When you pop open a brand new box, you never know quite what to expect. I was quite pleased with what I was greeted with. Whomever was in charge of packing the cards went a little crazy on packing foam, not that I’m complaining, no damage was incurred during transit, obviously!

The card itself is quite nice to behold, no fans, hear that? It’s called silence! This is something that isn’t really considered an option when card makers are dealing with high-end equipment. Some may scoff at my use of the phrase “high-end” but coming from a 9800 Pro, I consider it very high spec.

Having a somewhat bland looking card (lack of fan and thus pretty heatsink covers) is offset by the black heatsink which matches the PCB with a green XFX logo plastered across.

Snaking out of the top of the card are two silver heat pipes which run along the top of the card into the main part of the heat sink which is layers of fins lining the pipes to draw heat away from the card. While this is probably quite effective, I am not a fan of mediocrity, but we’ll get to that later on.

The green DVI outputs also look quite cool I think fitting in well with the overall theme of the card.

The card comes with quite a compliment of goodies and software, Two DVI to VGA converters to plug CRT and older LCD’s into the card. A 4 pin Molex to 6 pin PCIe power connector to give the card a much needed shot of juice. Books which explain anything and everything about the ins and outs of the card. A HDTV out to component cable.

A driver CD also comes in handy, as well as a free game. And not just any game, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. One of the most popular (and difficult) first person shooters on the market. The rest of my PC is not really high end equipment. But it does the job. I beat the hell out of my system with this card. Maxed out all settings and ran it at 1280x1024, it didn’t bat an eyelid. It begged for more, to which I obliged and got consistently owned in single player of GRAW.

Now lets get to numbers that matter. Benchmark and real world results.