Introduction

What do you expect, was the waiting worth it? We can only start by saying 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.

Do you still remember when NVIDIA released the first GeForce 8 series graphics cards? Cause frankly speaking since the introduction of the now well known G80 graphics chips, it has been one hell a great time for NVIDIA and their partners. 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 series cards, their new GeForce 9 series are going to take over and extend this period of success. Until very recently, the king of the hill was still the GeForce 8800 Ultra which had almost no real rivals, though that has changed now for some weeks. With the introduction of the G92 chipset, the reign of the G80 based products has come to an end, with the GeForce 9800 series taking the lead on the performance and gaming experience.

The past few months have been 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 9800 GX2 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 series 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 9 series graphics processing units redefine the PC gaming experience and are essential for the best Windows Vista experience.

Main Specifications

GeForce 9800 GX2 (dual G92 at 600MHz) 1024MB 256-bit GDDR3 Memory (2000MHz) High-speed 512-bit Memory Interface Memory Bandwidth of 128.0GB/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 standard version, which comes with default clock speed settings and supports the SLI technology. The box looks very familiar, and it does have a huge sticker to brand it as the BLISS 9800 GX2 edition. The GeForce 9800 GX2 comes with two graphics cores each having their own frame buffer of 512MB in size. That means a total of 1GB frame buffer though following the NVIDIA reference design and adhering to the standard cooling solution.

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 9800 GX2 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 Gainward BLISS 9800 GX2 dual-GPU 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 9800 GX2 does follow the reference design just like any other. As the GX2 actually features two graphics cards in one single design, the cooling solution from NVIDIA is actually a well though design and as such it becomes very hard to come up with something else that would be as efficient. Of course it might still be possible, and we have already seen some water cooling solutions for these types of cards. On top of the cooling solution you can find the Gainward name and logo. The graphics card is an all black design, with the red sticker 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, this already tickles your senses...