Leadtek's A400 Series Goes Heavy Metal

Conclusion

Leadtek really stands out from the crowd of NVIDIA card makers, which is already apparent in the naming scheme used for its cards. As mentioned above, instead of using the official chip name, Leadtek instead takes NVIDIA's internal code name for the chip (NV40) and adds a zero to create the product name.

The massive coolers used on the Leadtek cards can't be found on any other card and ensure very good cooling efficiency. On the downside, they are also quite literally a burden to the card, which weighs a full 740 grams in the case of the GT and Ultra versions. This is simply too much, at least if you plan on moving your PC around from time to time, to take it to a LAN party, for example. The worst case scenario would be that the card dislodges, falls on another component and damages it. The unnecessarily massive heatsink on the back of the card is partly responsible for the card's weight issues.

The software bundle that Leadtek ships with the card is very convincing, however. Two current and challenging games paired with two older, slightly exotic games that are probably not part of the standard gamer's collection should make for a good number of enjoyable gaming hours. The bundle is rounded off with a software DVD player as well as several helpful utilities. The only thing we found missing that would really complement the cards' feature set would be a Video-In feature.

The 3D performance of the three A400 cards is outstanding. Without a doubt, the A400 Ultra TDH is the fastest of the trio, but the GT version isn't far behind at all, giving it the better overall price to performance ratio. Although the standard A400 can't keep up with its bigger siblings due to the limitation to 12 pipelines, it still offers very compelling performance when compared to high-end cards of the previous generation.

Pros:

• Very good 3D performance & support for Shader Model 3.0
• Texture filtering optimizations can be deactivated (in part)
• Very good cooling efficiency
• Attractive software and gaming bundle

Cons:

• No Video-In functionality
• Requires a brawny power supply (A400 Ultra)
• Long circuit board, takes up two slots (dual-slot in the case of the A400 Ultra, GT)
• Very heavy