With the package out the way, it’s time to move on and have a look at the card and see if there was anything different when compared to our standard GeForce 8800GTS. Looking straight at it you can tell that the reference cooler is being used with Gainward choosing to place their sticker over the front of it to let you know what brand you have. To be completely honest, if it didn’t have a sticker on it like all other 8800GTS cards, you wouldn’t know what brand it was.
Looking around the card it is of course all very standard - we have the green PCB, turning to the side we have a 6-pin PCI Express power connector that is needed to power the card, across the top we have the SLI connector (unlike the GTX version that has two, the GTS only has the single connector). Up here we can also see another sticker saying Gainward, handy for people with a case window as it again let’s people know what brand you have, since it is difficult to tell when the card is facing down.
Flipping the card over is also very standard with just our normal array of numbers, stickers and circuitry all over the back along with a number of screws to keep the large heatsink fan in place.
I/O side of things also brings us the standard layout with two DVI ports of which both support Dual Link connectivity for users of the Dell and Apple 30” displays. We also of course have our S-Video like connector that takes care of all the TV-Out put functionally that is on offer from the card. The DVI ports are also HDCP compliant which means you’ll be able to use this graphics card to playback next-generation HD movie content such as HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies.
Like we have mentioned previously this particular card from Gainward is a Golden Sample which means it comes overclocked out of the box. The default core and memory speed on the GeForce 8800GTS is 500MHz / 1.6GHz DDR. Gainward has bumped this up and we get a core speed of 550MHz and a memory speed of 1.76GHz DDR.
The good news is that while most pre-overclocked cards normally come with an inflated price tag, the Golden Sample is able to be had for around $50 AUD (or roughly $38 USD) more than the standard clocked models - it isn’t bad but the deal would have been even sweeter if a full version game had been included. Let’s move on and see if it’s worth actually spending that extra money over a standard GeForce 8800GTS.
