FOLLOWING ITS ACQUISITION by graphics giant Palit, reports are popping up that Gainward is going the way of the watermelon: while it keeps with a polished green outside, it’s turning red on the inside. Yes, Gainward, known for its long standing relationship with the Green Goblin and cherry-picked performance graphics chips, has turned to punching out ATI-based cards.

The first HD 4850/HD 4870 cards will be pretty standard stuff, from what we garner, as the photos reveal they have the stock heatsinks we’ve tested before. However, we can expect the long tradition of Golden Sample/Bliss will kick in sooner rather than later and add some extra muscle to the line-up.

The info seems solid enough for a distributor in Singapore to have initiated a giveaway/competition at a HardwareZone forum thread for an ATI/Gainward poster design. The winner grabs a Gainward Radeon HD4850, the top 5 runner-ups get a bag o’goodies with Gainward paraphernalia (no Nvidia graphics cards, though).

You can find it here, if you have a good hand for creating web-ads (400x400). The thread also links to a photobucket album where you can see some shots of the cards and retail packaging.

Let’s hope that’s a typo on the HD 4850’s box (bottom right corner) – as it doesn’t use “DDR5”. Otherwise it’s an elaborate fake. Hmm… µ