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 share their passion for exciting products and innovations.

It has been more than a year now since NVIDIA introduced the first GeForce 8 series graphics cards and up to now it can still hold its ground on the DirectX 10 world. Yes for quite some time the G80 graphics chips have been ruling as kings on the high-end graphics market, and in fact they still do. And although NVIDIA is fading out the old GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX cards, the GeForce 8800 Ultra remains until it can put to bed once their much rumored GeForce 9800 GX2 will hit the market. But for now, the king of the hill is still the GeForce 8800 Ultra by far. Though since not so long, meaning since the last months of last year NVIDIA has refreshed their GeForce 8800 series by reducing the die and came up with the G92 chipset which is produced at only 65nm. These smaller, more optimized G92 chips are now reviving the GeForce 8800 range with a GT and GTS version, replacing the G80 based GeForce 8800 GTS cards.

The past few months have been quite hectic with a lot of rumors and new products being released by both ATI and NVIDIA, but with NVIDIA somehow being more successful. With the GeForce 8800 GT coming to the market NVIDIA crushed the competition as well as their own product range to a certain extend. Not that this is a bad thing for us, but it makes some video card in their GeForce 8 range obsolete. The die-shrink was the best move from NVIDIA so far for reviving their aging GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX cards. By releasing the G92 graphics chip with some optimizations and reducing the manufacturing process they have made a nice step forward with their unified shader technology. The GeForce 8 series graphics processing units redefine the PC gaming experience and are essential for the best Windows Vista experience.

Main Specifications

GeForce 8800 GT (G92 at 650MHz) 1024MB 256-bit GDDR3 Memory (1900MHz) High-speed 256-bit Memory Interface Memory Bandwidth of 60.8GB/s PCI Express x16 2.0 Compatibility High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection H.264 Playback with PureVideo HD Engine Multi-GPU SLI Bridge Interconnect Support DVI-I Connector for Analog/Digital Display High Performance Silent Cooling Solution

Where the G80 chip was a fully new chip design and really the first graphics core featuring the unified shader technology, the G92 is more a build on experience chip renewal. And no, we don't mean that as being a negative aspect but rather an easy way of taking technology one step further. The G92 chip does bring some added value as NVIDIA has took the good of each G8x chip they have produced so far and combined this all to release something better. With the G92 you now have a fully integrated VP2 engine within the core, an optimized unified shader architecture and a 256-but memory interface. Since the 256-bit memory bus is actually a reduction from the 384-bit used on the GTX version, it does come with an advantage as the new cards come with a very nice price tag and also more standard memory sizes.

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 2.0 card with high performance GDDR3 memory. A meanly brown colored box, with some yellow/black to cover the back of the box. This is the Golden Sample version, which comes with higher clock speed settings and supports the SLI technology. Moreover, it comes with double the amount of memory of what we have so far on the standard GeForce 8800 GT cards. That means a total of 1GB frame buffer and on top of that Gainward has come up with their own cooling design for silent operation.

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 8800 GT 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 8800 GT Golden Sample 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. But just as a small note, the box hasn't actually changed since the GeForce 8800 series gotten introduced and Gainward is just using the same one over and over again by just applying a sticker to make the difference and to highlight the specific features.

The Gainward version of the GeForce 8800 GT doesn't follow the reference design just like any other. With their Golden Sample version they have opted for a design of their own and opting for a more silent cooling approach. The first versions of the GeForce 8800 GT series all came from the same production and each of the brands put their own colors and logo on it. So for the Golden Sample version Gainward shows once again their innovation and wants to stand out in the crowd. On top of the cooling solution you can find the Gainward name and logo. The graphics card is an all red design which is actually referring to the quite old colors of Gainward, when their cards all featured a full red PCB and typical red colored cooler. The good old days, which already tickles your senses...