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 supplied in the box. Their graphics products are known to deliver an incredible realistic gaming experience and highlighting effects as never seen or experienced before. Together with Gainward we invite you to embark on the ride to the future...

With the introduction of the first GeForce 8 series at the end of last year we only saw from NVIDIA the high-end product range coming to the market to take over and rule the graphics world. Since then NVIDIA has been working hard to get their mid-range cards ready for the public and to finally offer full DirectX 10 and Windows Vista support to the average users. Over a month ago NVIDIA launched the GeForce 8400 series which was done by releasing one version, the GeForce 8400 GS featuring the low-end G86 graphics core. Yes actually the same G86 also used on the GeForce 8500 series. And Gainward has jumped on the wagon to be amongst the first to release their products based upon this optimized G86 chipset, offering an entry-level GeForce 8 series at a low price tag.

The G80 chipset from NVIDIA has been going strong for quite some time now with no real competition until recently with the showing of the Radeon HD 2900 XT accelerator. But to counter the Ultra version was released which somehow wasn't needed looking at the performance figures. Just recently the G92 came into the picture and made quite a shift on the price to performance ratio in favor of NVIDIA once again. But we need to stay on track as the GeForce 8400 GS is using the low-end G86 chip and currently this does have a counterpart from ATI with their Radeon HD 2400 series. Looking at the GeForce 8600 series it was clear that NVIDIA has the upper hand when compared to the Radeon HD 2600 series. So will NVIDIA be able to draw the line and also have with the GeForce 8400 GS graphics card a winner at hand?

The GeForce 8400 GS is the successor to the entry-level GeForce 7300 GT, widely perceived as the low value DirectX 9.0c graphics card of the past year. With the GeForce 8400 GS, gamers will enjoy the same unrivalled value and be able to enjoy the DirectX 10 games to certain extend. The GeForce 8400 series are available in just one configuration, the GeForce 8400 GS however we might as well consider the GeForce 8500 GT the big brother. The GeForce 8400 GPU's contains 210 million transistors and implements a highly parallel, unified shader design, consisting of 16 individual stream processors. The GeForce 8400 is a distinct new chip from the GeForce 8800 and tweaks have been made to the architecture to improve the per clock shader performance.

Main Specifications

• GeForce 8400 GS (G86 at 459MHz)
• 256MB 256-bit DDR2 Memory (800MHz)
• Medium-speed 64-bit Memory Interface
• Memory Bandwidth of 6.4GB/s
• PCI Express x16 Compatibility
• High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection
• H.264 Playback with PureVideo Engine
• DVI Connector for Analog/Digital Display

When we look back at the G80 chip, we could definitely say it was a great improvement over the previous G71 core adding quite some complexity and advance logic. The G80 core was a completely new design dedicated to the unified shader environment that the new DirectX 10 has somehow enforced. That means that you can't speak about fixed vertex, pixel or texture units but these are now combined in what NVIDIA calls stream processors. Each stream processor is capable of being dynamically allocated to vertex, pixel, geometry or physics operations for the utmost efficiency in GPU resource allocation. With the G86 chip, the same logic is applied but in a reduced, tweaked application.

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 whole. The box itself details very clearly the product that you are buying as well as the main features, that it is a PCI Express card with high performance DDR2 memory. A meanly brown colored box, yellow/black which are the main colors of Gainward. This is actually the smallest box from Gainward we have seen so far, but still of the same high quality as we are used to. The front doesn't list that much except the product, and also the indication that this a Windows Vista certified product and ready for DirectX 10 gaming pleasure.

Turning the 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 8400 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 8400 GS accelerator, like the system requirements and also the contact details. All these add up in the first impression of the Gainward package, a very detailed and professional box. As far as the box goes, it is small but certainly is very attractive.