Introduction

With nVidia deciding to lift the restrictions on pre-overclocking their latest GeForce 8800 series graphics cards, we knew it wouldn't be long till we saw companies release their special overclocked editions. The first into the TweakTown labs comes from Gainward in the shape of the Golden Sample series.

It's been a while since we have seen anything from Gainward but what a card to come back with - the GeForce 8800GTS is extremely popular around the world thanks to its excellent performance, huge amount of memory and feature list and they've only improved on it by overclocking it from the factory.

Following a very standard review layout, we are going to see just what an overclocked GeForce 8800GTS is capable of when compared to a stock clocked version. We will also see what happens when we place ATI's current top dog, the Radeon X1950XTX, into the mix and see just what kind improvement overall the overclocked Gainward Golden Sample does for us in terms of improvement in overall game play experience.

Let's get started!