With the release of NVIDIA's GeForce3 graphics processor, many video card manufacturers are finding it difficult to successfully produce and sell cards based off the "latest and greatest" NVIDIA offering. Aside from the sheer cost associated with GeForce3 card production, a cost made high as a result of the expensive 3.8ns memory among other things, manufacturers are also finding it hard to get NVIDIA to supply them with chips. Add these problems to the fact that the GeForce3 caters to a very limited market and it becomes clear why so few GeForce3 products are finding their way to stores in mass numbers.

Despite the problems, a select group of manufacturers do seem to be making the best of what they have, getting their products out of the warehouse and onto the store shelves at reasonable prices. Of these companies, few have been successful, leaving only a handful of readily available and attractively priced GeForce3 cards on the market. A quick search shows that one company alone dominates the extremely low priced GeForce3 market, as the 5 lowest priced GeForce3 cards on Pricewatch as of publication are all produced by the Asian manufacturer Gainward.

Of the major video card producers based in Asia, not many have been able to penetrate as large a market as Gainward. Offering a complete line of NVIDIA based graphics cards, Gainward has been able to win the hearts of users in all parts of the world with their high quality and low cost products. It seems that their most recent project, the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!, continues this trend with the GeForce3 graphics processor.

Available in a low-cost package that includes only the TV-out feature as well as a more expensive decked-out package that includes DVI-output as well as VIVO capabilities, the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! comes in configurations that can meet every user's needs. Today we take a look at the fully featured CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! which is identical to the lower-priced version only with some extras.

The Card

As we have seen many manufacturers do, the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! attempts to distinguish itself from the competition in one of the most basic ways: visually. The theme of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! is red, and just about everything on the card is this color, from the PCB to the heatsinks to the daughter card. It does make for a pretty smooth looking card - too bad it is going to be housed in a metal box for its usable life.

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Those red components we mentioned before do more than add visual appeal to the card; they make it what it is. What is behind the red exterior of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!?

Well, the red PCB of the card is based off of NVIDIA's reference design and therefore looks identical to the layout we see on almost every other GeForce3 card. This is a safe move that we see more and more manufacturers making especially in early releases of a product. Not only does using the reference design decrease the time needed to manufacture a board, it also ensures that a design is going to work right off the bat.

The red circular heatsink that is used to cool the GeForce3 core is identical to the circular design we have seen in the past. We have found this type of heatsink and fan combination to cool as well as the reference square design, however the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!'s heatsink and fan is noticeable smaller than the large reference fan. We would have to wait for the overclocking results before we could make a judgment on the red fan's effectiveness.

The heatsink and fan combination is attached to the GeForce3 core with a thermal pad. Of all the attachment methods, the thermal pad falls to the bottom of our preferred list ranking only above strict core to metal contact. We would have been much more pleased to find the assembly attached with a thin layer of thermal grease but some manufacturers choose to use thermal pads for ease. Once again, judging the effectiveness of the thermal pad would have to wait until we overclocked the card.

The third red component on the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! are its red RAM-sinks. Gainward choose to outfit the RAM with the reference heatsinks, which were obviously good enough to win NVIDIA's approval. With 16 large fins, the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!'s RAM-sinks differ only from the heatsinks on our reference card in color.

Below the red heatsinks lie eight, 8MB 3.8ns (265MHz) EliteMT DDR SDRAM chips for a total of 64MB of memory. This is the same memory type and speed used on all other GeForce3 cards we have come across. We suspect that it will be quite some time before another brand of memory starts popping up on GeForce3 cards simply because EliteMT seems to be the only manufacturer willing to rate large batches of their memory this high.

Like we saw in the original GeForce2 GTS cards, manufacturers are forced to use higher rated memory due to low yields at these faster speeds. In the case of the GeForce3, the stock memory clock requires only 230MHz or 4.3ns memory chips (460MHz effective) but manufactures are forced to use faster memory in order to ensure that all chips hit this high clock speed.

The red heatsinks are attached to the memory chips in the same manner we have seen on many GeForce3 and GeForce2 Ultra cards: using thermal tape. This provides adequate heat transfer while at the same time keeping the RAM-sinks from falling off.

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The last red component of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! is its red daughter card, but this is no ordinary daughter card. The CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! is the first card we have come across to offer VIVO (video-in video-out) functions thanks to a Philips SAA7108E encoder/decoder chip, although we do know that other manufacturers are using this chip as well. The chip is a fairly typical video encoder/decoder and includes Macrovision copy protection and supports PAL and NTSC output and input formats. What is special about the chip is that it finally brings true VIVO functions to NVIDIA products.

Video Capture

In the past, special designs such as the ones implemented in the ASUS Deluxe series cards were needed if VIVO functions were desired on an NVIDIA card. The launch of the GeForce2 GTS and its "daughter card" feature promised to bring full VIVO functionality to NVIDIA cards, but in reality we only saw manufacturers use the card for TV-out features. It seems that the GeForce3 product line finally allowed for a VIVO daughter card to be implemented.

The CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! uses a universal dongle of sorts that breaks up into an S-Video out connection, a composite out connection, an S-Video in connection, and a composite in connection. All are conveniently color coded, with the yellow wires indicating video-in connections and the black ones indicating video-out. The single card connection is necessary to make space for the DVI port also located on the back of the card.

We were quite pleased to finally find a VIVO daughter card and were surprised at its small size. In the past, cards like the ASUS Deluxe cards required two separate chips in order to supply both video-out and video-in. The Philips SAA7108E combines both of these functions onto one chip, meaning that the daughter card consists only of the SAA7108E and some filters, 2 crystals, and resistors.

Driving the video-input features of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! on the software side is Ulead Video Studio 5.0. We have seen previous incarnations of this video editing package before and complained at its difficult use. Luckily, the new version made some needed changes.

After installing Video Studio and the appropriate drivers, we were greeted with the Video Studio main screen. We quickly found our way around, opting to produce a new capture file. The software allows for the capture to be saved in a variety of outputs including MPEG2 and AVI. Both of these formats, which we suspect will be the most used ones, allow capture resolutions up to 720x576. We hooked up our trusty NES to the composite input of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! and were presented with the following screen.

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From here, Video Studio 5.0 made video capture easy. Video could be recorded and still images could be captured with the click of a button. This was one area that we had problems with in the past, but it seems that version 5.0 makes it easier. Transition effects, like those shown below, were easy to add between images or segments of video.

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Finally, audio can be recorded, text added, and the final project saved in just a few steps.

Although Video Studio has become the standard bundled video capture software, we would have liked the VIVO features of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! better if it came with a simple, stripped down capture utility as well. We found that with our ASUS Deluxe cards, it was often easier to capture video with the ASUS utilities than it was with Ulead Video Studio, especially when the capture did not need to be professionally edited or altered.

When all was said and done, the capture quality was on par with other VIVO systems we have looked at.

Overclocking

As we mentioned before, we were a bit concerned with how the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! would respond to overclocking due to its use of a thermal pad. It turns out, we were more than pleasantly surprised.

Our CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! was able to hit a core speed of 235MHz, proving that the core is getting the cooling it needs to work properly. This is 35MHz over the shipping speed of the GeForce3 core and an impressive achievement for any card.

The thermal pad, which actually looks like a large square of Silly Putty without the tackiness, seems to have done a good job at transferring the heat form the core to the heatsink. And speaking of heatsinks, it seems that the smaller circular fan can perform just as well if not better than slightly larger square heatsinks.

We have seen the reference style RAM-sinks in the past, and this time they allowed us to reach a clock speed of 515MHz. As you can see, this is below the rated 530MHz of the memory chips, proving that our theory regarding low yields on 3.8ns chips.

Both our core and memory overclocking success can be attributed to luck as much as cooling efficiency. Luck or not, we did manage to get 235MHz out of our CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! core and 515MHz out of the memory. This resulted in good overclocking capability, with the core going higher than most we have seen in the past.

As usual, PowerStrip was used to overclock the card since the CoolBits hack only allows for up to a 500MHz memory clock speed.

The Drivers

We must say that we were pleased with Gainward's driver package that came with our CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!. Unlike many manufacturers, Gainward chose to take the extra time and add additional utilities to the NVIDIA reference drivers.

Gainward's driver suite, dubbed Expertool, does not modify the display property pages in any way but instead adds functionality accessible via a taskbar driven utility. Contained within the property dialogue boxes of Expertool are 5 setup screens that provide a variety of information and allow for some tweaking as well.

The information, monitor, and desktop tabs all provide a convenient interface for common display items. We were more impressed with the performance tab. Here, one can easily set core and memory clock speeds well over what the CoolBits hack allows. The "dials" can be turned up for maximum core clock of 300MHz and maximum memory clock of 600MHz; well over what any GeForce3 can be pushed to.

Upon installation of the drivers, the user is prompted with an option to use "Enhanced Performance Settings," a feature also available in the performance tab. Enabling this feature automatically overclocks the core to 220MHz and the memory clock to 480MHz. This is useful for those not knowing how far is too far when it comes to overclocking or don't want to know what is going on behind the scenes.

The other utility that Gainward provides is a zoom utility that functions similarly to Window's Magnifier.

The Test

Windows 98 SE Test System
Hardware
CPU(s)	AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) 1.33GHz
Motherboard(s)	ASUS A7M266
Memory	128MB PC2100 Corsair DDR SDRAM
Hard Drive	IBM Deskstar DPTA-372050 20.5GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 66
CDROM	Phillips 48X
Video Card(s)	ASUS V8700 Deluxe GeForce3 64MB Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! 64MB MSI Starforce 822 GeForce3 64MB
Ethernet	Linksys LNE100TX 100Mbit PCI Ethernet Adapter
Software
Operating System	Windows 98 SE
Video Drivers	NVIDIA Detonator 3 12.10
Benchmarking Applications
Gaming	idSoftware Quake III Arena 1.27g - demo127.dm3 Croteam Serious Sam - Karnak Peaceful Night Coop GT Interactive Unreal Tournament 4.32 Reverend's Thunder Demo AquaMark (Aquanox Benchmark)

Note that since the GeForce3 still does not work properly with Synetic's Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing demo with the driver version 12.10 that we used, the benchmark was left out of this review.

OpenGL Performance - Quake III Arena

At the low resolution of 640x480x32, all the cards perform pretty much the same. The Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! fell smack in the middle of the other two cards tested, but the performance difference between the cards is on the order of less than .5%.

At 1024x768x32 the story remains the same. All three cards tested perform nearly identically, with the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! going head to head with the MSI GeForce3 solution. Both of these cards outperform the ASUS offering, but by only .2 FPS or .1%.

Do we see a trend developing? The CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! runs neck and neck with the other GeForce3 cards including the more expensive ASUS V8700 Deluxe.

Real-World Fillrate - Serious Sam

With the Serious Sam fillrate benchmarks, we are often to see slight differences between cards. This is the case with the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! which was able outperform the competing products by a small amount. The CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! performed about 2% faster than the next fastest card in the single texture fillrate test. This small improvement is most likely a result of some minor BIOS optimizations or design tweaks.

When we switched to the dual texture fillrate benchmark, we found that the cards do not separate themselves as they did in the single texture benchmark. Here the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! lies at the bottom of the chart but the difference between cards is extremely small: only about .2%. The differences are not noticeable by any means and can likely be attributed to simple variations between benchmark runs.

So we see that the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! performs a slight amount better than other GeForce3 cards when rendering a single texture but the same as other cards in dual textures. Let's see how this effects actual Serious Sam gameplay.

OpenGL Performance - Serious Sam

It appears that the slight lead that the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! had in the single texture fillrate benchmark equates to a good sized lead in actual gameplay. At 640x480x32 the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! rises to the top of the chart by performing 2% faster than the next fastest card.

At 1024x768x32 the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! is still able to maintain a speed advantage over other GeForce3 offerings. Here the card keeps its 2% performance lead, going 1.8 FPS faster than the ASUS V8700 Deluxe. The difference between cards may be small, but it is always nice to know that the card you purchase is "the fastest," at least in Serious Sam.

The 2% trend continues, as the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! performs 2% faster than the other GeForce3 cards. At 1600x1200x32 this allowed for a 1.1 FPS gain; not noticeable but still faster.

DX7 Performance - Unreal Tournament

Unlike the new Serious Sam engine, the aging Unreal engine has problems sorting out the differences between cards. At 640x480x32 all the GeForce3 cards perform the same, this time with the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! reaching the top of the chart by an insignificant .3 FPS.

The performance lead of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! shrinks at 1024x768x32 to .1 FPS. Once again all GeForce3 offerings are essentially identical and card placement on the chart is likely to change simply when repeating benchmarks.

Same story at 1600x1200x32. Not much more to say other than that all GeForce3 products appear to perform the same with the Unreal engine.

DX8 Performance - Aquamark

Unreal Tournament may have not been able to differentiate cards due to its lack of stress on the video card, but Aquamark cannot distinguish one card from the next because of its extreme stress on the card. With the powerful GeForce3 only getting 43 FPS at 640x480x32, it is clear that Aquamark is pushing the GeForce3 chip to the limits. As a result of this, minor variations in card design and performance can not be reflected as really the only item being taxed is the GPU: an item that remains the same regardless of the card.

For the reasons mentioned above, performance at 1024x768x32 is identical across the board.

Once again, at 1600x1200x32, the cards all perform the same.

FSAA Performance

When Quincux FSAA is enabled on the GeForce3 cards, the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! is not able to keep its slight performance lead in Serious Sam, at least not in this resolution. The CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!'s performance falls 1.6% from the top.

At 1024x768x32 with Quincux enabled, the differences between cards is eliminated. Although the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! lies at the bottom of the graph, it is only .2 FPS or .4% slower than the "fastest" card here.

Quincunx at 1600x1200x32 begins to show differences between cards, and this allows the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! to rise to the top again. Here, the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! performs a full 5% faster than the MSI card and 8% faster than the ASUS.

Overclocking Results

Running at a 235MHz core clock and a 515MHz memory clock, we paired our overclocked CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! with the stock clocked version of the card. In the first of our tests, we investigated how the overclocked card performed in Serious Sam's fillrate tests.

We found that overclocking the card provided rather large gains in both the single and dual texture fillrate benchmarks. The single texture fillrate performance of the card increased 11% when overclocking and the dual texture fillrate performance increased 15%. Let's see how these performance increases help actual gameplay performance.

The performance gain of the overclocked CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! rose as resolution increased. At 640x480x32 the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! at 235/515MHz performed the same as the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! at 200/460MHz. When increasing resolution to 1024x768x32, the overclocked card performed 4% faster and at 1600x1200x32 the overclocked card performed 11% faster.

Running at 235/515MHz provided a good performance boost in Serious Sam gameplay and won't leave gaming enthusiasts disappointed.

It is not surprising that the most taxing game in our benchmark suite was able to benefit the most from overclocking. Even starting at 640x480x32, the overclocked CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! was able to outperform the stock clocked card by 8%. Moving up in resolution to 1024x768x32 allowed for a 12% speed gain and 1600x1200x32 provided us with a 14% speed increase.

Conclusion

With our examination of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! it became clear to us why Gainward has experienced quite a bit of success in the US market. From the features, to the quality, to the performance, we were very pleased with the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!.

Upon first glance, one may wonder if there is anything to the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! besides its red color. We found that there is quite a bit more to the card than its visual appearance. The cooling setup of the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! proved to be rather effective. Although we were a bit concerned with the somewhat small heatsink and its thermal pad, it turns out that the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!'s core could overclock to the same level or better than others.

The red RAM-sinks, identical to the NVIDIA reference RAM-sinks, performed their job well. We were able to overclock the memory to a rather high mark, but we have seen other cards with different heatsink designs go higher.

The features and options on the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! are a major part of its appeal. First off, for those looking for a "bargain" GeForce3, the "stripped" CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! makes an ideal solution. We put the words stripped in quotes because the only features missing on the base CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! are the DVI port and video-in functions. The base card uses the same cooling setup and includes the useful Expertool utilities. And at a price of $342, the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! is one of the less expensive GeForce3 cards available.

For those wanting a bit more out of their GeForce3, the loaded CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! will not disappoint. For $33 more, the card comes with full VIVO functionality (something we are quite pleased to see on an NVIDIA card) as well as a DVI-out port. This brings the cost of the loaded CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! up to $375, but even at this price the card is a deal considering what you are getting.

We had very few complaints about the CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!!, but that does not mean that the card cannot be improved. First off, it would be nice to see thermal grease replace the thermal pad on the underside of the heatsink. Although the thermal pad did work well, past experience tell us that thermal grease would work better.

We also would have liked to see Gainward take a bit of time to design an easy to use capture utility for times when the extra features of Video Studio 5.0 are not needed. Something along the lines of ASUS' Live utility set would hit the spot. And, although we have not looked keenly upon game bundles, some competing products are starting to bundle games people actually play. Our CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! came only with WinDVD 2000 (a good program, especially for DVD TV playback) and a few demos. It would have been nice to see a good game in there somewhere but as long as it did not influence the price.

In summation, we were thoroughly impressed with the Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! and recommend it as a great GeForce3 solution in both the base and VIVO packages. With this card, Gainward scores again.

How it Rates

Please note that the score given is a comparison between the Gainward CARDEXPERT GeForce3 PowerPack !!! and other GeForce3 cards on the market. This is not meant to reflect how GeForce3 cards compare to other video cards on the market processor wise. To find this information, please see our NVIDIA GeForce3 review. Also keep in mind that a score of five indicates standard performance. To learn more about our rating system, please click here.

Note: The Overall Rating is not an average of all of the categories