Computex 2003 - Day 2: Motherboard and Video Coverage

Gainward

Normally, Gainward isn’t known for anything other than video cards, but today we learned they had quite a bit to offer in terms of variation in product range.

What you see above is Gainward’s $1000 water-cooled GeForce FX 5900 Ultra video card. The water pipes themselves are produced by Eheim, with Stammham actually manufacturing this beast. Supposedly, with this setup Gainward claims that a core clock speed of 500MHz and a memory speed of 1000MHz (1GHz) are possible. This is certainly an impressive overclock of sorts to be able to reach, but we think that both the price tag and the GeForce FX’s performance in DX9 games is so lacking that a product like this is simply without any steam.

The “Hollywood@Home” sound card is Gainward’s official entry into the PCI add-in sound card market. This card is based on the 7.1 channel sound controller from VIA, dubbed the Envy 24HPT, and is capable of sample rates of up to 24-bit/96KHz through optical SPDIF. Overall, after listening to this sound card with an excellent set of Klipsch Promedia 5.1 speakers, we can say that its sound fidelity was absolutely superb, even if it wasn’t the best we’ve heard from a PCI sound card before.

Among some of the other, less exciting, products Gainward had on display were wireless cards in the 802.11b and 802.11g format. Their 802.11g wireless card will be shipping later this year.