Even though Gainward has been doing ATI based graphics cards for a while now, it still feels weird having a Gainward graphics card in our test system followed by installing the Catalyst driver suite. Today we're looking at a Radeon HD 4870 X2 card from Gainward which carries those two words we love to see, Golden and Sample. What has Gainward done to make it so special? Gainward actually has two Radeon HD 4870 X2's Golden Sample currently available. The first is the one we have today which carries with it a slight overclock and the other is the Goes Like Hell edition which carries an even higher overclock. Let's firstly have a look at what exactly we have going on with the package. - TweakTown

Gainward Rampage 700 Golden Sample Style Review

We've got a pretty big box which doesn't come as any real surprise. Across the top of the box we have the Gainward logo while below that we have a picture, some ATI logos and of course the Golden Sample logo. Across the bottom of the box we have the Rampage 700 name, the amount of memory the card comes with and with some of the main features on the card such as DirectX 10.1, HDMI and more. Turning the box over, we have some details on what features the GPU gives you. We also have a bit of information on CrossFire along with the system requirements, the Gainward name once again and the website address.

Pulling the card out of the box, we can see the big dual fan design that takes up the majority of the card. On each side we can see some vents, but they don't really do anything more than make the card look a bit meaner. If you look behind the fans you can see the giant heatsink in place along with some of the copper heatpipes that help get the heat away from the cores. Looking around the card, there isn't really anything different to what we usually see. We have the 6-pin and 8-pin power connector pointing upwards while the front of the card gives us a single CrossFire connector in the event you want to put two of these together.

While we can see Gainward hasn't done anything here with the core clock rate, the company has upped the memory to 3800MHz effectively. As we mentioned earlier, Gainward also has a higher overclocked version under the Goes Like Hell naming scheme which has a core clock of 790MHz while the memory still carries the same 3800MHz effective overclock. The Gainward card might actually look quite familiar to some as it shares the same design as the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe card we looked at not long ago. The purchase of Gainward by Palit is the whole reason the company is actually now doing ATI based graphics cards.

The thing is though, as we were impressed with the Palit offering, we are also with the Gainward. Sure, the cooler is huge and placing two of them in a system together is going to be nothing short of extremely difficult, but he card really does tick all the right boxes. While being more expensive, it's not excessive. And while the cooler is large and makes it just a little difficult to install in CrossFire configs, most people will simply find just one card is plenty. Performance is similar to slightly faster over a stock clocked board, but temperatures are down and connectivity is up with DisplayPort and HDMI present.

Now at the end of it all, if you want something with even more power but love the overall design, then the Goes Like Hell version is also available. And while the package is a bit on the light side, the card itself is fantastic and if you're looking for one of the meaner Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards on the market, definitely have a good look at the Gainward's Golden Sample line.