Digital Reviews

Gamer’s the XFX Geforce 9800GTX 512mb has arrived to boost your gaming, so let’s find out what can do. The GTX moniker has always stood for high-end performance from the chip. The 7800GTX was the fastest 7XXX series card till the 7900GTX, the 8800GTX was the fastest 8xxx card until the Ultra and it generally meant that the card was the fastest single card of that generation.

Now the 9800GTX was designed to replace the GeForce 8800 GTX, the new 9800 GTX is not quite as mighty as once suspected. In fact if you look at the specifications carefully, the GeForce 9800 GTX appears to be nothing more than a tweaked version of the already existing GeForce 8800 GTS 512 graphics card. This is made disappointing due to the fact that the 8800 GTS 512 is very similar to the 8800 GTX in terms of performance.

The XFX 9800GTX is a very large card, not as monstrous as the 9800GX2 or HD3870X2, but almost as big and it’ll hang off the end of your motherboard, and take up every millimeter of it’s double-slot width. Compared to a 8800 GTX, both PCBs are of the same length, but the cooler on the 9800GTX stretches even further along than its predecessors. In regards to the cooler, the one on the XFX 9800 GTX is from the standard, reference design XFX have not changed it in anyway.

Specs:

Brand Name	XFX
EVGA Part Number	PV-T98F-YDF9
Graphics Chip	G92
Core clock	675MHz
Shader Clock	1688MHz
SPs	128
Fabrication Process	65 nm
Transistors	754 Million
Memory clock	1100 MHz/ 2200 MHz
Memory Interface	256-bit
Memory bandwidth	70.4 GB/second
Memory Size	512MB
ROPs	16
Texture Filtering Units	64
Texture Filtering Rate	43.2 Gigatexels/second
HDCP Support	Yes
HDMI Support	Yes (using DVI-to HDMI adapter)
Connectors	2x Dual-Link DVI-I, 1 7-pin HDTV Out
RAMDACs	400MHz
Bus	PCI Express 2.0
Form Factor	Dual Slot
Power Connectors	2 x6-pin
Max Board Power	156 Watts
GPU Thermal Threshold	105 C

Compare it with previous models:

Card	9800GTX	8800GTX	8800GTS 512MB	9600GT	8800GT 512MB
Stream Processors	128	128	128	64	112
Core Clock	675	575	650	650	600
Shader Clock	1.689GHz	1.5GHz	1.625	1.625	1.5
Memory Clock	2.2GHz	1.8GHz	2GHz	1.8GHz	1.8
Memory amount	512MB	768MB	512MB	512MB	512MB
Memory Interface	256-bit	384-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory bandwidth	70.4	86.4	64	57.6	57.6
Texture Fillrate		36.8	41.6	20.8	33.6

Specials Features:

Hybrid SLI
PureVideo HD
Dynamic Contrast Enhancement
Dynamic Color Enhancement
Dual-Stream Decode

Gaming Test:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz) LGA775

2 X 2GB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400

ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38)

Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)

Nvidia Forceware 174.53 driver

This GeForce 9800 GTX delivers very good performance, excellent overclocking capabilities, is extremely quiet, SLI™ & Tri-SLI certified, extremely cool even when overclocking and a low power consumption. If you are looking for a flagship video card this one has all the gaming power that you need.