Gainward Ultra/3500PCX XP Golden Sample (GeForce 7800GTX)

At the Paris presentation of GeForce 7800GTX which we attended, NVIDIA swore that it would no longer allow such a shortage of new-generation cards which we all saw in the previous round with NV40 and R420. Moreover, they promised to supply the novelties to the retail shelves on the very day of announcement and even presented a large list of shops which are fully ready for the influx of buyers wishing to immediately spend their money for the new card. For our lives, we have heard a lot of hyping promises and phrases, so we took statements like these with a large extent of skepticism.

Now after the time that has passed since the announcement we can assert that NVIDIA was indeed absolutely ready not only for the demonstration of the card at the presentation but also to hand out limited quantities of working samples to the editors of leading editions, but also to the launch of large-scale sales everywhere. The partners were merely waiting for a say-so in order to please and astonish the public with their G70-based products, and today we are delighted to review the first batch-produced new-generation solution - GeForce 7800GTX by Gainward.

Certainly, most of the first batch-produced cards do not appear to be something original and sometimes differ from the reference with only a sticker on the cooling system and some proprietary utilities and games in the package bundle. This also applies to the Gainward solution because by the appearance it is almost identical to NVIDIA's reference card, but nevertheless Gainward has definitely introduced some corrections.

Gainward has been widely known on the market as a faithful partner of NVIDIA. The company policies in the production of video cards is interesting enough and stands out with a fair amount of audacity, because the main stake was put by Gainward on the so-called "exclusive solutions", which allowed the company to take a firm place in the niche "expensive nonstandard high-end products".

We can of course argue for a long time regarding the viability and correctness of such a path bringing in the results of various marketing research. But all have "a right to live" - no only giants of the market like ASUS, but also low-profile manufacturers like Gainward. This company has been doing well so far, and despite anything it is still pleasing us with not only its ordinary products but also with nonstandard and high-end solutions. We all know that the market should be presented ideally by all, in order to satisfy the demands of even the most exigent consumer.

By the way, the sensible marketing policies of the company has brought its deserved fruits. For a long time, Gainward used to be referred to the category of those manufacturers whose advantageous solutions were known to merely a narrow circle of "advanced users". Now, things have changed, and even those who are not experts at the market are very well aware of the Gainward brand and the company itself which produces not simply expensive products but those which are worth their price.

First of all, among solutions like these are Golden Sample and Goes Like Hell series which stand out with their manufacturer-guaranteed increased frequencies - not merely raised or overclocked but equipped with video memory faster than on other similar cards. And of course what makes the company produce stand out among the others is that specially selected chips of superb overclocking capability are used.

The advantage of such "official" overclocking is in that the company originally fully guarantees a trouble-free operation at specified frequencies, unlike many other manufacturers who are not liable for the overclocking capability of their solutions except when it is expressly specified. In the case with Gainward, the specified frequencies are normally set with the proprietary utility ExperTool which is a bundle item in each Gainward board, then using the Enhanced Mode (Safe Mode means reverting to the default frequencies, but in our view this option is absolutely redundant). In this case, it is a Gainward PowerPack board. Ultra/3500 PCX XP Golden Sample started up immediately upon overclocking once the drivers have been installed.

Finally, Gainward is the first company to install water-driven cooling system (Cool FX series) on batch-produced solutions. For instance, during the GeForce 7800GTX presentation in Paris the company demonstrated two video cards 7800GTX CoolFX series equipped with the proprietary water-driven cooling system. The system of water-driven cooling presented in Paris was originally designed for the SLI-configuration and is compatible to 2õ7800GTX.

That is, it would be not quite correct to position Gainward produce as "unwarrantably expensive". All in all, it has something to offer worth of extra money to pay for, and the arguments in favor of that are above. Once we talk on money terms, there are not as many cards in the high-end sector as in the middle-end, the criteria of "substantial price difference" are other than accepted in the mainstream and low-end where Golden Sample GLH is sometimes not the most expensive option.

Today, we are reviewing the very ultrahigh-end, the most recent batch-produced solution on the base of NVIDIA's new-generation G70 chip, or to be more precise - the Gainward Ultra/3500 PCX XP Golden Sample. We are going deep into a card whose nominal frequencies have been essentially overstated relative to the reference (430/1200MHz) and amount to 470/1300MHz.

Gainward Ultra/3500 PCX XP Golden Sample Layout

With the release of new line of boards, Gainward lastly decided to modify the box design. In our view, the matte coating is nice to touch and looks smart enough. The new design of labels and the changed background turns integral into the general conception. Although the exterior of the box does not play the leading part in the overall estimation of the card nor affects the performance, it's always a please to note that the company has done a good job improving its produce in all regards. Now move on to the the package bundle contents.

Package bundle:

• Gainward Ultra/3500 PCX XP Golden Sample video card;
• 2 DVI 15-pin/D-Sub adapters;
• VIVO splitter;
• Adapter for additional power supply;
• Drivers & utilities CD (including EXPERTool and Adobe Acrobat Reader);
• PowerDVD 5 and Muvee AutoProducer3;
• User's Guide.

As we have already stated above, by the exterior the card differs from the GeForce 7800GTX reference sample in only a lid on the cooling system made in corporate colors and Gainward style.

As regards the design of the cooling system itself, it is an aluminum radiator with soldered fins that cools the GPU and four memory chips positioned over the front side of the board. In the upper part of the radiator, there is a heat pipe for more effective cooling of the video memory chips. On the reverse side, there is an aluminum plate that is used for fastening the cooling system.

The power line conditioners are cooled with a separate small aluminum radiator.

On the reverse side, there are the remaining four video memory chips. A separate aluminum plate is used to cool them. The manufacturer used the "jewel steel" for GPU as the thermal interface and thermal spacers for the video memory chips. Note there are more pads for additional video memory chips on the front and reverse sides of the PCB which will be installed on the 512Mb version of GeForce 7800GTX. This solution will soon come to light, in particular, in Gainward's product line.

The card is equipped with 256 Mb of GDDR3 video memory with a 256-bit data transmission bus assembled of eight Samsung memory chips of 1.6 ns access time. This is equivalent to 625 MHz (1250 MHz DDR) of operating frequency. But as we noted above, the Gainward solution stands out with its video memory frequency increased to 1300MHz. That is, in this case the video memory originally runs at a frequency 50 MHz higher than its nominal. Further on, we'll try to reveal the overclocking capability of the memory on the card in question. We immediately recall the phenomenal overclocking results for video memory on the Gainward PowerPack! video card. Ultra/1960 PCX XP Golden Sample GLH (GeForce 6600GT PCI-E) which took part in our previous NVIDIA SLI Roundup was granted a well-deserved award because two SLI cards showed a superb overclocking of video memory under the standard cooling - as high as 1270(!)MHz DDR.

Let's look at the GeForce 7800GTX (G70) GPU of revision À2 made on the 20th week of year 2005. The nominal operating frequency is 470MHz, which is 40MHz higher than the 430MHz announced in the specifications. It offers four pixel pipelines, eight vertex units.

In conclusion, note there is one connector for additional power supply

two digital outputs and TV-OUT,

and a connector allowing to merge two Gainward Ultra/3500 PCX Golden Sample video cards into SLI.

The board also supports VIVO features. Philips SAA7115HL is used as the VIVO chip

Now on to the benchmarking.

Test configuration

To test ATI video cards, we used the latest Catalyst 5.6 WHQL-drivers, and ForceWare 77.72 and 77.62 drivers - for NVIDIA cards.

Overclocking

Although originally Gainward's 7800GTX is already overclocked relative to the standard, we did not restrict ourselves by that. In the end, we succeeded in attaining simply fantastic results without modifications to the standard cooling - 525/1340MHz!

Remember that our previous overclocking experiments with the reference NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX board showed a more moderate result - 500MHz for the chip. Memory in these two video cards showed approximately the same overclocking - a 10MHz difference in favor of the NVIDIA's board.

Performance analysis and conclusions

So, meet the most powerful air-cooled solution to date - Gainward Ultra/3500 PCX XP Golden Sample! As usual, Gainward is not content with the generally accepted standards but raises the performance bar even higher.

Certainly, speaking about the most powerful solution we mean only the single-slot cards, omitting the SLI configurations based on GeForce 7800GTX which will be a matter of our forthcoming material. Putting a special emphasis on the air-driven cooling, we mean to say that Gainward's product line also offers a solution on the base of 7800GTX CoolFX series which we'll be also testing shortly.

It goes without saying that we should test ultrahigh-end solutions with one very important reservation - to make the most of their capabilities, the other system components should be fully on par with the video card itself. Putting it simple, we would have to fork out for a very powerful processor. That is not cheap indeed.

As regards the prices for GeForce 7800GTX in particular, currently the Moscow retail offers quite a limited number of offerings and the prices are high enough to shock even us - about $700.

We all very well remember the "interlunation" of shortage last year when GeForce 6800GT was swept off the shelves despite the price $500+, but anyway we are not losing hope that soon as the market gets saturated, this situation will change to the better. For example, the recommended price for the Gainward card in question is about $620, which does not make a big difference from the $599 recommended by NVIDIA. The final price is already up to the sellers, so it is highly probable that the board will sell at absolutely insane amount. It is useless cursing the vendor for that - it's better to spend your efforts looking for a shop that offers more sensible price, which will be there much than today because the potential demand for new-generation solutions is very high, and soon many leading distributors of partners by that Californian company will flood the shelves with G70-based products. Therefore, prices will more likely to break even.

For now, the most reasonable option is not to rush out for the freshly baked 7800GTX boards but patiently wait for the R520 whose announcement is expected late in summer. In the end, even if the Canadian new-generation flagship does not match expectations and performs not that well (which is highly doubtful because at this stage the company simply can't afford that), the assortment of GeForce 7800GTX will expand and prices will be more reasonable. If you don't care about the price and monthly upgrades is a common thing for you, the best and most powerful option to date is the SLI configuration on the base of 7800GTX by Gainward which offers more powerful solutions than boards of standard specifications.

Coming back to the hero of our today's material, we note the superb overclocking capability - 525/1340MHz under standard cooling without additional blower. In so doing, the temperature did not exceed 68 C, which is a rather good result.

Once again, Gainward has proved its overclockers' appeal of its products and a high rating at the manufacture of graphic cards. Judging by the results of today's tests, Gainward Ultra/3500 PCX XP Golden Sample (GeForce 7800GTX) has been awarded by the 3DNews Editor's Choice medal.