Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/2400 "Golden Sample" GLH

- Introduction

On October 12th, Gainward announced its latest "Powerpack Ultra/2400" family of graphics cards. This family is based on the 6800GT and 6600GT and is aimed at the 3D gaming enthusiast.

In this review, we will be testing the Gainward PowerPack! Ultra/2400 "Golden Sample" GLH. The Golden sample GLH (Goes Like Hell) cards are based on hand selected 6800GT Nvidia processors and redesigned by Gainward to improve speed flexibility, overall performance and bandwidth. Each card is really overclockable and guaranteed by Gainward to work at the same speed as the 6800 Ultra. This is a card with which you should have no fears overclocking.

The PowerPack! Ultra/2400 family details are summed up in the following table:

- Packaging - Bundle

The card ships in the Gold and Blue theme packaging, seen in the picture below.

Even though the card targets the gaming enthusiast market, the software that is bundled along does not include any games whatsoever. Instead, Gainward provides the user with some useful programs for video playback and authoring.

The bundle consists of among other things, 3 CD-ROM disks. One contains Muvee autoProducer 3 for video editing, the second interVideo's most famous WinDVD 5 and on the third disk you'll find drivers and application software for the card.

Also included in the package is a Quick Start Manual with details and easy instructions on how to install the card on your motherboard and using its utilities (such as EXPERTool).

Of course, the cables for connecting the graphics card with external devices couldn't be missing. A short S-to-Composite cable, two DVI-to-VGA connectors and a dual molex power connector complete the set of bundled accessories.

02 - A closer look

The card's full title is "Gainward Powerpack! Ultra/2400 Geforce 6800GT Golden Sample GLH". Simply put, the card is a special version of the 6800GT built for the purposes of overclocking it up to the 6800 Ultra's clock speeds.

Cooling is taken care of by a couple of fans protected by a huge magenta copper cage. The cage is intended to keep the user from accidentally touching the high speed fans and to prevent damage to the card.

The memory chips are from Samsung and are located on the front of the card, covered by heatsinks. The dual fan set draws colder air from the case interior and blows it on the chips in order to keep them from overheating.

You can see there is no direct cooling solution for the core. Instead, Gainward focuses on the memory components which are the main concern in overclocking when enabling the Enhanced Mode Settings from the driver menu.

A front view of Gainward 6800GT GLH. Click to enlarge.

The back side of the card.

Unfortunately, in order to support the cooling system, the Gainward card acquires two major drawbacks.

The first one is that the card consumes around 150W. Even though the design is such that it doesn't need a second molex connector for power, the power consumption in itself is simply insane. The required power supply as suggested by Gainward is for at least 300W.

In order to reach to 6800GT's core first we had to unscrew the copper cage.

Before...

and after removing all the heatsinks.

After a while we reached our target. The NV40 chipset

The second drawback is that the card also hogs the space over PCI slot below the AGP slot of your motherboard. While the card with just the heat sinks installed could fit in the AGP slot alone, the fans and copper cage require the extra space.

The extended bracket of Gainward 6800GT

We didn't mind repositioning our PCI expansion cards but what troubled us is the fact that on the left hand side of the package there is a clear message stating "The Gainward 3D processor board occupies one AGP slot"...

As you can see in the picture above, the Gainward 6800GT GLH offers 2 DVI outputs for direct connectivity with a TFT monitor and one for S-Video input. With the supplied cables and adaptors that come with the card, you will have no problem connecting your accessories or hardware to it.

Test System - Page 03

3DMark05 - Page 04

With 3DMark05, Futuremark continues the tradition in its benchmarking software by providing a state-of-the-art Microsoft ® DirectX ® 9 3D performance benchmark.
3DMark05 is an all new 3DMark version, making the most out of Microsoft's DirectX 9. The previous version, 3DMark03, provided a nice testbench for this technology. However, 3DMark03 used DirectX 9 specific features in a limited manner, because fully supporting hardware was rare at the time of its launch. In contrast, 3DMark05 requires DirectX 9 hardware with full support for at least Shader Model 2, and takes shader usage to never before seen levels.
Just like its predecessors, 3DMark05's point system is set so that at the moment of release, the high-end VGA cards available on the market can only score around 5000 3DMarks, whereas the worst card that meets the program's requirements, yields a score of 1000.

Game Test 1 - Return to Proxycon

Being the sequel to the "Battle of Proxycon" from 3DMark03, in "Return to Proxycon" we're once again set in space and the battle continues as space pirates invade a cargo ship in order to take control of its valuable cargo.

This test, tries to simulate a futuristic first-person shooter game with all the high details that such a game entails. The dynamic shadows, highly detailed environment and advanced lighting techniques, ensure that under normal circumstances, no recent card can run it with decent frame rates.

At last, a decent performance on this Game test. For the first time, we were able to actually follow the storyline of the game test without being distracted by the low framerates we had witnessed with other cards.

Game Test 2 - Firefly Forest

A forest is filled with magic fireflies at night. The moon is nearly full, illuminating the forest with a bluish faint light. The magic fireflies have flickering, bright green lights that playfully move around the forest.

This scene is a nice example of a smaller scale outdoor scene with rich vegetation. Immediate visibility is only short range, and there is a skybox surrounding the whole scene.

A large number of trees with their branches swinging separately, and dense vegetation being dynamically distributed according to the camera movements, make this test the most demanding of the three.

The results we got demonstrate the game test's GPU requirements. The constant use of dynamic shadows and complexity of the grass and trees drop the framerate to 15.

Game Test 3 - Canyon Flight

A Jules Verne type airship flies through a canyon guarded by a dangerous sea monster. The airmen defend their ship using heavy cannons, but these seem to have no effect on the huge sea monster. Finally, the crew manages a narrow escape using the airship's "last resort" afterburners.

This scene is fairly complex with large areas of water reflecting the high canyon walls. The water is actually one of the key points of interest in this scene. The water not only does realistic looking reflections and refractions, it has a depth fog, making the sea monster swimming under the airship appear deep down in the water. The air in this scene also uses a volumetric fog, making distant cliffs in the canyon appear far away.

The resulting chart expresses Gainward's 6800GT superiority against the lower class X300 and X600XT. The game test ran smoothly and we actually enjoyed watching as the card successfully unraveled all of its details without too many problems.

Final Score

 3DMarks on 3DMark05 are now calculated with the following formula:

(Game Test 1 * Game Test 2 * Game Test 3)^0.33 * 250

This is basically the geometric mean of the total frames in each game multiplied by 250, which means that all game tests are on an equal par.
Let’s see the result for the 6800GT GLH:

Excellent performance. It might not be close to the 7000 3DMarks which indicate an overall sufficient framerate for all game tests but comparing it to the X300 and X600, you get 3-4 times their performance with only 2 times the money needed for an X600 XT.

06 - Aquamark3 / 3DMark 2001

Since the majority of today's applications and games are compatible with DirectX 9, the need for benchmark applications that use DX 9 has been stepped up. This particular benchmark uses the 3D engine (Krass engine) from the Aquanox game.

Aquamark Triscore

The Aquamark Triscore comprises 3 values: the overall system performance, the performance of the graphics system and the CPU performance. Keep in mind that this is not the total result of the tests, but the result of the whole benchmark process including all 9 chapters.

3DMark 2001

3DMark 2001 is the predecessor to 3DMark03. It's mainly a directx 8.1 benchmark and the score depends a lot on the CPU power of your computer. However, for reference use only, we decided it would be best to just leave it in our benchmark list so you can compare the next generation cards with the possibly outdated one you have at home.

08 - Half life 2

Half life 2 is no doubt the most anticipated pc game of all times. Gamers keeping the excellence of Half Life 1 in their mind as well as the remarkable E3 demo preview, have been anxiously waiting for the much delayed release of HL2.

Regarding the storyline, the player again picks up the crowbar of research scientist Gordon Freeman, who finds himself on an alien-infested Earth being picked to the bone, its resources depleted, its populace dwindling. Freeman is thrust into the unenviable role of rescuing the world from the wrong he unleashed back at Black Mesa. And a lot of people he cares about are counting on him.

Characters - Advanced facial animation system delivers the most sophisticated in-game characters ever seen. With 40 distinct facial "muscles," human characters convey the full array of human emotion, and respond to the player with fluidity and intelligence.

Physics - From pebbles to water to 2-ton trucks respond as expected, as they obey the laws of mass, friction, gravity, and buoyancy.

Graphics - Source’s shader-based renderer, like the one used at Pixar to create movies such as Toy Story® and Monster's, Inc.®, creates the most beautiful and realistic environments ever seen in a video game.

AI - Neither friends nor enemies charge blindly into the fray. They can assess threats, navigate tricky terrain, and fashion weapons from whatever is at hand.

To measure performance we used the Video Stress Test(VST) that is available in the CounterStrike:Source beta available through Steam. We set all the details to the highest level and changed the resolutions from 800x600 to 1600x1200.

Even though Half Life 2 was supposed to be an Nvidia game, the 6800GT from Gainward seems to have no problems bringing the best framerate we've ever seen in the Video Stress Test.

All the results point out that as long as your CPU and memory can handle half life 2's Source engine this video card won't stand in your way in terms of performance..

09 - Doom 3

A massive demonic invasion has overwhelmed the Union Aerospace Corporations? (UAC) Mars Research Facility leaving only chaos and horror in its wake. As one of the few survivors, you struggle with shock and fear as you fight your way to Hell and back, in an epic clash against pure evil.

Activision made it's miracle again with Doom 3 which is said to be the best-looking game ever, thanks to the brand-new OpenGL graphics engine used to generate its convincingly lifelike, densely atmospheric, and surprisingly expansive environments. If you are a fan of the previous Doom games then you will get many flashbacks with this revision, since you will find reimagined versions of almost every monster from both Doom and Doom II.

To measure performance on the game we used the timedemo demo1 command from the console (Alt+Ctrl+~).
Enabling the high quality setting and executing the timedemo demo1 command twice for each resolution, we witnessed the following:

First without the Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering settings enabled, we got the following results:

The 6800GT was promoted as the perfect choice for this game and our benchmarks prove this true. There's no Doom 3 setting that's able to bring the card down to its knees and that is a fact, even when we set AntiAliasing to 4x and Anisotropic Filtering to 8x:

Yes. With the Gainward 6800GT GLH and enhanced mode settings selected at the driver menu, you will enjoy Doom 3 with all the eye candy effects, quality settings enabled and at the maximum resolution of 1600x1200.

11 - Medal of Honour Pacific Assault

Medal of Honor Pacific Assault puts you in the boots of a WWII soldier in the Pacific Theater of Operations. As Marine Private Tommy Conlin, you must survive the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor and then join the Allied crusade to defeat imperial Japan's bloody conquest of the Pacific. From the attack at Pearl Harbor to the pivotal battle against Japanese Forces at Tarawa Island, Medal of Honor Pacific Assault gives PC gamers a sense of the courage it took to endure and overcome the Japanese threat in WWII and fight for VICTORY in the Pacific.

To record performance of this game we used fraps and played around for a minute in the first stage of the demo.

Even though the performance difference between the cards is imminent, the 6800GT couldn't produce more than 84 fps at the lowest possible detail settings. As the latest series Medal of Honour comes with new models and rendering effects, it needs a state of the art computer to run the game in full detail and quality options enabled.

As we couldn't set any AntiAliasing at this point, we will just present the plain results until we get the full game version.

13 - Colin McRae 05

For all you racing fans out there, this test is for you and will represent the Racing game category in our benchmarks.

From the graphics point of view, the first thing you'll notice in the game is the excellent amount of detail on your racing car. High resolution textures on the car and lighting make it quite impressive. All the eye candy such as the sun reflection in the virtual camera are still the same as the older CM versions but motion blur has been added when your card hits something hard which will happen most often if you're new to the racing simulation world.

To measure performance on the game we used fraps to get the average fps of the whole 8th stage of UK which is actually the only stage you get to play on the demo.

The 131 fps rate seems to be our CPU limit using our top-notch AMD Athlon FX-55. The card can deliver more than that but the processor can't cope with it. Increasing the resolution further, the graphics card is the one that limits the framerate but fortunately the resulting numbers are still at optimal levels even when we turn on AntiAliasing and Anisotropic Filtering: