Gainward's Cool FX 2600 is a performance water beast

IT'S NO secret that Nvidia is more then happy to have Wolfram Tismer on its side. He is an aggressive marketing manager was one of the key people at Gainward responsible for the Cool FX series of graphics cards.

Gainward always wanted to be different from its competitors and so it has to think up cunning new schemes. It was the first company to tamper with Nvidia's HolyReferenceDesign and the first company able to offer a higher clocked card, at a price, of course.

When Gainward saw that it had be even more aggressive at the time of NV35, it made a decision to go for a water cooled graphic card powered with a specially designed Innovatek graphic block.

It deployed this plan with the Geforce FX 5950, NV38 and now it's time to release this water beast for the NV40, Geforce 6800 Ultra.

The card is covered with a huge water block on the front side as there is no necessity to cool the other side of this monster card. All components are up front. Nvidia's normal clock for Geforce 6800 Ultra is 400MHz and by default Gainward clocks its water cards to 450MHz and up to 470 or even 480MHz once you install its overclocking tool. That should be the limit of the chip. As for the memory, Nvidia clocks its referece cards to 1100MHz while Gainward clocks its cards to 1200 MHz.

The card comes in an enormous box and apart from it, CDs and Cables you get a water pump, a huge radiator and many tubes to connect it all properly. It will take you some time to connect all these parts properly but if you've dealt with this water cooling stuff before you should not have any problems. If you haven't I would wisely advise to do this with a friend that's experienced. The card costs €899 and that's not peanuts but then again if you want a Maserati, you have to pay the price.

I don't want to talk too much about NV40, Geforce 6800 Ultra, it's the card that Nvidia would rather die then send it to us to evaluate with support for Shader Model 3.0 sometime in the future.

NV40 is a 222 Million transistor chip with shader model 3.0, 256 bit GDDR III memory support 16 real pipelines that can process one texture and 32 pipes that can process all information apart from the Z values - something that Doom 3 will find very useful.

Don't be scared of its two power connectors but yes, you need them if you are serious about overclocking.

When you remove the card from the MegaBox it won't take t much to put it together. We did it before so it took us only few songs from a play list to finish it. You have to attach the pump and reservoir together, connect that with a tube for a radiator that has to be cooled with an active fan and you are fine. You have to be extra careful not to spill any water.

It's like a normal card apart from the fact you have to pour some water inside a tank and to shake it a bit to get rid of the bubbles. This will take you only a few minutes and then you can continue.

We used Nvidia latest 61.34 press only non WHQL drivers and you have to install Gainward experts tool to clock the card to its default 450MHz/1200MHz memory. It will work as a normal card from that point on.

Test
We tested with

Athlon 64 3400+ clocked at 2200 MHz
EPOX HDA3+ K8T800 board
2x512 MB Corsair DDR 550 PC4400 CL2
Western Digital 8 MB cache 80 GB Drive
Titan Athlon 64 cooler

We ran some standard and some new graphic benchmark sets since we saw quite a few changes in the last few months in game market.

Far Cry 1.1	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	68.82	68.18	66.85
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 475 / 1200	67.38	68.41	64.79
Unreal Tournament 2004	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	163.71	171.4	167.7
Quake 3	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	426.6	399.1	383
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz	352	334.6	322.7
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 475 / 1200	428.4	402	388.6
3Dmark 2001SE Nature	Nature	1024x768
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	199	24730
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz	219.9	25141
UT 2003 FLY	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	294.3	238.9	276.3
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz	297	291.4	261.7
UT 2003 BOT	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	104.6	104.4	103.9
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz	102.4	103	102.8
Serious Sam 2 FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	174.7	161.7	126.7
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz	164.2	146.3	114.6
Aquamark 3			1024x768
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200			68.24
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz			57.1
Halo PS 2.0 benchmark	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	63. 9	68.6	61.8
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz	58 .6	58.2	58.9
Far Cry FSAA 4X + 8X aniso	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	64 .9	51.7	39.8
Quake 3 FSAA 4X + 8X aniso	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	427 .3	347.4	278.4
Composite Figures 3Dmark03	3Dmark03	game 2	Game 3	Nature
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	12953	195.1	86.1	72.4
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz	11131	83.2	68.7	72.7
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 470 / 1200	13142	107.1	87.2	73.7
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 475 / 1200	13241	107.4	88	74.3
Composite Figures 3Dmark03	Single Texturing	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel sharer 2.0
Gainward CoolFX 2600 Geforce 6800 Ultra 450 / 1200	3559.2	6752.4	36.5	188.1
ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum 525 / 1260 MHz	2798.4	6621	36.1	136.5

I also included more FSAA and Anisotropic tests this time but we stuck with our beloved Quake 3, Serious Sam - Second Encounter and the new Far Cry FSAA 4X and Anisotropic 8X.

As you can see from the tables, the Cool FX 2600 at 450 MHz wins on almost all benchmarks and the Radeon X800XT Platinum edition, the fastest of the ATI R420 generation, just cannot keep up with this card. 13000 in 3Dmark03 is a respectable result and you can see that in games such as Far Cry for which you will get over 60 FPS all the time, even with FSAA 4X and Anisotropic 8X.

Conclusion
A Maserati will always cost you and this card is the Maserati of the graphics market. At a hefty €899 you will definitely get the fastest of the fast. This is a top performer.

If you have the money to spare, then this is the card for you. If not, then go for the "cheap" $499 or even more affordable cards that won't deliver this performance. µ