NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Roundup

Different Name, Same Game

Different Name, Same Game

At the end of our tests, we have shown conclusively that the new GeForce 9800 GT does not offer any additional performance over the older 8800 GT. They really are one and the same, just part of a larger renaming and rehashing project by NVIDIA. This is a worrying sign, because rather than providing a more mainstream and affordable card based on the newer GT200 architecture as seen in the GTX200 series of cards, NVIDIA has instead opted for the easy way out, by rebranding cards using its G92 core, which is also showing its age, what with the new Radeons available. Remember, the G92 core is actually based around the G80 core, which by now is absolutely ancient by graphics cards standards.

Such a strategy of rebranding can also be observed with the latest GPUs from NVIDIA. Just today, it announced the GTX 260 Core 216, which is a slightly buffed up GeForce GTX 260 with 216 stream processors compared to the original 192. Other than that, clock speeds have remained the same and of course, a longer and potentially confusing product name has entered the market.

While the GeForce 8800 GT used to be a real champion around our labs, this is no longer the case. It stumbles against ATI's new Radeon HD 4850 at higher resolutions and especially in newer games such as Crysis. Furthermore, the fact that some vendors are offering the HD 4850 at prices similar to the 9800 GT makes the NVIDIA card even harder to recommend. A quick check with our local vendors indicates that the price differences between most overclocked 9800 GTs and a standard 4850 are less than S$50 usually.

It's a no-brainer. All things equal, would you rather have new or old technology? And even if you are using an nForce SLI motherboard and prefer dual-GPUs, ATI's soon to be released Radeon HD 4850 X2 would be a cleverer bet.

So while the new 9800 GTs do run cooler and consume less power than their ATI rivals, it may not be priced attractive enough to justify the cost, performance and technology. Hence, if you are in the market for a mid to high-range graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 remains the top choice, at least for the moment.

The Gigabyte falls behind slightly because of its higher S$235 price-tag, which puts it squarely in 4850 territory. During our price check, we found that an ATI Radeon HD 4850 can be had for as low as S$229, though most were generally higher. However, credit must be given where credit is due, and the Gigabyte 9800 GT did run the coolest and was quite willing to overclock as well.

Finally, despite being an engineering sample, we expected more from the ASUS EN9800GT Matrix. We expected it to at least match the reference Gigabyte 9800 GT, but instead found it to be lacking in most of our tests. Also, considering ASUS' claims that it could easily overclock to 750/2000MHz for the core and memory, we were sorely disappointed to find that it could barely go beyond our 650MHz/1800MHz configuration.

Nevertheless, this is still an engineering sample after all and it is a very interesting product (3-way SLI hints and the hardware auto-tweaking). We're confident that ASUS would have sorted everything out by the time it finally goes out on the market. Hopefully, we would have more information and updated benchmarks then. For now, we're reserving our judgment and not rating the card as it is now.

Still, if you really must have a 9800 GT, some of these cards here are certainly decent picks. Of the four, the Palit GeForce 9800 GT Sonic and Zotac GeForce 9800 GT AMP! Edition are our favorites. Not only are they relatively cheap for its class, with both coming in at around S$210; they are also the best performing, overclocked variants.

Furthermore, in our overclocking tests, they were the two that we pushed the farthest. However, if we had to pick one between the two, it would have to be the Palit, because it absolutely trumps the Zotac when it comes to operating temperatures. What's more, the Palit even comes bundled with a copy of Tomb Raider Anniversary.

Card Ratings