gainward Interview with wayne tritton

Verdian3: How did you come to work for Gainward?

Wayne: I started off at STB, along came 3dfx, then they went again! I knew the Nvidia market was competitive and when i got to know more about Gainward they were the obvious choice as they stood head and shoulders above the rest for product innovation and quality.

Veridian3: What is the most enjoyable aspect of working for Gainward?

Wayne: I know it sounds cheesy but the people we work with make it enjoyable. We have a good team spirit especially in the UK. Our customers also give us great support and that certainly helps.

Veridian3: The recently released Cool-FX range of Gainward Geforce FX's is a radical change to the cooling provided by all other FX manufacturers. What prompted Gainward to make such a bold move and do you expect to see other companies following your lead?

Wayne: Gainward has always been at the top of the performance charts and our customers are amongst the most demanding due to their advanced knowledge and desire to have the fastest rigs. We had noted how quickly the 'modding scene' was growing and water-cooling is one area we decided would have great synergy for our products. Our intention is to deliver performance solutions not just a chip and board. We wanted enthusiasts to have access to these solutions. With our CoolPC (a cooling kit for the Northbridge and CPU), you can have an instant water-cooled system. Did I mention it is almost silent too?
We were the first company to include the DVI/VGA convertors as standard in our NView enabled products and they followed so i guess so. Other manufacturers have already been playing with bigger heatsinks, heatpipes etc but water-cooling is far more efficient.

Veridian3: Does the warranty on the Cool FX range differ from the standard FX range in any way?

Wayne: Not at all, we offer 3 year warranty on all our graphics products.

Veridian3: The Retail pack for the 5900 Ultra golden sample contained a plethora of additional hardware and accessories, as with any product its never good to stand still. How do Gainward hope to better this bundle in future packages.

Wayne: By continuing to listen to what enthusiasts tell us and by feedback from reviews we can tell which aspects are popular. We don't stand still on our bundles and they often change with every new chipset.

Veridian3: Recently we have seen several manufacturers (for example Asus ) begin manufacturing cards based on ATI and Nvidia architectures rather than concentrating on one brand. Is this something Gainward would consider?

Wayne: We are 100% NVIDIA throughout Europe.

Veridian3: What would you say is the number one reason a consumer should choose a Gainward product over a competitors product?

Wayne: We push the boundaries. I would like to think we are enhancing our products in a way that naturally promotes us as first
choice. Golden Sample versions mean we can achieve a 10-30% performance increase over same-chip reference based designs. And that's straight out of the box guaranteed!

Veridian3: Would Gainward consider revising the product names for their cards? If we are being honest "Gainward FX PowerPack! Model Ultra/1600 XP "Golden Sample"" is a bit of a mouthful and taking an example from the past the Gainward GeForce 3 PowerPack!!! Model Ti/500 JUMBO "Golden Sample" - having TI 500 in the name when it was based on a TI200 chipset was confusing.

Wayne: I think our customers are pretty clued up to be honest, when they call us they tend to use just Ultra/1600 etc. Our product names have clashed with chipset names but with the Ti500 (with Ti200) we had a board running at Ti500 speeds. We couldn't call our card a 5900Ultra because it's much more than that. We differentiate our names like we do our products.

Veridian3: Gainward provide regular BIOS updates for their range of cards, something few other manufacturers choose to do. Do you recommend consumers install the latest bios when its released as general good practice or should the BIOS be updates only when the user experiences a concern?

Wayne: Unless you have a specific problem or there is a performance gain to be achieved i would say leave it as it is. Information on our latest BIOS can be found on our website.

Veridian3: Is there any feature in a competitors product that you wish was included in yours?

Wayne: Hmm. I think because we go beyond the reference design there really is nothing!

Veridian3: Just to clarify something for your customers...Golden Sample products are guaranteed to work at their enhanced settings 24/7?

Wayne: Yes! This is one of the reasons we should always be benchmarked at those settings as that is what you are buying!

Veridian3: Can you tell us of any forthcoming products or any cool ideas you have planned?

Wayne: Well I am sure you have been closely following info, rumours etc on the web so keep an eye on us in the next week or so!