term of package? Gainward is shipping the BLISS 7950 GT Golden Sample edition in an eye catchy colored paperboard box. Opening the package reveals the card itself and some extra items. The main part and weight of the package comes actually from the graphics accelerator itself, which features its own cooling solution designed by Gainward. The box as we mentioned already before is quite nice and stylish, and the Gainward graphics card on its own looks very impressive. So let's dig into the package and find out what Gainward has included...

You can say what you want but Gainward has certainly made a colorful package with their BLISS 7950 GT series. Since Gainward almost vanished over a year ago, they are now back to hit the competition with a very tempting package design and corresponding product. Next to the BLISS 7950 GT Golden Sample card you get some extra items in the package. These will come in handy when installing or finding out some more details on the video card itself and what you can expect from it.

Components

• Gainward BLISS 7950 GT Golden Sample Board
• Gainward Quick Start Manual
• Gainward Driver Installation/Utilities CD
• 2x DVI to VGA Converter
• 6-pin "Y" PCI Express Power Cable
• TV-out Cable (HDTV Support)
• Gainward muvee autoProducer 5
• Gainward Free 2 Choose Voucher

What we discovered first in the box was the Quick Start Manual; this is a quite extensive small booklet that provides details on the installation of the card and the different tools delivered with the Gainward package. This Quick Start Manual is well designed and informative, with some focus as well on the technical details and references. But do you really care that much about such a manual when purchasing a graphics card? Where it comes down to is getting the card installed and enjoy the gaming performance. Next to that Gainward included as well a decent software bundle, with the usual Driver CD and Gainward's muvee autoProducer 5 software.

What else have we found? We found two cables, a 6-pin split power cable and an S-Video cable. The 6-pin molex split cable is very useful for those who ran out of power cables. Gainward has made sure that they are including it with their package. The S-Video cable with HDTV support is shielded which will add up to the image quality in the end. And lastly there are two DVI to VGA adapters. These adapters might come in handy when you got a screen that doesn't have a DVI connection, meaning no digital input. Of course, these digital connections are becoming a standard on current LCD displays.

Along came as well a voucher from Gainward to choose one free game from their website. Quite a nice feature from Gainward to leave the chose up to the buyer! And yes not to forget, this is the Golden Sample edition which is identified by the orange emblem. With the Golden Sample mark, Gainward show that this is a superior product and comes pre-overclocked out of the box. After having gone through all the accessories that came with the Gainward package it is time to have a look at the graphics card itself.

Now that we have checked the content of the Gainward bundle, and know what is included we can finally get to the most interesting point the card itself, namely the Gainward BLISS 7950 GT Golden Sample accelerator. As you might have spotted already this is not the ordinary GeForce 7950 GT, but a bolder card as it features a dual slot cooling solution and faster memory. This might seem to be an overkill for the card, but will come in handy with the current and yet to be released game titles. Let's see how this card it build and dig deeper into the details of this graphics accelerator board.