Gainward ULTRA 650XP Golden Sample - REVIEW

1st Impressions:

Well I don't have words to describe the feeling I had when I first saw this card, don't ask me to explain you why, because I just can't ! I loved that red look, it must look very well on a moded computer case with a window on the side ! The case in wich the card came, was also very nice, with a big monster face on the front and big letters annoucing that this is a "Gainward GeForce 4 Power Pack !", and a big golden sticker, (after all this is a famous Golden Sample !), explaining that this is the 128MB version of the card, with Video-In / Video-Out (powered by a Philips chip) and DVI, based on the Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 GPU, what I noted next was the bundled software ! And belive me when I say this card is one of the few I have ever seen with this many software, it camed with:

- CD containing: full version of Serious Sam (game).

- CD containing: full Intervideo's WinDVD (DVD player software).

- CD containing: full Intervideo's WinProducer and Win Coder (MPEG 1/2 encoder and editing software)

The graphic card bundle also brought:

- A case sticker saying "Power by Gainward".

- A cd containing the drivers for the card and many other aplications such as EXPERTool.

- An owners manual.

- A cable to make use of the card's VIVO (Video In/Out) module.

 

Card Details:

GPU: Nidia's GeForce 4 Ti4200 working @250MHz

Memory: 128MB DDR Samsung 4ns. (250MHz*2) working @222MHz*2 or 260MHz*2 (Enhanced Mode Settings )

Outputs: analogic monitor output, DVI, Tv-Out.

Input: Video-In

Maximum supported resolution: 2048*1536@75Hz

Maximum supported refresh rate: 240Hz @ resulutions going from 640*480 to 1024*768

 

Overclocking:

Well if there is one thing that Gainward's graphic cards are well know by, it's defenatly OVERCLOCKING, and I couldn't let a card like this pass by without trying to overclock it ! The GF4 Ti4200 graphics cards combine the power of the GF4 TI GPU to a good price, so they have to be different from their older sisters the Ti4400 and Ti4600 cards, Nvidia managed this by lowering the cards pcb from 8 layers to just 6, and the memory and gpu clocks, so this card comes with the gpu clocked @250MHz and the memory clocked @444MHz (222MHz DDR, meaning 444MHz = 222MHz * 2), but Gainward likes to give their buyers the chance to fully appreciate the power of their graphics cards, so they include the "EXPERTool" a software that permits the user to change the default speeds of their graphics card gpu an memory, from the defaults, to "Enhanced Mode" 250MHz core and 520MHz memory, or to whatever speeds the user desires, as long as the card can do it, Gainward also apllied a "orbish" looking cooler to the gpu, and some thermal grease between the gpu and the cooler, to help cooling the gpu better, unfortunatly the cooler looks very fragile and doesn't inspires me great trust, but at least it helps when your thinking of overclocking the gpu like I was.

Well when you are an overclocking/games fan, you will certainly feel the need to have more power than what the Enhanced Mode provides, so I utilized the EXPERTool to slowly raise the core and memory speed of the card, and 3DMark 2001 SE to bench the card at the overclocked speeds and make sure that there were no anormalities in the image when I had the card overclocked ! Here are the results:

GPU: I was able to rise the gpu from the default speed of 250MHz to 275MHz, this is good, since i've managed to get the gpu to work at the default speed for a GF4 Ti4400, anything above 275MHz would cause 3D Mark 2001 SE to run with some "artifacts" on the image, but the card still ran at 300MHz core, but had some serious image problems on 3DMark, on the windows desktop, there was no problem, so if some serious cooling was applied to the core I belive that we could see speeds of 300+ MHz.

MEMORY: Well the memory for this card doesn't bring any heat sinks, but that is not a great problem since memory doesn't heat up much, so I slowly started to raise the speed for the memory and found that it could match the speed of a GF Ti4400 also, being that speed 550MHz ! If I tried more speed the memory started to have problems, in 3D Mark some artifacts started to apper on the image of the games.

The conclusion we can take from here is: without doing any modifications to this card, you can overclock it with ease to the level of a GF4 Ti4400: 275MHz GPU and 550MHz Memory, anything more than that and the card starts to have image problems on benchmarks and games, but while the memory wouldn't benefit much form the use of heat sinks, if you apllied a better cooler to the core of the Ti4200 you can still expect much more overclocking power coming out from that GPU !

 

Testing:

Testbed:

CPU: AMD Duron @866MHz

Motherboard: Soltek SL75 DRV2

Memory: 256MB DDR PC2100 Crucial

HD: Maxtor 80GB ATA133 7200RPM 2MB Cache

Monitor: Philips 107E

Operating Sistem: Windows 98 SE

Benchmark Used:

Madonion's 3DMark 2001 SE @ default settings

Results:

Default Speeds (250/444): 7076 3D Marks

Madonion link to score with details: http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3534583

Enhanced Setting (250/520): 7240 3D Marks

Madonion link to score with details: http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3538663

At Ti4400 speeds (275/550): 7413 3D Marks

Madonion link to score with details: http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3539964

As a means to compare this scores I leave you here with the score this same sistem had with a GF2 MX400: 1311 3D Marks

Madonion link to score with details: http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3477384

 

Final Words and Conclusion:

As we can see by the results of 3D Mark 2001 SE, this card performs very well , and as you can see, it "revived" my testbed computer, while with a GF2 MX400 this computer didn't enabled anyone to play any games at acceptable fps, with this GF4 Ti4200 from Gainward all the games now run at very acceptable fps speeds !

This card is at sale for 349€ at Gainward's e-shop, this isn't exactly the cheapest GF4 Ti4200 128MB out there, it's a little expensive, but this card is worth it, because it has a lot of good things such as:

- Good overclocking capabilities !

- Good software bundle !

- DVI Support

- VIVO module, enabeling you to capture and edit films in MPEG 1/2 format.

- Hand Picked materials, that enable you to take the most benefit from your card !

For all this reasons I consider this product a: Highly Recomended Buy !

 

UPDATE: I removed the thermal paste that was between the gpu and the cooler, and substituted it by Artic Silver Alumina, since it’s a better thermal compound, wich permits better heat transfer and doesn’t cause any electrical problems, as a result, I was able to push the gpu to a stable 315MHz core, with no image problems on the various 3D Mark 2001 SE tests ! If I had a better cooler, one made from copper, I think the gpu could do 330+ MHz…