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Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/750 XP Review May 21, 2002 Brandon Bell |
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Summary: Gainward has a history of catering their graphics products to the high-end market. Did you know that they were the only manufacturer with a 128MB GF3 Ti 200 board? Find out what they have in store for the GeForce4 Ti 4600 in our latest review!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 10 ) |
The GeForce4 market
It has been three months since the GeForce4 Titanium originally debuted, in that time we’ve seen GeForce4 prices fall slowly (Ti 4600 boards can easily be found for under $320 online) along with greater availability, there are well over half a dozen video card manufacturers producing Ti 4600 video cards with widespread availability of Ti 4400 while Ti 4200 boards targeted for the mainstream market are beginning to become available. With the GeForce4 Titanium line continuing to hold the performance crown (at least until Matrox Parhelia ships), the only option consumers have had in the high-end segment is from NVIDIA. Once you’ve determined your budget (and therefore the GeForce4 core you can afford), the only decision left is choosing the card manufacturer for your upcoming purchase.
Gainward: Video cards for the hardcore market
This brings us to Gainward, with well known names such as ASUS, VisionTek, and most recently, PNY (one of the world’s largest memory manufacturers) offering NVIDIA-based products, other manufacturers are making a name for themselves by offering unique solutions that deviate from the standard GeForce4 reference design. One of these companies is Gainward and the video card we’re reviewing today, the GeForce4 PowerPack! Ultra/750 XP is one such product. If you’re unfamiliar with Gainward, they’re a small company based in Taiwan. First established in 1984, Gainward has manufactured two generations of video cards based on NVIDIA graphics cores as well as one card based on 3dfx’s Voodoo3. Gainward has set itself apart from most other manufacturers by offering unique features that set its graphics cards apart from others.
For instance, for the GeForce3 Titanium, Gainward offered its “Golden Sample” line of products. These are special GeForce3 Titanium boards that have been adjusted to operate at higher clock speeds than all other GeForce3 Titanium boards. If you’ve ever been hesitant to overclock your video card on your own, these Golden Sample cards would make the perfect solution. Gainward also separated itself from the competition by offering a GeForce3 Ti 200 card with 128MB of memory, another first in the industry.
With so many unique products in its history, what does Gainward have in store for the GeForce4? Read on to find out!
SIDEBAR: Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack! Ultra/750 XP Product Webpage
| Specifications | Page:: ( 2 / 10 ) |
Since you’re probably already pretty familiar with the specs of the GeForce4 GPU, we’ll briefly go over the features before getting into more detail on the board itself.
The list
NVIDIA® GeForce 4 Ti 4600 GPU
128MB high speed DDR video memory with 10.4 GB/sec bandwidth
4.8 billion AA samples/sec fill-rate, 86 million triangles/sec
1.23 trillion operations/second
On-board TV-out support up to 1024x768 resolution
LCD output support up to 1600x1200
NVIDIA video processing engine (VPE)
High-quality HDTV/DVD playback
nView display technology for powering multiple displays
Integrated 350MHz RAMDAC, resolution up to 2048x1536 (VGA output), True Color @ 60Hz
Accuview antialiasing subsystem
Full acceleration for Microsoft DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3 ICD
3-port IEEE PCI 1394 card included
Software bundle: EXPERTool performance tuning utility, Serious Sam: The First Encounter, WinDVD, Intervideo Winproducer and Wincoder
First impressions
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The Ultra/750 XP dons a red printed circuit board, separating itself from other GeForce4 offerings on the market. The board design itself closely follows NVIDIA’s reference design, Gainward simply adds heatsinks to the memory chips and dual DVI outputs instead of the single DVI/VGA connector combination included with every other GeForce4 card on the market. While LCD prices have come down considerably over the past few years, CRTs continue to offer better display performance as well as price. Therefore, we personally don’t see the need for dual DVI outputs, as LCD gaming isn’t quite feasible just yet. If you don’t have an LCD display, don’t fret. Gainward includes two DVI-to-VGA converters in the Ultra/750 XP’s packaging.
The heatsinks on the memory modules may come slightly in handy for overclockers, as we were able to overclock the memory on our Ultra 750/XP to levels higher than any other GeForce4 card we’ve seen previously.
Other than those two changes, the Gainward GeForce4 PowerPack! Ultra/750 XP is unchanged from the GeForce4 Ti 4600 board. For video-editing buffs, Gainward includes Philips MPEG chip for encoding/decoding video. With NVIDIA’s VIVO adapter included in the packaging, the Ultra/750 XP supports this capability through the S-Video output.
One additional feature Gainward includes with the Ultra/750 XP is a PCI Firewire card. With the aforementioned video input/output capabilities of this card, this makes the Ultra/750 XP the perfect card for the hardware enthusiast that is new to the video-editing scene.
SIDEBAR: Gainward also bundles their EXPERTool for overclocking the Ultra/750 XP. EXPERTool offers a safe-mode setting (default speeds) and an enhanced mode with slightly overclocked settings. We still obtained the best overclocking results by adjusting the settings manually.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 3 / 10 ) |
Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz
ASUS P4B266
256MB PC2100 CAS2 DDR SDRAM
ASUS V8460 GeForce4 Ti 4600
Gainward GeForce4 Power Pack! Ultra/750 XP
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 reference board
VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4400
NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 reference board
Driver version Detonator 28.32
30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive
AFREEY 12X DVD-ROM
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 8.1
Desktop Resolution: 1024x768x32
Benchmarks
3DMark 2001 Second Edition - 32-bit color, 32-bit textures
Quake 3 Retail - High Quality
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter - Normal (32-bit) The Elephant Atrium demo
Jedi Knight II – Normal Quality
SIDEBAR: Gainward also manufactures GeForce4 Ti 4400 and Ti 4200 boards.
| 3DMark 2001 | Page:: ( 4 / 10 ) |
3DMark 2001 - DirectX 8
SIDEBAR: Gainward is based in Taipei, Taiwan.
| 3DMark2001 Framerates | Page:: ( 5 / 10 ) |
3DMark 2001 - Car Chase
3DMark 2001 - Dragothic
3DMark 2001 - Lobby
3DMark 2001 - Nature
SIDEBAR: Besides graphics cards, Gainward also manufactures multimedia cards (including one based on NVIDIA’s Personal Cinema).
| Serious Sam 2 | Page:: ( 6 / 10 ) |
Serious Sam 2 - OpenGL
SIDEBAR: Like the board itself, the DVI-to-VGA adapter is colored red. In fact it’s a transparent red.
| Quake III | Page:: ( 7 / 10 ) |
Quake III - High Quality
SIDEBAR: Doom 3 will be displayed at E3 later this week. Mmm.
| Jedi Knight II | Page:: ( 8 / 10 ) |
Jedi Knight II
SIDEBAR: Star Wars, Episode II debuted at the #1 spot over the weekend bringing in $86.2 million.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 9 / 10 ) |
Pros
Performance: As a card based on the GeForce4 Ti 4600 core, the Gainward Ultra/750 XP offers more than enough performance for all of today’s latest games. As long as the GeForce4 Ti 4600 remains on the top of the performance heap, this will always remain the case. With NVIDIA’s AccuView AA engine, performance is also exemplary under high resolution/antialiasing conditions.
Dual DVIs?: With Gainward’s emphasis on the high-end gaming market, we’re unsure how many gamers plan to take advantage of the Ultra/750 XP’s dual DVI outputs. Quite simply LCD gaming just isn’t there quite yet. However, by including dual DVI connectors (and the necessary VGA adapters) the Ultra/750 XP is the most flexible GeForce4 card currently available on the market and this is certainly something to be proud of.
Firewire capability: Gainward bundles an IEEE 1394 card based on VIA’s Fire II VT6306 chip for its Firewire capability. The VT6306 supports data transfer rates up to 400Mbps and supports up to three devices. This makes it an excellent choice for the consumer who wishes to connect his digital camcorder to his PC. Simply plug in your Ultra/750 XP and Firewire card and you’re good to go!
Overclocking: Thanks to Gainward’s EXPERTool tuning utility, end users can easily overclock their Ultra/750 XP without having to modify the Windows registry. While EXPERTool offers nothing beyond the standard utilities provided by NVIDIA, there are countless end users who aren’t even aware that their graphics card can be overclocked, EXPERTool opens the world of overclocking to these consumers.
Cons
Price: The Ultra/750 XP offers so much beyond the standard reference design that prices are a bit higher than your typical GeForce4 board. The lowest price we found on PriceWatch was $370. This isn’t a bad price considering what you’re getting, but if you’re looking to spend as little as possible on a GeForce4 Ti 4600, the Ultra/750 XP probably isn’t for you.
SIDEBAR: After Microsoft and Sony’s price drops, Nintendo responded by cutting its price on the GameCube to $149. It will be interesting to see the sales numbers for this quarter.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 10 / 10 ) |