Will Gainward be a US player again?

[severus]

I remember back in the GeForce 4 days, Gainward cards were everywhere, even CompUSA. Are they going to hit the US market again any time soon? I really like their non-reference design cards and if I replace my 4870 I'd like to get a Gainward card.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Gainward used to be able to set themselves apart from others back in the day when others would actually cut corners on components, but nowadays that's not really the case so I don't see how they could really set themselves apart.

 

[Hauk]

Ah the Golden Sample. Good times with the 6800 GT..

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/steelsix/pic3.jpg

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/steelsix/pic6.jpg

 

[happy medium]

Yea , I remember wanting that 7950gt agp card they made, but shipping was killer.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I had one of their passively-cooled 6800 cards (Zalman heatpipe cooler), but the first revision of the cooler let the card cook itself to death.

Warranty service via newegg was painless and the revised design (with even bigger Zalman cooler) worked well.

If they do come back with some non-vanilla designs I'd give them another chance.

 

[Avalon]

Had a Geforce 3 Ti200 Golden Sample back in the day. Good times.

 

[vshah]

had a golden sample ti4200 back in the day...great card. would like to see gainward back

 

[solofly]

Ah the Golden Sample. Good times with the 6800 GT..

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/steelsix/pic3.jpg

http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/steelsix/pic6.jpg

I had one of those too. It was factory overclocked but unstable. Had to manually downclock it to make it work...

 

[nitromullet]

I had one of those too. It was factory overclocked but unstable. Had to manually downclock it to make it work...

My experience with Gainward wasn't great either. I bought an FX 5900 that artifacted out of the box at stock clocks (a supposed "Golden Sample"). I RMA'ed it, Newegg didn't have a replacement in stock, so I picked up an FX 5900 from a company I had never heard of before called BFG Technologies.

Unless they offer a lifetime warranty and have North American based CS/TS, I'd have to get one hell of a bargain on a card to go with anyone other than EVGA, BFG, or XFX for an NVIDIA card.

 

[yacoub]

Whatever happened to them?

 

[nitromullet]

Whatever happened to them?

They're still around, they just pulled out of the US market.

http://www.gainward.com/main/wtb.php?lang=en

 

[BladeVenom]

Who cares about the golden sample. Power Color had the Golden Pig.

 

[mindless1]

My memories of them aren't that great. Had a Golden Sample GF3 TI-500 I sold to a friend and it died for no apparent reason. Had GF4 Ti4200 with bad capacitors. http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=166031

 

[cbn]

I really like their non-reference design cards and if I replace my 4870 I'd like to get a Gainward card.

Lets hope they can make more "high end" non-reference cards with features like dual x8 pin. Wider PCBs would be nice too.

Some of these dual GPU cards actually seem more economical than their single GPU counterparts. For example, HD5970 contains two "highest bin" Cypress cores.....yet it is only 50% more money than a single HD5870. Biggest problem, though, appears to be both power and cooling.

 

[cbn]

Who cares about the golden sample. Power Color had the Golden Pig.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/pc_gold/

Interesting cooler design.

 

[RibSpreader]

Bought one Gainward card ever, a ti4200 that went to artifacting after a few months, about 30 days after CompUSA started to shutter their doors. Might be an exception but Gainward will never get my money again.

 

[Leyawiin]

I was kind of surprised when Gainward bailed on the US market. I don't know anything about their business model, but they seemed to be one of the biggest, most respected companies at the time. Fortunately XFX, BFG and EVGA were waiting in the wings.