About Gainward :

(from Wikipedia)

"Gainward is a computer hardware company which produces video cards. Their graphic cards used to be exclusively based on NVIDIA chipsets. However, they also announced ATI-based graphics solutions after the successful launch of ATI 4800-series hardware.[1] Gainward products are famous for their overclockability. The company has also recently released cards that deviate from the reference specifications set forth by NVIDIA.[citation needed] They have released a 20 pixel pipeline 7800GS AGPs with 512 MB of memory (based on the G70 core), and a 24 pixel pipeline 7800GS+ AGP video card with 512 MB of memory (based on the G71 7900gt core).

Gainward is well-known for their famous 'Golden Sample' range of graphics cards. These cards are overclocked past their stock speeds and tested before they are sold, to ensure quality for their customers. Current examples of 'Golden Sample' cards are; nVidia 7900GS, 7900GT, 7950GT and 8800GT and most recently ATI's HD 4850, HD 4870, and HD 4870x2. At one stage 'Golden Sample' cards came with a "Free 2 Choose" game voucher which could be redeemed for a downloaded game from www.gainwardgamingzone.com . The 'Golden Sample' cards now come packaged with a free game.

Gainward had a gap in which they did not produce anything new but they started producing again with the nVidia 8800 GTS series which has brought them back up to date with other companies such as Gigabyte and PNY Technologies.”

Chipset Specifications :

-NVIDIA unified architecture: Fully unified shader core dynamically allocates processing power to geometry, vertex, physics, or pixel shading operations, delivering up to 2x the gaming performance of prior generation GPUs.

-NVIDIA CUDA Technology: CUDA technology unlocks the power of the GPU’s processor cores to accelerate the most demanding system tasks – such as video transcoding – delivering incredible performance improvement over traditional CPUs.

-Microsoft Windows 7 Support: Windows 7 is the next generation operating system that will mark a dramatic improvement in the way the OS takes advantage of the GPU to provide a more compelling user experience.

By taking advantage of the GPU for both graphics and computing, Windows 7 will not only make today’s PCs more visual and more interactive but also ensure that they have the speed and responsiveness customers want.

-DirectCompute Support: Full support for DirectCompute, Microsoft’s GPU computing API.

-NVIDIA PhysX Technology: Enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.

-GigaThread Technology: Massively multithreaded architecture supports thousands of independent, simultaneous threads, providing extreme processing efficiency in advanced, next generation shader programs.

-NVIDIA Lumenex Engine: Delivers stunning image quality and floating point accuracy at ultra-fast frame rates: 16x Anti-aliasing: Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.

128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR)

Lighting: Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects – now with support for antialiasing.

-OpenCL Support: Full support for OpenCL GPU computing API.

-OpenGL 3.2 Optimizations and Support: Ensures top-notch compatibility and performance for OpenGL applications.

-Dual-link HDCP Capable: Designed to meet the output protection management (HDCP) and security specifications of the Blu-ray Disc formats, allowing the playback of encrypted movie content on PCs when connected to HDCP-compliant displays.

About Nvidia PhysX

Delivering physics in games is no easy task. It's an extremely compute-intensive environment based on a unique set of physics algorithms that require tremendous amounts of simultaneous mathematical and logical calculations.

This is where NVIDIA® PhysX™ Technology and GeForce® processors come in. NVIDIA PhysX is a powerful physics engine which enables real-time physics in leading edge PC and console games. PhysX software is widely adopted by over 150 games, is used by more than 10,000 registered users and is supported on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC.

In addition, PhysX is designed specifically for hardware acceleration by powerful processors with hundreds of cores. Combined with the tremendous parallel processing capability of the GPU, PhysX will provide an exponential increase in physics processing power and will take gaming to a new level delivering rich, immersive physical gaming environments with features such as:



* Explosions that cause dust and collateral debris
* Characters with complex, jointed geometries for more life-like motion and interaction
* Spectacular new weapons with incredible effects
* Cloth that drapes and tears naturally
* Dense smoke & fog that billow around objects in motion

The only way to get real physics with the scale, sophistication, fidelity and level of interactivity that dramatically alters your entertainment experience will be with one of the millions of NVIDIA PhysX-ready GeForce processors.

Here are some PhysX demos from Youtube :

Nvidia CUDA :

NVIDIA® CUDA™ is a general purpose parallel computing architecture that leverages the parallel compute engine in NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) to solve many complex computational problems in a fraction of the time required on a CPU. It includes the CUDA Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and the parallel compute engine in the GPU. To program to the CUDATM architecture, developers can, today, use C, one of the most widely used high-level programming languages, which can then be run at great performance on a CUDATM enabled processor. Other languages will be supported in the future, including FORTRAN and C++.

With over 100 million CUDA-enabled GPUs sold to date, thousands of software developers are already using the free CUDA software development tools to solve problems in a variety of professional and home applications – from video and audio processing and physics simulations, to oil and gas exploration, product design, medical imaging, and scientific research.

Technology features :

* Standard C language for parallel application development on the GPU
* Standard numerical libraries for FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) and BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines)
* Dedicated CUDA driver for computing with fast data transfer path between GPU and CPU
* CUDA driver interoperates with OpenGL and DirectX graphics drivers
* Support for Linux 32/64-bit and Windows XP 32/64-bit operating systems

On the back of the box, we can see what this card is good for : gaming, watching HD content and running hardware accelerated applications; here we also get to see the system requirements :

In the box, we can find the video card wrapped in a red bubble plastic bag, to avoid damages to the card and cooling system, a quick installation guide and a CD with the drivers and the Gainward Utility ( Expertool ) :

The manual explains to us very nice with drawings and text how to install the graphics card, step by step and how to install the drivers :

The video card has a very nice red PCB, like we’ve also seen on Palit video cards and on the GPU we can find a large heatsink + fan which has red blades to keep the same theme as the PCB. The fan motor is mounted in a plastic frame which covers all the top of the heatsink, which is also colored in black :

The fan connector has 2 wires and its placed right under the GPU heatsink :

Here is another lateral view of the video card, where we can see how the top plastic part and the bottom heatsink are connected :

The Samsung DDR5 RAM is placed right under the heatsink :

On the back of the video card there are no memory chips but we can find stickers in various places which tell us not to strip them; if they get damaged, the warranty gets void immediately :

As outputs, this card does have HDMI, D-SUB and also DVI :

The card does look nice installed inside the testbench and does not take a lot of extra space :

From the TechPowerUp GPU-Z utility, we can see some more video card information. Here we can see that the card fully supports technologies like OpenCL, CUDA, PhysX and DirectCompute 4.1 :

Here are also the video card details, picked up by Everest Ultimate Edition. Here we can also see the 2D, low power 3D and Performance 3D pre-defined frequencies. The DirectX version supported is 10.1 and the GPU code name is GT215 :

The card also comes with the EXPERTool utility; the latest version, downloaded from the website is 7.6 :

The utility, which works on most nVidia video cards from various manufacturers ( I was using it since GeForce 6800GT/Ultra days ) has a very nice function like setting the fan speed separately between 2D and 3D modes; we also have the option to let the fan speed adjust itself depending on the GPU temperature :

The application does also have an overclocking section, from which we can overclock the GPU within safe limits :

The included fan setting/overclocking utility, EXPERtool has evolved a lot since its first revisions and help the user to modify the frequencies in a safe range or adjust the fan speed to its linking.

Like it can be seen from the FluidMark benchmark results, the card supports PhysX successfully and had almost the same scores like the Inno3D GT 240. CUDA is also available so a lot of applications will benefit which use it, like the Kaspersky Antivirus.

Again, I would like to mention that I am disappointed that nVidia did not choose to provide SLI for the GT 240 video cards. Hardware SLI is not possible because the cards do not have a connector to put on the bridge and Software SLI is not available either, because it was disabled by nVidia. However, I’ve seen that with the 2 video cards installed, the score in FluidMark almost doubles itself so, if you are using PhysX intensive games, you might use the second card to improve performance.

I would like to thank again to Gainward for offering me this nice product for review!