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Gigabyte Radeon HD 3870 versus the 9600GT - PAGE 4
Kevin Spiess - Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

Box & Packaging

On the standard-size Gigabyte box we have a Darth Maul-like, evil mage guy, highlighting prominently the fact that Bioware's and Obsidian Entertainment's Neverwinter Nights 2 comes included with video card.

On the back of the box the benefits of CrossFireX (which allows up to 4 current generation ATI cards to be linked together for improved performance) and Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 2 technology are described in detail. In the box the card is in an anti-static bag, comfortably sandwiched in a shell of styrofoam, which is good for the safety of the card, if bad for the environement.

Bundle

As mentioned, the Gigabyte HD 3870 comes with a full version of Neverwinter Nights 2. This is game is a sequel to Bioware's original Neverwinter Nights, which is perhaps the best modern translation of Dungeons and Dragons in a PC game. Needless to say, the game is an RPG, and was generally well received by critics. For the price-point of this card (~$200), it's great to see this game in the mix -- even more so if hardcore RPGs are your thing!

Rounding out the rest of the bundle, in the way of cables we have 2 DVI to VGA adapters, a CrossFire bridge, a Molex-to-PCIe power adapter (if you happen to have a old PSU this will be handy), and a Gigabyte branded HDTV video adapter. Additionally, we have a driver CD, a full paper manual for Neverwinter Nights 2, a well-illustrated quick start guide for the card, and a manual. Though this probably will not weigh into your decision regarding possibly purchasing this card, I do want to mention that this Gigabyte manual is excellent -- far above than the vast majority of video card manuals -- and is written in two very popular languages: English and Chinese.   


Article Index

1.Introduction
2.Close look at the Gigabyte HD 3870
3.Power Usage & Overclocking
4.Box and Bundle
5.Benchmarking Setup
6.3DMark06
7.Unreal Tournament 3
8.Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
9.Call of Juarez DX10
10.Bioshock
11.World In Conflict
12.Crysis
13.In the end...

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