Gainward Ultra 760XP GeForce FX 5600 Ultra Video Card Review

One of the most unique things about the Ultra 760XP is the fancy GPU heatsink. At first I thought the flame job was just a metal plate that covered the heatsink but as you can see the flames are an integral part of the entire cooling solution. Considering the size and density of this heatsink it would appear to be built more for looks than high performance cooling.

We all know that ramsinks are 90% show and 10% work but anymore I feel a little funny buying a video card without them. Much to my delight Gainward has provided a fairly aggressive set of ramsinks on the Ultra 760XP. The coolers are held in place with plastic pressure clips but appear to be glued in place. Having heard horror stories about TinyBGA chips releasing from the PCB it was decided that the ramsinks would remain as they were.

The 5600 Ultra is pretty sparse when it comes to cap and coil usage though despite the minimalist approach it does require an external power source to run.

Here we can see the 5600 Ultra "flip-chip" GPU. Much like the Pentium III and Athlon processors the "flip-chip" configuration provides a more direct access to cooling that results in higher frequencies and better performance. ATI has also applied the "flip-chip" design to their Radeon cards but has done away with the heatspreader. Before the cooler was replaced the white thermal grease was cleaned off and replaced with Artic Silver III.