Gainward Bliss 8600GT PCX

The Gainward 8600GT comes in a very attractive looking box. On it you can find most of the info you might need about the card except for any indication on the card speed. The contents are fairly standard, though Gainward have also supplied some extra software, namely the DVD Solution package from Cyberlink. Other than that you will find the standard two DVI-to-VGA converters, the driver CD, the TV out dongle and a installation manual. Not the best package we have seen, but not too shabby either.

The first thing that stands out about this card is the huge metallic cage that covers it. It looks imposing and at first we actually though this was all part of the cooler. As it turns out most of it is just for appearance and a regular fan cooler is hidden inside the cage (not the reference 8600GT fan cooler, but a propietary solution). As you can see Gainward decided to put some heatsinks on the bottom of the card, precisely where the memory modules are positioned. This should help with overclocking, were it not for the fact that the card is overclocked right out of the box:

GPU Clock	Shader Clock	Memory Clock
594mhz	1296MHz	800/1600MHz

The main problem with the cooling solution is the fact that it takes up two slots instead of the standard single slot the rest of the 8600GT cards do. The open space around the fan does help somewhat and the cage helps with the airflow over the PCB.

For those interested in multi-screen setups the two DVI ports are both dual-link enabled. The TV-Out connector supports HD resolutions.