by FastSite
10/12/2001 | 12:00 AM
In fact, Gainward graphics cards are not very popular in the Russian market. However, nevertheless we managed to get hold of a number of their products pretty well-known worldwide. As you probably know, Gainward is an experienced graphics card manufacturer. Since its birth in the far-away 1984, Gainward has launched a good lot of graphics card families based on chips from S3, SiS and NVIDIA (as for the latter, Gainward designed graphics cards on all the existing chips: from Vanta to GeForce3). Of course, it would be impossible to discuss all these cards in a single review, therefore we decided to tell you about the latest products this time. Our choice was also determined by the fact that among Gainward graphics cards there is a family called "Golden Sample", which implies supposedly some extra functions and advantages over the other Gainward products.<%BANNER[article]%>
So, in this review we'll spotlight three graphics cards comprising the Golden Sample family and will do our best to find out their specific features attracting the users' attention.
Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX is the youngest model in the Golden Sample family:
Thanks to its two D-Sub connectors, this graphics card supports dual-display configurations. The card is also equipped with a Video-In and a Video-Out:
Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX is based on GeForce2 MX 400 graphics chip from NVIDIA:
This graphics card is bundled with 32MB SDRAM 128bit from EtronTech. Unlike most other cards of the sort, it has remarkably fast graphics memory with 4ns access time:
Despite this fact, the card's default core and memory frequencies make 200MHz and 166MHz correspondingly.
An external RAMDAC (3815KRC from Fairchild) serves to grant support for the second display:
Video signals are encoded and decoded for different TV standards by SAA7108E chip from Philips:
This is a faster and more expensive graphics card from the Golden Sample family:
This graphics card follows accurately the reference design from NVIDIA. It scarcely differs from any other GeForce2 Pro based cards by some other manufacturers:
The card is based on NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro graphics chip:
However, Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/450 is not hundred percent similar to the solutions from other graphics card makers, it doesn't lack identity at all: the card is equipped with 64MB DDR SDRAM 128bit from EtronTech, which features 4.5ns access time. Actually, NVIDIA's official specifications for GeForce2 Pro based cards require 5ns graphics memory to be installed on the cards, however, Gainward decided to veer away from the standard requirements having provided its solution with faster 4.5ns memory. This way, Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/450 has every chance to be of greater interest to the customers.
By default this graphics card works at the standard 200MHz core and 200MHz memory frequencies.
Although the card's layout features a special spot for a DVI connector for digital displays, it is not implemented on this card. Instead, it has a Video-Out mounted on a small daughter card. The popular Bt869KRF chip from Conexant encodes video signals into appropriate TV standards:
This is the fastest and accordingly the most expensive graphics card from the Golden Sample family:
It feels as though Gainward engineers decided to attract customers at any rate and resorted even to color stimulation to make CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! wanted. As you may see from the picture the card is bright red. To make a stronger impression, the card also features memory heatsinks and a cooler of the same red color:
Whatever the outlook is, this card can't boast anything extraordinary: Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! is equipped with NVIDIA GeForce3 graphics chip and 64MB DDR SDRAM 128bit from EliteMT with 3.8ns access time.
Like Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX, it features Philips SAA7108E chip, but in this case it is located on a daughter card:
Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! default core and memory frequencies make 200MHz and 460MHz respectively.
As it follows from the above-given descriptions, CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX and CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! are equipped with a Video-In and a Video-Out (VIVO), so apart from the regular drivers and utilities they are supplied with a licensed version of Ulead VideoStudio 5.0 SE, which is a special software set for video capturing and editing:
These two cards are also shipped with a special VIVO converter:
CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/450 has no Video-In, so its is not accompanied by Ulead VideoStudio 5.0 SE software, but goes with a regular S-Video-to-RCA converter:
When any of the mentioned Gainward graphics cards is installed, EXPERTool icon appears in the right corner of the system tray:
EXPERTool includes all the desktop, display and graphics card settings. It is a very convenient thing, even though it offers no extra settings and offers just the same things as Detonator and Windows do. We didn't want to encumber the page with screenshots, so we decided to show you only the "Performance" page here: The only bookmark which we believe worth posting is "Performance":
As you can see, alongside with adjusting core and memory frequencies, Gainward offers some Enhanced Performance mode. It allows you to fix the core and memory frequencies at higher rates. By the by, during the driver installation procedure, the user is offered an opportunity to choose either nominal frequencies or to try his luck at higher frequencies. Let us find out now what frequencies are available there and what these graphics cards are capable of in terms of overclocking.
In "Performance" mode the nominal 200MHz/166MHz frequencies of CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX can be raised till 230MHz/230MHz.
As you can see, both the core and memory have some overclocking potential. To say more, CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX worked stably at 240MHz/260MHz too. The card owes this impressive result to quality memory chips with 4ns access time and efficient core cooling:
BTW, all the three graphics cards are equipped with the coolers as shown on the photo above. Even CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! features the same cooler on the chip. It is simply painted the same red color as the PCB.
From the name of CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/450 you can guess its highest memory frequency. Indeed, in "Performance" mode the card can be set to work at 22MHz0/450MHz (against the nominal 200MHz/400MHz), though in our testlab it endured the frequencies up to 240MHz/480MHz. We'd like to stress that a new modification, CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/500, is to come out soon. It would be a really exciting task to discover its overclocking limits…
CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! can be overclocked up to 220MHz/480MHz from the nominal 200MHz/460MHz. We guess, Gainward was too cautious to call these figures a limit. It's common knowledge that GeForce3 based graphics cards have splendid overclockability. During our tests CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!, like a great deal of other GeForce3 based cards, revealed a typical overclocking limit of 250MHz/560MHz.
CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/450 and CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! have proven to ensure high image quality, which is quite comparable to what other rivalry graphics cards are capable of. CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX disappointed us: at 1280x1024 already we could see a notable blurring effect.
Cards with VIVO are equipped with Philips SAA7108E chip that provides approximately the same TV image output quality as the popular chips from Conexant. At least, we noticed no difference whatsoever.
In order to check how good the cards are at encoding digital video signals, we decided to transfer the image in PAL-B format from the Video-Out of CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX to the Video-In of CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!. In the end we CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! provided the following image in 800x600 resolution (the fragment on the right is given at 1:1 scale):
From our point of view, the image quality is quite acceptable. Especially taking into account that the image was transformed twice: at the Video-Out of the first card it became analog from digital, and then, at the Video-In of the second graphics card, it was re-encoded back into digital.
We tested our graphics cards in the following testbed:
Software:
For these tests we selected Detonator 12.60 driver.
It makes no sense to compare these graphics cards with similar rivalry products, and it makes even less sense to compare them with each other. So, we made up our mind to look at each of them separately in Quake3 Arena. Besides, it's a nice way to check the performance gain obtained in the Performance mode and during ultimate overclocking. When testing we set the quality settings to the maximum, enabled tri-linear filtering and texture compression.
Quake3 Arena, 16bit:
Quake3 Arena, 32bit:
You can see it pretty well on the diagrams that at lower resolutions the general performance of NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro and GeForce3 based cards is limited by the system's moderate capabilities. Therefore, overclocking doesn't help to increase the performance there.
In other modes you can see with the naked eye that overclocking turns out really fruitful. Even in the "Performance" mode the cards don't reach the utmost of their abilities. And the abilities are quite impressive, we should admit. The charts below will help you to assess the performance gain during overclocking:
CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX, being overclocked to its maximum, ensures an exorbitant 60% performance gain in 32bit color modes. We have never witnessed anything like that… Oh no, we have, but that time we modified the card first and then overclocked it. As for CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX, this graphics card is provided with fast memory chips of high quality and efficient core cooling solution. That's why it needs no modifications to get as high as that.
As for CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/450, overclocking granted it an appreciable boost too. Of course, overclocking speeded up the card much more than the available Performance mode.
The behavior of CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! in 16bit mode resembled that of CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/450, whereas in 32bit color mode ultimate overclocking brought about a 50% performance increase. That's another piece of evidence showing that Gainward engineers were too cautious introducing the clock frequencies of the Performance mode. On the other hand, they are right, since overclockability is a personal characteristic of every graphics card, which is determined by a lot of diverse factors. Having set lower frequencies than they could they simply ensured that no problems with overclocking would occur.
Having discussed three graphics cards from Gainward, we are happy to state that all of them demonstrated excellent overclockability, so it's not for nothing that the entire family is called "Golden Sample". For those who are not very much excited about overclocking utilities, Gainward developers offered an opportunity to bring up the cards' performance by increasing their clock frequencies during driver installation. The only thing to do is to select the Performance mode.
Another advantage of CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX and CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! cards are VIVO, S-Video and RCA converters, as well as software for video capture and editing.
However, CARDEXPERT GeForce2 MX is not free from some drawbacks: it brings about blurred graphics when the resolution gets higher than 1280x1024, while CARDEXPERT GeForce2 Pro/450 and GeForce3 PowerPack !!! ensure marvelous image quality.
Today CARDEXPERT Golden Sample family graphics cards are priced higher than similar graphics cards from other manufacturers, but if you are an overclocking fan, we'd advise you to pay due attention to these products.
Highs:
Lows: