Gigabyte GV-N295-18I-B: Package and Accessories

This product is packed into a smaller and upright box as is typical of Gigabyte’s graphics cards. The box is painted a calm mix of white and blue. Despite the use of the metallic effect, the coloring does not irritate the eye. The box is embellished with a picture of a pretty girl with a huge gun.

There is no technical info on the box other than the model name, the type and amount of graphics memory. The memory type is indicated correctly as GDDR3 but the manufacturer couldn’t help attracting the customer with a larger but misleading number: 1792MB instead of 896MB that 3D application can actually use.

Inside the thin glossy wrapper there is one more box, made from robust black cardboard. The graphics card is fixed securely in a foam-rubber insert that protects the device against any hazards during storage and transportation. Accessories can be found nearby:

• DVI-I → D-Sub adapter;
• DVI-I → HDMI adapter;
• 2xMolex → 1x6-pin PCIe adapter;
• 2xMolex → 1x8-pin PCIe adapter;
• S/PDIF cable;
• Multilingual user manual;
• CD disk with drivers.

There are no special extras and the kit looks modest overall. Unlike with the above-described Gainward, you won’t have problems connecting power to the card even if your PSU has no PCIe connectors at all.

The enclosed disc contains the GeForce 186.18 driver. There are no additional software save for Yahoo! Companion. Thus, the accessories to the Gigabyte GV-N295 are better than those of the Gainward GTX 295 in terms of hardware but worse in terms of software. Anyway, we guess both kits don’t look nearly as good as the Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum kit we have reviewed recently as the latter contains as many as two high-quality games. Generally speaking, we don’t think it is right for expensive graphics cards to come with such scanty accessories.