Gainward's Golden Sample series of graphic cards always offers something a bit special and these cards are aimed at the overclockers amongst us. The Powerpack Ultra 2400 continues with the Gainward tradition when it comes to naming cards; the name gives you no clue as to what GPU it's based on.

Actually based around a reference design nVidia GeForce 6800GT, the Powerpack Ultra 2400 uses Gainward's own design of cooling solution. Instead of the standard single cooling fan, Gainward use two fans mounted on a large aluminium plate that covers the GPU and the memory chips. The GPU heatsink is copper-based and it's this impressive cooling that allows the Powerpack Ultra 2400 to be so overclockable.

The whole cooling unit is anodised red and the fans are lit by red LEDs, which makes a nice change from the current fad of using blue ones for everything. Because of the sheer size of the cooler the card takes up two expansion slots, which only poses a problem if you have a multitude of expansion cards in your system already, and in any case you should always leave the PCI slot adjacent to the graphics card slot free to allow air to circulate.

As the card is based on nVidia's reference design, out of the box it runs with a core clock speed of 350MHz, with the 256MB of DDR3 memory running at 1GHz (500MHz DDR). Just by adding Gainward's ExperTool utility these speeds rise to 400MHz and 1.1GHz (GeForce 6800 Ultra speeds) for the core and memory respectively.

Using this utility under test conditions, the card ran solidly with a core speed set at 413MHz and a memory clock set at 1.253GHz, but the card is probably capable of running at higher speeds if you start to tinker with the voltages of both clocks. Certainly the cooling can cope with the higher speeds you might get.

Performance wise this translates to a 3DMark03 score of 12,030 and 64fps for FarCry when tested at default clock speeds at a 1,024 x 768 resolution, rising when run at 413MHz core and 1.253GHz memory to 12,690 for 3DMark03 and 69.56fps for FarCry.

The ExperTool also controls the voltage feeding the cooling fans, either manually or dynamically. In dynamic mode, the fans speeds are adjusted automatically depending on what load is being placed on the GPU, while in manual mode you can set the fan speeds for both 2D and 3D modes.

To keep down the cost of an already pricey card, the supplied software bundle is limited to copies of InterVideo WinDVD 5 and Muvee autoProducer 3.

Verdict
Gainward's Powerpack Ultra 2400 Golden Sample is a great card for those who are into serious overclocking and have deep enough pockets to pay for it.

Company: Gainward

Contact: 01635 524949

Tags: nvidia graphics processing unit gainward geforce advanced micro devices gpu video card hardware