X-bit labs

Faster than GeForce 9800 GTX, Available Today: Gainward Bliss 8800 GTS 1024MB TV DD GS GLH Review (page 2)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 03/31/2008 | 12:35 PM ]

Package and Accessories

The box with our Gainward Bliss 8800 GTS 1024MB is decorated alike to the box of the Gainward Bliss 9600 GT. The picture has remained the same:

The text on the front of the box shows basic info about the product the potential customer may like to know. Particularly, you can learn that the card belongs to Gainward’s fastest GS GLH series. The DD and TV suffixes in the product name denote two DVI ports and support for analog TV output. These functions are quite ordinary for a modern graphics card, though.

The graphics card is packed into a bubble wrap and stored in an individual box inside the main one. The side compartments contain the following accessories:

• 2 x Molex→6-pin PCI Express power adapter;
• DVI-I→D-Sub adapter;
• DVI-I→D-HDMI adapter;
• S-Video→S/PDIF adapter;
• Universal YPbPr/Composite splitter;
• Brief installation manual;
• CD disk with drivers and full user’s manual;
• CD disk with CyberLink DVD;
• DVD disk with Tomb Raider: Anniversary game

These are standard accessories of Gainward Bliss 8800 series products. The box contains all the cables and adapters you may want, including a DVI-I → HDMI adapter and an audio-over-HDMI cable, but the software bundle doesn’t have an up-to-date version of PowerDVD that supports HD content. The CyberLink DVD Solution disc included into the box contains software for video editing and DVD authoring. The program versions are rather dated, yet some users may find them useful.

Like every other product from Gainward we’ve reviewed recently, this one comes with a full version of Tomb Raider: Anniversary. The game is not new, though. Gainward should take a look at more recent titles.

We haven’t spotted a significant difference from other Gainward products we’ve reviewed, and our opinion about this card’s packaging and accessories is the same: everything is good but an up-to-date version of PowerDVD would come in handy. It’s not a serious drawback, though, as this product is meant for a dedicated gamer rather than for the use in a media PC.