Gainward ULTRA 750XP Golden Sample - REVIEW

1st Impressions:

Well my first impressions with this video card aren’t very different from the ones I had to say about the Gainward GF4 Ti4200 review, since the box and the software bunble are very alike ! I love the red colour this cards has, I also like very much the box in wich it came, as I’ve mencioned the bundle that came with this card is very alike to the ULTRA 650XP Golden Sample I also reviewed, the main differences are that: this card brings two native dvi connectors, instead of one dvi and one analog connector like other GF4 Ti cards, this video card is much bigger than the Ti4200, it has a different GPU cooler, instead of an orb cooler, it has a GF4 default cooler, plus it has heat sinks for the memory in both the front and the back of the card, and the bundle beside the software also brings an aditional separate pci card, powered by a VIA chip, wich has: 4 firewire (IEEE 1394) ports, 3 external and 1 internal, this complements the video card VIVO module, helping you to enjoy your digital videos, taken with your digital camera, in your pc, the bundle also brings a firewire cable so that you can connect your firewire pheripherals to your pc !  In total the card bundle brings:

-          Win Producer / Win Coder full software for capturing/editing MPEG1/2 movies.

-          Win DVD for viewing your dvd movies in your computer.

-          Serious Sam (game).

-          Power CD, a cd with utilities and drivers for the video card.

-          Firewire PCI Card and cable.

-          A case stiker.

-          A owners manual for the card.

-          A manual to help with the instalation of the firewire card.

-          2 DVI adapters, so that you can connect the card to normal analog monitors.

-          A cable to conect the VIVO module to your: tv, camera, vcr, dvd player, etc…

Card Details:

GPU: Nidia's GeForce 4 Ti4600 working @300MHz

Memory: 128MB DDR Samsung 2.8ns. (357MHz*2) working @325MHz*2 or 340MHz*2 (Enhanced Mode Settings )

Outputs: analogic monitor: one or two, utilizing the dvi adapters, DVI: one or two, Tv-Out.

Input: Video-In, IEEE 1394.

Maximum supported resolution: 2048*1536@75Hz

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

 Overclocking:

Well Gainwards video cards have always overclocked very well, so this shouldn’t be any different ! The cooler on the GPU seams very efficient, it comes with some generic thermal paste between the gpu and the cooler, the heat sinks on the memories are welcomed, but I don’t belive that they will make much of a difference when overclocking, since memory doesn’t tend to heat up that much, but let us check out the results:

GPU: I was able to rise the gpu from the default speed of 300MHz to 320MHz, this is nice, but I must say I expected a little more, not because this is a Gainward, but because it is an A3 revision of the gpu, the most recent revision of this gpu, and also one wich is said to overclock pretty well, guess it was all just rumors, I wasn’t glad with this speed, so I tought on putting some really good thermal paste between the gpu and the cooler, thinking that this would make a difference, like it did for the GF4 Ti4200, but I was wrong ! The gpu didn’t overclock more, it didn’t even made 325MHz, it would start to run 3D Mark 2001SE but then it would just block the pc, or cause problems in the image.

MEMORY: I am glad with this choice of  Samsung memory modules from Gainward, they overclock pretty well, as we have seen on the Ti4200 review, and I wasn’t expecting nothing less from this 2.8ns modules ! I was able to overclock them from the default of 650MHz to 745MHz ! Not bad, almost a diference of 100MHz ! Unfortunatly any more than this and the image would start having problems in 3D Mark, on the desktop everything looked fine.

Conclusion: This card overclocks pretty well, 320MHz / 745MHz are both great speeds for an un-modified card ! And maybe with a better cooler for the gpu the card could overclock even better !

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

Drivers: Nvidia’s 28.32 Detonator Drivers WHQL Certified  

Benchmark Used:

Madonion's 3DMark 2001 SE @ default settings

Results:

Default Speeds (300/650): 7397 3D Marks

Madonion link to score with details: http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3565448

Enhanced Setting (310/680): 7436 3D Marks

Madonion link to score with details: http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3598621

At maximum achieved speeds (320/745): 7511 3D Marks

Madonion link to score with details: http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=3566592

Final Words and Conclusion:

As we can see by the results of 3D Mark 2001 SE, this card is a top performer, it’s performance was limited because of my testbed pc, if it had been tested on a more recent Athlon XP or even a Pentium 4 processor, it would have performed even better. This card is at sale for 599€ at Gainward's e-shop, wich doesn’t makes it exactly the cheapest GF4 Ti4600 out there, but with a card such as this, it’s worth spending that money, because it has a lot of good things such as:

- Good overclocking capabilities !

- Good software bundle !

- Support for 2 DVI monitors ! Normaly only founded on more professional cards, wich tend to be more costy.

- VIVO module, enabeling you to capture and edit films in MPEG 1/2 format, plus the firewire card, enabeling digital video support !

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

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