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Bundle

Gainward has included a basic bundle including an RCA in/out cable, a DVI-to-VGA converter, and a small bundle of software that includes Gainward's EXPERTool tweaking/overclocking utility and a copy of Serious Sam, along with WinCinema. This is pretty close to being as bare bones as you can get.

Overclocking

Gainward's EXPERTool allows some overclocking ability, but we used Powerstrip to push the card to its limits. We managed to push this card all the way to 330Mhz core and 696Mhz memory without visual artifacts or lock-ups. That's more than a 100Mhz overclock on the memory, and an impressive 55Mhz overclock on the core (compared to Nvidia's 4400 default clock speeds). At this overclocked speed, we did some tests on Quake and Unreal Tournament 2003, and you'll see just how amazing the results are in our benchmark results.

Test System Setup

Our test systems for this review were setup as below:

Intel P4 2.8Ghz chip
AVC Sunflower P4 Cooler
MSI 648Max motherboard
512MB Corsair PC3500 Memory
or 512MB OCZ PC3500 Memory
Seagate 120GB ATA133 Barracuda ST3100
WinXP with SP1

Test results are compared against AGP8X and non AGP versions of various cards including the recently reviewed Ti4200-8X cards, Ti4600-8X, and the RADEON 9500PRO. The RADEON 9500 PRO is an especially important comparison since it offers a very excellent blend of performance at a very nice $160-190 price point.

Tests Run:

Commanche Bench
Unreal Tournament 2003
Quake III
3dmarks 2001SE
Spec Viewperf 7.0