So the GeForce 4 cards are well into the mainstream now and manufacturers have been turning out there cards for us to long for and drool over. Some companies wanted to be among the first and released there cards very early in the game. A few companies sat back and waited a while. Gainward is one such company who waited and with good reason. Gainward started life as just one man back in 1984 in Taiwan, and has grown to offer us some really good products worldwide. There "Golden Sample" cards impressed quite a few last time round and they wanted to wait for the right chip yields so they could offer us the same again. Lucky me, the guys at are stocking these cards so I just had to know if there current top end card would live up to my expectations.
The Gainward GeForce 4 Powerpack! Ultra/750XP "Golden Sample" (could you add any more abbreviations and hints to a name?) is a Ti4600 card based on the Nvdia reference design, although as you will see later, there are a few additions. It isn't an Ultra version of the Ti4600, but it will run faster than a standard card out of the box. It will also run on other systems besides XP, despite the name :p. Before I go into the package, pictures and benchmarks let's take a look at the product specifications I stole from Gainwards website.
Specs
Integrated nVIDIA GeForce4 Ti series the most powerful GPU.
Supporting 128MB high-speed 128bit DDR RAM/SDRAM memory.
nVIDIA nVIEW TM Display Technology provides flexibility and control for using multiple displays.
Lightspeed Memory TM Architecture (LMA) II increases memory bandwidth efficiency for unmatched performance.
Accuview TM Antialiasing delivers unbeatable visual quality and frames rates.
NVIDIA nfiniteFX TMII engine for full programmability.
Dual Programmable Pixel product surface details never before seen on the desktop
Integrated hardware transform and lighting engine.
Integrated 32-bit color and 32-bit Z/Stencil Buffer.
Integrated Cube environment mapping, and true reflective bump mapping.
Multibuffering (double, triple, quadruple) for smooth animation and video playback.
AGP 2X/4X supporting and Execute Mode, Easy Plug- and-Play AUTORUN installation From CD-ROM include.
Support High-Definition Video Processor (HDVP).
Gainward's ExperTool TM utility for customized performance enhancements and efficient desktop management. Performance enhanced, accelerated software drivers for all major operation systems and APIs.
Video-out support (NTSC/PAL) TV system providing best-of-class TV-out functionality at high resolutions.
Support LCD output with DVI connect, the resolution up to 1600x1200
In the box
1x GeForce 4 Ti4600
2x DVI to VGA adaptors
1x S-Video in/out cable
1x Firewire PCI card (4 port)
1x Firewire cable
1x Gainward WinDVD Software CD
1x Gainward Drivers and Utilities CD
1x Serious Sam game CD
1x Wincoder and WinProducer CD
Ok so now that's out of the way, let's take a good look at it all.
First thing I noticed when I opened the box was the bright red PCB and HSF. It's what my little boy would call Fire Engine red and is a very refreshing break from the norm. This card was designed not just for performance but with good looks in mind too (gonna have to get a red motherboard now just so I don't clash). The next thing I noticed was the size and weight. This is a BIG card, being over half again as big as my GeForce 2 GTS and PRO cards.
If you look at the pictures you can see that the ram on this card has been covered with very attractive red anodized heatsinks on both sides, which should aid in overclocking. More on that later though.
On top of the card you can't miss the Nvidia reference design cooler, although again this is coloured Fire Engine red. At the back end of the card you can see the capacitors, all of the low level variety. Whether this will actually help those having trouble installing these cards in certain motherboards I couldn't say as there is plenty of room in my current system for it.
The PCI faceplate has all the connectors, in this case 2 DVI ports and an S-Video port. This is where the 2 DVI to VGA adaptors come into play. This is at time of writing the only card that I know of that has 2 DVI ports as well as the adaptors included for normal VGA output. A very nice touch that, however I'm not to keen on the adaptors themselves.
If you look at this picture you can clearly see that the weight of the monitor cable and the adaptor being so long will put a lot of extra and unnecessary stress on the DVI port. I would have preferred to see some form of adaptor cable rather than this box affair.
In an effort to offer you a little of the Radeons AIW cards appeal of video in and out, there is an S-Video in and out cable included. Utilizing the onboard Phillips chip, this will give you TV out to a maximum of 800 x 600 as well as video capture. There is also an included PCI Firewire card using the VIA chipset with 3 ports on the face plate and also an internal port.
Very nice additions indeed and having the Firewire card as a separate component mean's it will last beyond the life time of the GeForce card itself. All of the software you would need as far as drivers and applications for all this are included too. The Video editing software WinProducer and WinCoder do there jobs admirably, and have support for mpeg1 or 2 encoding, AVI or DVI (easy enough to re-encode in a different format such as DivX but would have been nice to be able to do that off the bat). Having the support for DVI serves 2 purposes; you can grab straight from say a camcorder in HI8 format, edit it, then up it back to the camcorder via either the Firewire or the S-Video.You can easily capture a stream from the card straight to harddrive (if you have the room!). There are a few transisitions and special effects you can use as well as titling functions which should be enough for the average user.
The card itself also has hardware motion compensation for DVD playback which goes quite a way to giving a better picture, and the included Gainward branded WinDVD software will make full use of this. Being a software DVD player, the picture isn't as good as you would get from a proper hardware solution, but it is better none the less.
Serious Sam is a good game, but not something that will take full advantage of the card. It's not all that old and great fun so a pretty good choice there, although considering the price of Serious Sam which never was that expensive, there is the possibility that a lot of people will already have it. I've seen a lot worse bundled games that's for sure.
Gainward's software for the card itself comprises of the drivers and a utility called Expert Tool. Expert Tool allows you to control many of the cards features and performance options; as well as the most commonly used windows graphic options such as screen size and resolution.
It also allows you to perform easy overclocking of the card, and as this is the Golden Sample model will change the cards specifications from standard to Gainwards guaranteed overclocked settings and beyond. You can also update your cards driver's and bios with a click of a button whereupon it will connect to Gainwards ftp and download the latest files for you. Pretty handy tool, although you can easily achieve the same results and with more options with something like Powerstrip or NVmax. It is included with the card and it makes overclocking a one button affair which is great for beginners and the experienced alike.
All in all, a good first impression straight out of the box and installed, so let's see how it actually performs.
Benchmarks
Ok, time to put the card through its paces. As I'm sure you're pretty much all aware by now, one of the big selling points of a GeForce 4 card besides the performance increase is the FSAA (Full Screen Anti Aliasing) abilities of the card. I'll be testing the abilities of FSAA as well as taking a look at a few screen shots to try and show you the difference it can make to your images under OpenGL and DirectX. I'll also be seeing how far I can push this card, see if we can't warm those ramsinks up a bit.
The side of my case will be left off for 2 reasons. 1) I want to keep the PC interior and the card as cool as possible to see just how far I can push it and 2) because my current case is crap and I have to remove the side to do anything intensive.
The usual benchmarks will be used for testing at 3 different screen sizes. V-Sync will be kept off and unless otherwise indicated all other settings will be as per first installation. I'll be comparing it with the systems previous card, a GeForce 2 GTS from Creative.
The test system is as follows:
1.4 Athlon Thunderbird
Asus A7V266
GeForce 4 Ti4600 at "enhanced" clock settings (310/680)
GeForce 2 GTS 32 meg at standard settings
512 meg of Crucial PC2100 (at aggressive timings)
Windows XP Pro
Detonator drivers 28.32's
Via 4in1's version 14.37's
Quake 3 Arena
First up is Quake III Arena (1.31). This game is getting a bit long in the tooth but is good to show just how much of an increase from my GeForce 2 card there is. A clean config was used and the menu options were set to highest quality, with texture set to maximum.
Geforce 2 GTS (no FSAA)
1024*768 102.6fps
1280*1024 89.8fps
1600*1200 39.9fps
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (no FSAA)
1024*768 124.3fps
1200*1024 123.3fps
1600*1200 120.4fps
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (2x FSAA)
1024*768 122.3fps
1200*1024 121.1fps
1600*1200 119.2fps
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (4x FSAA)
1024*768 114.5fps
1200*1024 114.0fps
1600*1200 112.9fps
This test shows a clear increase in performance. For the system that it's running on the numbers are good. It also show's the GeForce 4 is a lot better at scaling to higher resolutions. There's a big decrease with the GeForce 2 card the higher we go, but with the GeForce 4 the difference is minimal even with 4x FSAA.
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
Next up is Jedi Knight II: Outcast. This is a recent addition to our testing procedures here at the Lair and utilizes an enhanced version of the Quake III engine (actually the Team Arena code). So let's see how we do here with the included demo jk2ffa.
Geforce 2 GTS (no FSAA)
1024*768 63.5fps
1200*1024 58.9fps
1600*1200 50.5fps
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (no FSAA)
1024*768 85.2fps
1200*1024 84.8fps
1600*1200 82.9fps
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (2x FSAA)
1024*768 85.1fps
1200*1024 83.3fps
1600*1200 80.5fps
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (4x FSAA)
1024*768 85.0fps
1200*1024 83.0fps
1600*1200 80.1fps
We can see here that Jedi Knight puts more of strain on the card than Quake III Arena, which is to be expected. The performance of the card however is still impressive with a very nice increase over the GeForce 2. The GeForce 2 doesn't do all that bad to be honest, and even scale's with the resolution quite well. I believe the reason that the scores are similar for the GeForce 4 across the board is due to 2 reasons. 1) The rest of my system isn't holding it's end up and supplying data quick enough. 2) This particular demo isn't very good to use to test FSAA as there isn't really much on the map to anti-alias.
Next, its 3DMark 2001SE from MadOnion (Build 300). This benchmark performs a series of tests in DirectX to stress the card in differing ways, and then compiles an overall score you can compare with others online.
Geforce 2 GTS (no FSAA)
1024*768 3829
1200*1024 3453
1600*1200 2491
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (no FSAA)
1024*768 8652
1200*1024 7450
1600*1200 6395
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (2x FSAA)
1024*768 7294
1200*1024 5732
1600*1200 4228
Geforce 4 Ti4600 (4x FSAA)
1024*768 5609
1200*1024 3500
1600*1200 2238
This card just blew away the GeForce 2 GTS, even with 4x FSAA. The results speak for themselves here. I can remember watching the polygon count 8 lights part with the dragons on the merry go round on my GeForce 2 at about 1 fps, when I first bought it. It was a total slideshow affair and made me wonder if there was something wrong with my card till I realised it was just THAT intensive a test. Watching it with the GeForce 4 is entirely different. The frame rate is still low, but it's actually viewable as moving imagery.
Overclocking and FSAA
Ok let's take a look at the overclocking potential of this card. I ramped up the settings and the best overclock that I could get from the card was a very sweet 318/735. Higher than that and the screen had some spots here and there. I ran 3dmark at 318/738 but the spots gave me a headache and it crashed half way through the nature demo, stuttering every few seconds for as much of it as it did run. Have to point out here, I tried the card at higher settings in the course of testing how far I could go. When it got to far the PC crashed and upon reboot, the card was reset back to "safe mode" standard settings by Expert Tool. Very nice.
Damn fine overclock, although it didn't have any effect on my benchmark results, not even a 1% increase. I get the feeling the card wants to give me more even at enhanced settings but is being held back by the rest of the system (time to upgrade!) and my testing results would seem to confirm this. Just to add, if I overclocked any higher than Expert Tool's "Enhanced" settings, WinDVD would corrupt the Windows desktop with hardware motion compensation enabled. Everything else ran fine as per the above results, it was just WinDVD. Not to much of a worry really, one click of the button and it can be set it to "Enhanced" or even "Safe Mode" for DVD playback. I'm impressed and happy with the card's abilities for my own personal use as it should scale very nicely with an upgrade, plus the FSAA is fantastic. I'm a big fan of Quake III Arena and Jedi Knight II: Outcast and the difference it has made to the image quality is great. Here's a few screenshots to try and explain what I mean.
No FSAA
2x FSAA
4x FSAA
If you look at the curves in the pictures you'll notice a gradual lessening of the "jaggies" from image 1-3. The same goes for the vertical corner wall on the left hand side towards the back. Now a screenshot doesn't really do this justice, as the card is doing this with moving images and there's no noticeable variance during movement. It's the kind of thing you really notice once you go back to no FSAA (which I never will if I can help it!). All of the curves just look more "real"; more like curves than multiple lines going together to make a curve. Great stuff, and the fact that as you can see from the benchmarks it doesn't have a big impact on frame rates is awesome. There are other forms of anti-aliasing, like 4XS and Quincunx. 4XS only runs under DirectX and Quincunx blurs the image to much to be worthwhile so I've stuck with testing and using the forms that I believe most people will use.
Final Words
Gainward have tried to pull out all the stops with this package, and for the most part they have succeeded. The card is ready for 2 DVI outputs or able to do 2 VGA outputs with the use of adaptors or 1 of each. The adaptors themselves, whilst not effecting picture quality in the slightest are not to my mind designed all that well, but they do there job. You can also output to a TV as well as capture via the S-Video port. This card is designed with Dual output capability in mind, which you can read more up on right here with Cheet's look at the nView functions. The included Firewire card being a PCI component means you can upgrade the graphics card but still have Firewire functionality and the included Video editing and capturing software, whilst not being the best you can get, will certainly accommodate the average user. The performance of the card is great, and the Expert Tool along with the "Golden Sample" chips used will allow even a complete novice to overclock without fear or trepidation at the click of a button. For the hardcore amongst you, the ramsinks and "Golden Sample" chips allow for higher overclocks than most cards on the market, and again the Expert Tool will facilitate you in your endeavours. The card really excels at high resolutions and FSAA with a limited decrease in performance even at 1600*1200. The Fire Engine Red scheme of the card would look great with a red MSI motherboard under a Cold Cathode light for those of you with windows and lights in your case, and the ramsinks and cooler should catch the light very nicely indeed.
The only real downside is the price. It is quite an expensive package but you do get a lot for you money here, and buying everything separately would be more money than this whole bundle. I'd of liked to of seen some sort of demo disk, with a few demo's showing off the cards technology as there isn't any games that can really take full advantage of it as yet. The performance and technology begs to be shown off. Nvidia do have some really good looking demos on their website which are very impressive indeed, but not everyone has web access or high-speed internet as most of these demos are pretty big.
If your not an overclocker, have only one monitor and all the extra's you get with this package don't interest you, then you would probably be happier with a cheaper card. If you have 2 LCD's that need DVI, are an overclocker (or want to be), and/or interested in video editing and could use the extras this card provides, then this card should definitely be at the top of your list.
Pros
Great performance
Great overclocking
Looks good (mines faster than yours coz mines a red one!)
2 DVI out with VGA adaptors for normal Monitors
TV/S-Video out and in
Comprehensive extra's aimed towards video editing/capture
PCI Firewire card included
FSAA with limited frame rate slowdown
Cons
DVI to VGA adaptors place extra stress on the DVI ports
Bit expensive
No demo's/games to show off to your friends/the chicks
