Gainward Cards
Gainward is the maker of the famous Golden Sample factory overclocked cards, and we wouldn't want to disappoint anyone by leaving them out. We've included a Golden Sample and a 5700 Ultra.Gainward GeForce FX 5950 Golden Sample
The Golden Sample comes pre-clocked to 500/1000 (core/mem) and sports two red fan LEDs. The card will fit in a single slot, but we would still recommend leaving the first slot open to give the fans room to breathe.
This card was a bit of an enigma to us. We ended up getting two separate samples from Gainward. We sent the first back because we couldn't get through a couple runs of the Aquamark benchmark at 500/1000 clock speeds.
We determined that the problem had to be memory related, since we couldn't even run the card at 425/1000 error-free.
The second card we received had similar issues, though they were not as pronounced. We are still trying to track down exactly what is going on here. Since Gainward does have a 3-year warranty on their cards for running at their stock 500/1000 speeds, we decided to run the card at whatever core speed that we could get with a memory speed of 1000.
Gainward GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
This Gainward offering performed very well for the 5700 Ultra offerings, and hit some amazing memory clock speeds.
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KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Very well done.Icewind - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
I'd like to know how the freak the Nvidia cards outdid the ATI's in Halo and UT2k3, thats just beyond me.TheSnowman - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
hum Derek, i don't suppose you know why the nvidia based high end cards idle at so much lower temperature when compared to the ati based offerings?AnonymouseUser - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Nice roundup. The 5900se (priced similar to the 5700 Ultra and 9600XT) is what I find most impressive.Abraxas - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
great review, this is the first of its type that i've seen and it really changed my mind on what card to buy. I would like to see 1280x1024 or even 1600x1200 in a future review, but even at 1024 it is nice.53.03 is really that much faster? that's just amazing.
#7 ATI held a huge advantage on older drivers in HALO, just as much as in HL2. if the new drivers are that much faster... it appears that nvidia should never have been doubted :)
DerekWilson - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Sorry Icewind, we didn't include numbers for stock 9800pro, 5900(ultra/non-ultra/se/xt) or any stock card other than the newest releases. Most other reviews cover reference cards running stock numbers, but we just needed one reference point to show where these numbers fell and give people a basis to judge performance increase.Iger, there are a few reasons for what you are seeing. I would say that your questions were the correct ones to ask.
We could only use a couple benchmarks, and the couple we chose are standardish (UT2K3), based on very common engines (JKJA), or one of the few available (Halo having PS2.0 support). These were not the games with huge performance gaps between them (like Tomb Raider or Tron). Also, since we were including 5700 and 9600 parts, we wanted to stick with the standard-but-lowish 1024x768 resolution rather than bump up a 1280 flavor.
There is also one other thing that has been overlooked. Since the fall, there have been some driver changes. We've moved up to 53.03 for NVIDIA (which brough some noticeable performance increases) and the CATALYST 4.1 drivers which we have yet to give a good work out.
In future reviews of this type, we plan on going with higher resolutions even if we include midrange cards. So the question we leave to the readers is this: how high do we go? 1152x864, 1280x960, 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 ...
Lonyo - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Most 9800's seem to be able to hit about 450MHz at the very max. Even the 9800 non-pro's (mine can get to 440MHz, but I run at 430MHz).Seems like a limit of the chip at about that sort of level.
drpepper1280 - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
To answer a few questions, the passivly cooled 9600xt is on newegg, its the ultimate version. If you search by category it is at the bottom. Also the reason the nvidia cards do well against the ati cards is because they are overclocked in the bench marks (I'm pretty sure), also none of the bench marks are Half Life 2, lol. I had one question even before viewing the article, how does sapphires 9600xt 256mb stand up. Unfortunetly it was not reviewed, but I did read the the 9600xt could benifit from a memory increase. This makes me wonder if the 9600xt 256mb is actually a really good deal (it only cost 170 dollars), or if it is like many 256mb cards that actually decrease performance.Iger - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
It's strange it almost doesn't correspond with the fall test of FX5950 against 9800XT... There 9800XT looked much stronger... Now even the reference XT looks weaker, than FX. Maybe that's because the fall test was at higher resolutions? Or just not enough tests to see the big picture?tfranzese - Wednesday, February 4, 2004 - link
Good article. Impressed with both camp's overclocking headroom.