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Printed On: | July 21, 2008, 7:40 am |
| Category: | GPUs & Graphic Cards | |
| Type: | Reviews | |
| Posted By: | Firefox | |
| Date Posted: | April 6, 2008, 5:34 pm |
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Gainward Bliss 9600GT 512MB & 9600GT Golden Sample!
Our guys are rather pleased to see an old name return to our labs, specifically Gainward. A duo of boxes bearing the Gainward name were dropped off in our lair a short while back and we have been additionally pleased to see yet another old name return, otherwise known as Gainward's Golden Sample! Graphics accelerators bearing the mark of the Golden Sample have traditionally been pimped out to offer more than the usually reference models and this time round, we note that the tradition continues. As a matter of fact, both the Gainward Bliss 9600GT and its Golden Sample cousin turned out to be entirely different from the reference NVIDIA cards we are so used to seeing. And so it is with great pleasure that we take the duo out for a test or two and see if Gainward would make a return not unlike the King in Tolkien's trilogy.
We can immediately see that the Golden Sample offers DisplayPort and HDMI connectivity on top of what the regular version has.
Is that it? Just connectivity options? Well, no. Golden Samples are almost always overclocked from the factory and as we take a look at the basic specifications, we will see just how much.
| Graphics Accelerator | NVIDIA 9600GT | Bliss 9600GT | Bliss 9600GT GS |
| Buffer Size (MB) | 512 | 512 | 512 |
| Core Clock (MHz) | 650 | 650 | 700 |
| Shader Clock (MHz) | 1625 | 1625 | 1750 |
| Memory Bus Width (bits) | 256 | 256 | 256 |
| Memory Clock (MHz) | 900 | 900 | 1000 |
| Bandwidth (GB/s) | 57.6 | 57.6 | 64.0 |
The Golden Sample offers slightly faster Core clocks but a nice 125MHz increase in Shader clocks (we think this matters more when it comes to the crunch) and 200MHz (DDR) faster memory speed. Now that we are done with the specifications, lets take a look at what these cards can deliver.
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Blissful Duo?
My buddy tells me red goes faster, will decking the Bliss in red make it perform better?
The Golden Sample comes in Black instead. If my buddy's right, this doesn't look too good for the GS. ; )
The heatsink used on the regular version is a fairly beefy non-heatpipe heatsink that takes up 2 slots.
On the other hand, the Golden Sample sports a 2-slot heatpipe cooler that seems more promising.
The regular version offers 2 phase power regulation.
You can barely make it out but the Golden Sample sports 3 phase power which should give more headroom when pushing the card.
Next up, we will look at just how we can hook up display sets to these two cards.
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Piecing things together.
TV out, a HDMI port and a DVI port are offered by the regular unit.
The Golden Sample sports a myriad of connections; Gone is the TV out and in it's place, we get:
2 DVI ports, 1 HDMI port, 1 DisplayPort and a S/PDIF TOSLINK output!
The regular card came with a TV breakout cable and a molex to 6-pin PCI-E adaptor. Nothing much to cry about.
Being the Golden Sample, Gainward threw in Tomb Raider, Cyberlink Software as well as a TOSLINK cable and an internal S/PDIF cable for the digital audio output!
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The Slaughter House
For this review, we opt to use not just a QX9650 but one that's been placed under water cooling and overclocked to a cool 4.41GHz (420MHz x 10.5) alongside Corsair CM3X1024-1800C7D blazing away at DDR3-1680/ 6-7-6-17. All of these supported by an ASUS P5K3 Deluxe platform to ensure that the graphics performance does not get bottlenecked by the rest of the system. For electronic juice, we had a SilverStone Olympia power supply packing a whopping 1.2kW of power and a Dell 30" monster ensured that we could rev up the resolution and really put these cards to the test. Pictures of the respective cards in the setup after the break.
First up, the not-so-regular 9600GT from Gainward.
The Golden Sample placed on the bench.
As for the benchmark setup in more detail, take a peek below.
- Intel QX9650 running at 4.41GHz (10.5 x 420MHz)
- ASUS P5K3 Deluxe
- Corsair CM3X1024-1800C7D running at (1680MHz, CL6-7-6-17)
- 2 x 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7
- Dell 3007WFP LCD
- SilverStone Olympia 1200W PSU
- Windows Vista Ultimate
- Intel Chipset Driver 8.3.1.1009
- NVIDIA Forceware 174.16 WHQL
Now that we have gotten through that, lets take a look at how the cards stack up in the ever popular FutureMark 3DMark benchmarks.
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The Race Begins
Synthetic Benchmarks
First up, we have a few evergreen synthetic benchmarks comprising of FutureMark's 3DMark 2001, 3DMark 2003 and 3DMark2006.
In 3DMark 2001, the Golden Sample takes a lead owing to it's clockspeed advantage.
it is interesting to note that its "normal" cousin does better than the reference NVIDIA card.
In 3DMark03, the standard BLISS 9600GT seems to have a slight edge over the reference NVIDIA but only very slightly so.
In 06, we see the Golden sample take as much of a lead over the regular 9600GT as it does over the NVIDIA reference card.
Games
To kick off the gaming benchmarks, we have Team Fortress 2 and Unreal Tournament 3. Both, fun and playable games that are run at 1920 x 1200 with all settings maxed out to see just how much we can squeeze out of these 9600GT based cards.
In Team Fortress 2, we see both the offerings besting the reference NVIDIA 9600GT.
It appears that Gainward has done a little tweaking on the regular BLISS 9600GT.
In Unreal Tournament 3, the story repeats with the regular 9600GT edging out the NVIDIA reference card by a smidgen.
In both games, the Golden Sample easily offers a close to 10% lead over the "regular" cards.
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More Games..
In World in Conflict, the regular BLISS 9600GT seems to have lost its edge but doesn't fare worse either. The Golden Sample takes a 15% lead over the others here.
In Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, it's the same story again with the Golden Sample taking a 10% lead even in OpenGL.
Crysis is has been a very tough nut to crack even for some of the fastest GPUs of today.
All the cards show up with a barely playable average framerate and the Golden Sample still retains its 10% edge.
In all the games, be they DirectX or OpenGL, the Golden Sample has lived up to its namesake and easily offered a 10% - 15% lead over the regular BLISS 9600GT and the NVIDIA reference 9600GT as well. It's also interesting to note that the BLISS 9600GT actually had a slight edge over the reference card despite being clocked at the same speeds. It would appear that Gainward has optimized the BIOS or PCB layout somewhat. Having seen half-height graphics cards perform worse than full-height equivalent, I'm not too surprised that layout of the board can actually affect the performance of the graphics card.
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Overclocking and Conclusion
Overclocking
With a little help from RivaTuner, we were able to overclock both the BLISS 9600GT and the Golden Sample. A quick run of 3DMark 06 confirmed the stability of the overclocks and allowed us to glean an insight on the performance boost we can expect from the increased speed.
Gainward BLISS 9600GT Overclock GPU/ Shader/ Mem (733/1850/1053)
Click on the image to open in Full Size in a new window.
Gainward BLISS 9600GT Golden Sample Overclock GPU/ Shader/ Mem (766/1950/1095)
Click on the image to open in Full Size in a new window.
With better 2-slot coolers, both the BLISS 9600GT and its Golden Sample cousin overclocked quite well and turned out reasonable results. The BLISS 9600GT was clocked to a respectable 733MHz on the core with shaders at 1850MHz and memory reaching 1052MHz (2104MHz DDR). For the records, that is faster than the Golden Sample's default clocks and churns out a 3DMark 06 score of 13449 - approximately 1,500 points above stock.
On the other hand, we have the Golden Sample. It would be a shame if it didn't do better than the regular 9600GT in clocking and it doesn't disappoint us. The 9600GT Golden Sample readily clocked to 766MHz GPU, 1950 on the Shaders and 1095MHz (2190MHz) on memory. Every bit better than its regular cousin and turns out a score of 13970 in 3DMark06 - about 1,100 point boost from an already higher than normal score of 12,887. It might be difficult to visualize all of these scores and so I made a nice chart to show just how the cards fare when overclocked.
Conclusion
Both of the Gainward cards performed respectably throughout our testing with the Golden Sample readily showing its advantage by consistently throwing out better scores than either its lesser cousin or the reference NVIDIA card. The regular Gainward 9600GT also showed up with slightly better scores in some of the games and 3DMark06 as well. Although it seems somewhat inexplicable, the card is based on an in-house design and that might be the key to its performance advantage (due to slightly lower latencies from trace lengths or as my buddy tells me, "Red goes faster!"). The addition of the mesh on the 9600GT also helps to make the card look better for those of you with a casing side-panel window. Ditto for the Golden Sample card with its red and black shroud which looks quite mean as well.
Something similar to cards is the use of dual-slot cooling. Whilst some users may argue that it eats into the slot beside the PCI-e slot, the dual-slot cooler allows for a quiet solution whereas the reference NVIDIA single slot cooler does get quite noisy once the load goes up. With the Golden Sample, the heatpipe heatsink also negates the need for a 3rd party heatpipe cooler that adds additional cost. Furthermore, the addition of the HDMI output and DisplayPort differentiates it from the run-of-the-mill pre-overclocked graphics cards from other manufacturers. Add to that, the 3-phase power and an in-house PCB design and you have what can truly be called a Golden Sample coming from Gainward. All in all, both 9600GT offerings from Gainward offer more than the regular reference design 9600GT cards from other manufacturers but come in at a very similar price point. Thus, both 9600GT offerings from Gainward looks a lot better than competition, and with competitive prices,they do deserve the 80 VR-Marks awards.
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