Gainward Bliss 9600GT 512MB & 9600GT Golden Sample

Zitat

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.