NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Roundup
Taking an old product, renaming it and then passing it off as new is something that NVIDIA has done in the past. This time, NVIDIA has taken the good old 8800 GT and rebadged it as the 9800 GT, and we take four fine examples to see if there's any discernible difference.
By Kenny Yeo -
Shhh... Don't Tell Anyone I'm Really an 8800 GT
The GeForce 9800 GT is quite a recent addition to the graphics segment but it has hardly generated any excitement among enthusiasts. "Why?" You might wonder. You'll know the reason once you take a look at the specifications of the "new" GeForce 9800 GT and compare it with the older 8800 GT. Don't panic. Your eyes are not playing tricks on you and there are no typographical errors here.
The truth is, this is all an elaborate marketing ploy by NVIDIA to resell some of their older cards, because the simple fact of the matter is this: the 9800 GT is really an 8800 GT. Honest. The only difference is in the name.
Not that we are complaining. You see, the 8800 GT was a particular favorite of ours due to its outstanding performance to price ratio so we can expect more of the same. Still, we had hoped for more. Some have speculated that it will get support for 3-way SLI, but sadly, that didn't happen. Still others have said that the 9800 GT might have a higher clocked core as well as memory and shaders, but that unfortunately didn't happen either.
So has anything changed at all? Well, we are glad you asked and we are somewhat disappointed to report that the only thing that did change was added support for HybridPower. This is a feature found only on GeForce 9 series graphics cards that allows systems running on NVIDIA chipsets to switch to onboard integrated graphics when running less graphic-intensive applications, thus helping you save power and money. Hence it should be a useful feature for the budget and environmental conscious crowd.
Another improvement over the 8800 GT is that NVIDIA plans to eventually have all 9800 GTs manufactured on a 55nm process, which would theoretically lead to greater efficiency and lower power consumption and heat. That however is also still in the works and all the 9800 GTs we have here are currently on the 65nm manufacturing process, as the screenshot below can attest. Having said that, that's just about all the difference there is to the "new" 9800 GT.
As you can see, the Gigabyte 9800 GT we have is completely stock.
For our GeForce 9800 GT round-up today, we have gathered four cards: one from Gigabyte that comes with reference clock speed, and another two overclocked ones from Palit and Zotac, and lastly, a rather unique albeit engineering sample from ASUS. But before we begin, let's take a look at how the GeForce 9800 GT stacks up against the competition.
Model | NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 512MB | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB | ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB | ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB |
Core Code | G92 | G92 | RV770 | RV670 |
Transistor Count | 754 million | 754 million | 956 million | 666 million |
Manufacturing Process | 65 / 55 nm | 65nm | 55nm | 55nm |
Core Clock | 600MHz | 600MHz | 625MHz | 775MHz |
Stream Processors | 112 Stream Processors | 112 Stream Processors | 160 Processors (800 Stream Processing units) | 64 Processors (320 Stream Processing Units) |
Stream Processor Clock | 1500MHz | 1500MHz | 625MHz | 775MHz |
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF) units | 56 | 56 | 40 | 16 |
Raster Operator units (ROP) | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
Memory Clock | 1800MHz GDDR3 | 1800MHz GDDR3 | 2000MHz GDDR3 | 2250MHz GDDR4 |
DDR Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
Memory Bandwidth | 57.6GB/s | 57.6GB/s | 64GB/s | 72.0GB/s |
PCI Express Interface | PCIe ver 2.0 x16 | PCIe ver 2.0 x16 | PCIe ver 2.0 x16 | PCIe ver 2.0 x16 |
Molex Power Connectors | 6-pin | 6-pin | 6-pin | 6-pin |
Multi GPU Technology | SLI | SLI | CrossFireX | CrossFireX |
DVI Output Support | 2 x Dual-Link | 2 x Dual-Link | 2 x Dual-Link | 2 x Dual-Link |
HDCP Output Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Street Price | ~ US$140 | ~ US$120 | ~ US$199 | ~ US$120 |
Gigabyte 9800 GT 512MB GDDR3
The Gigabyte 9800 GT came in a simple looking box, featuring what seems to be some sort of a warrior princess.
The Gigabyte 9800 GT might not be overclocked, but if the Zalman cooler is as effective as it looks, it should give us a good overclocking overhead.
The Gigabyte 9800 GT is the only 9800 GT in our roundup which came with NVIDIA's reference clocks. This means 600MHz for the core, 1800MHz for the memory, and 1500MHz for the shader units aka stream processors. However, the card does come with a Zalman cooler, which should keep the card running cool and give us decent overclocking potential.
This is what the Gigabyte 9800 GT comes with:-
- User manual
- Driver CD
- 1 x Molex PCIe connector
- 2 x DVI-to-VGA connector
- 1 x DVI-to-HDMI connector
- 1 x S-Video to Component dongle
Zotac GeForce 9800 GT AMP! Edition
The Zotac 9800 GT AMP! Edition is packaged in a box that follows the same color scheme of their other offerings, which looks decent enough.
Zotac's 9800 GT AMP! Edition is the only one of the four that is of a single slot design. Despite being aggressively overclocked, it uses the same reference cooler found on older 8800 GTs.
From here on, we are entering overclocking territory. With its GPU core clocked at 700MHz, and its memory and shader units at 2000MHz and 1700MHz respectively, the Zotac is by far the most aggressively overclocked of our trio of overclocked cards. While you can't tell that just by the way it looks (especially as it sports a reference cooler), you can most certainly tell by the way it sounds. The fan is loud, sounding akin to a vacuum cleaner, and it is no doubt hard at work trying to keep the card cool. When it is plugged in, it also gives off a warm orangery glow.
This is what the Zotac GeForce 9800 GT AMP! Edition comes with:-
- Driver CD
- A copy of XIII Century: Death or Glory game
- Quick installation guide
- 1 x DVI-to-VGA connector
- 1 x DVI-to-HDMI connector
- 1 x HDTV/Video-out cable
- 1 xl S/PDIF cable
Palit GeForce 9800 GT Sonic
Palit's 9800 GT Sonic came in an interesting hexagonal shaped box. A sticker on it proudly indicates that it comes with a copy of Tomb Raider Anniversary the game.
Palit's 9800 GT Sonic, as we've mentioned, comes with a heatsink that's rather sharp at the edges. So do take note and handle with care.
Next up is Palit's GeForce 9800 GT Sonic, which has its own custom dual-slot cooler. The Palit has a rather unique heatsink, which, we must caution, can be rather sharp at the edges, so handle with care. For the Palit GeForce 9800 GT Sonic, the core has been tuned to 650MHz, while the memory and shader units are at 1900MHz and 1625MHz.
And these are what we found in the Palit GeForce 9800 GT Sonic:-
- Driver CD
- A copy of Tomb Raider Anniversary game
- Quick installation guide
- 1 x Molex PCIe connector
- 1 x DVI-to-VGA connector
ASUS EN9800GT Matrix 512MB
The ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix didn't come in its retail packaging, so you'll have to make do with this. In anycase, we think that the black and white color scheme looks good.
The ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix comes in plain black with no labels whatsoever. It also sports a cooler that looks similar to those found on reference HD 4850s and HD 4870s. Seeing it for the first time, we thought ASUS sent us the wrong card!
The ASUS 9800 GT Matrix stands out from the rest not only because of its dark color scheme, but also because it has not one but two SLI connectors. 3-way SLI anyone?
Lastly, we have ASUS's EN9800GT Matrix, which belongs to a new line of graphics cards featuring some interesting twists. What we got was an early engineering sample from ASUS and it will only go on retail later this month at the earliest. It boasts a customized hybrid cooler that looks a bit like the ones found on the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870 that spun up very loudly at boot up, though it quickly throttled down soon after.
Most importantly, the Matrix also boasts something ASUS calls the "Super Hybrid Engine" which will automatically adjust the voltage and fan speed of the card according to its load, thus saving you power while ensuring sufficient cooling. It will also come with a software utility to allow for adjustments of both clock and fan speeds, together with pre-configured user profiles like automatic overclocking during 3D applications and downclocking while in 2D/idle mode.
The Matrix comes slightly overclocked at default, with its core clocked at 612MHz, memory at 1800MHz and shaders at 1500MHz. ASUS says it can be further overclocked to 750MHz for the core, 2000MHz for the memory and 1753MHz for the shaders, if need be. We'll test it out later to see how true this is.
Since the card is not exactly retail ready at the moment, we cannot confirm the included package, but we expect it to have the usual assortment of cables.
Test Setup
If you've been reading our reviews religiously then you should know that we do our tests on two different system configurations, one on Windows Vista and another on Windows XP.
However, we encountered a slight problem this time round, with the ASUS EN9800GT Matrix, which refused to run on our usual Vista system. To get around this, we built another Vista system using the exact same components, but on a different motherboard (using the same chipset of course). Here are the revised test setups in detail:
Windows XP SP2 Test System
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz)
- Intel D975XBX 'Bad Axe' motherboard
- 2 x 1GB DDR2-800 Kingston HyperX memory in dual channel mode
- Seagate 7200.7 80GB SATA hard drive
- Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 and DirectX 9.0c
Windows Vista SP1 Test System
- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.00GHz)
- Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 motherboard
- 2 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Aeneon memory in dual channel mode
- Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
- Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1
Windows Vista SP1 Test System (for ASUS EN9800GT Matrix only)
- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.00GHz)
- ASUS P5E3 Deluxe motherboard
- 2 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Aeneon memory in dual channel mode
- Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
- Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1
We'll be pitting the four GeForce 9800 GT cards against one another and will be paying special attention to see just how much extra performance you can get from the cards that have been overclocked, and for comparison's sake, we have thrown in an older 8800 GT as well, to see if there are any discernible differences in performance. Also, note that the ASUS EN9800GT Matrix is an engineering sample and is rather rough around the edges, hence we do not expect it to perform as well as it possibly can. We also tried our hand at an MSI overclocked edition, but it seemed like an engineering sample and wasn't able to churn out results on par with the rest of the cards; thus we've omitted it for this article.
Card | Core | Memory | Shaders |
Gigabyte 9800 GT 512MB GDDR3 | 600MHz | 1800MHz | 1500MHz |
Zotac GeForce 9800 GT AMP! Edition | 700MHz | 2000MHz | 1700MHz |
Palit GeForce 9800 GT Sonic | 650MHz | 1900MHz | 1625MHz |
ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix (engineering sample) | 612MHz | 1800MHz | 1500MHz |
We'll also be throwing in some cards from the red camp, namely the older Radeon HD 3870 and the new Radeon HD 4850. Here's the complete list of cards and their respective clock speeds, as well as the tested drivers used for both test setups:
- Gigabyte 9800 GT 512MB (Forceware 177.79)
- ASUS EN9800GT Matrix 512MB (Forceware 177.79)
- Palit GeForce 9800 GT Sonic (Forceware 177.79)
- Zotac GeForce 9800 GT AMP! Edition (Forceware 177.79)
- NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB (Forceware 177.79)
- ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB (Catalyst 8.6)
- ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB (Catalyst 8.6)
The following benchmarks were tested using their built-in time demo or benchmarking tools:
For Windows XP
- Futuremark 3DMark06 (ver 110)
- Company of Heroes (ver 1.3)
- F.E.A.R (ver 1.0)
- Crysis (ver 1.1)
- Unreal Tournament 3 (ver 1.1)
For Windows Vista
- Futuremark 3DMark Vantage (ver 101)
- Crysis (ver 1.21)
Win XP Results - 3DMark06 (ver 110)
We begin our report with 3DMark06, a synthetic benchmark popular with gamers. Predictably, the overclocked 9800 GTs were marginally quicker. And as we expected, the reference Gigabyte 9800 GT produced scores that were similar to that of the older 8800 GT. Also, the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix, being an engineering sample, was slightly slower than the standard GeForce 9800 GT despite having better clocks on paper.
Over at the red camp, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 held its own against the GeForce 9800 GT, whereas its predecessor, the HD 3870 lagged behind quite hopelessly, especially at higher resolutions.
Win XP Results - Company of Heroes & F.E.A.R.
Moving on to real world benchmarking with Company of Heroes, we can see that it was very tight at the top. The Zotac and Palit cards were the faster of the bunch, but only by the smallest of margins. Unfortunately, the Matrix that ASUS sent us was the slowest amongst the four 9800 GT cards that we had. Clearly it needs a bit more work before it can fulfill its full potential and be ready for retail.
The situation, however, changed in F.E.A.R., where we can see that the Radeon HD 4850 was obviously the fastest. In fact, it was almost a good 15% - 20% faster than its closest competitor, the Zotac 9800 GT AMP! Edition. Here, we saw that even the Radeon HD 3870 putting up quite a fight, and it was almost as quick as its NVIDIA rivals right up until anti-aliasing was turned on.
Win XP Results - Crysis & Unreal Tournament 3
In Crysis, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 displayed its prowess as it was once again the quickest of the group. The NVIDIA pack turned out performance figures that were very close to one another, with the Zotac edging it by just a bit. To add on, the GeForce 8800 GT turned out figures that were almost identical to the reference-clocked Gigabyte 9800 GT, while, the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix again failed to impress. Strangely, the 9800 GTs all were unable to run the Crysis benchmark at our highest tested resolution when anti-aliasing was turned on.
In Unreal Tournament 3, the Radeon HD 4850 was the clear leader once again, especially at higher resolutions, which are more demanding. The pack of 9800 GT cards all churned out rather similar performance, with the Zotac being slightly faster than the rest, thanks to its aggressive clocks. The older Radeon HD 3870 finished last mostly, but it was very competitive at the highest resolution.
Win Vista Results - 3DMark Vantage (ver 101)
In case you don't already know, 3DMark Vantage is the latest of the 3DMark series of synthetic benchmark and utilizes the latest DirectX 10 API. Here, the aggressively overclocked Zotac 9800 GT AMP! Edition pulled ahead, with the Palit GeForce 9800 GT Sonic only a shade slower. Also, the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix performs almost on par with the Gigabyte 9800 GT, but considering its rather lackluster performance so far, we think that this could probably be due to the different motherboard used in its case more than anything else.
ATI's Radeon HD 4850 remained competitive especially on the Extreme preset, where it was clearly the best performer. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the older HD 3870, which finished last on all three test presets.
Win Vista Results - Crysis (ver 1.21)
Normally, we test our cards on Crysis in Vista on "Very High" settings, and with both anti-aliasing enabled and disabled. However, considering the fact that the new GeForce 9800 GT is positioned as a mid to high-range graphics card, we've decided to forgo testing the cards with 4x anti-aliasing setting turned on, because the results we got were pretty much meaningless - who plays on only 1.5 fps? Even so, Crysis on "Very High" settings without anti-aliasing is enough to break down the most powerful of graphics cards.
Again, we see that the Zotac 9800 GT AMP! Edition was the quickest of our bunch of 9800 GTs, with ATI's Radeon HD 4850 right up there with it. Gigabyte's 9800 GT, which comes with reference clock speeds, continued to perform similar to the older 8800 GT, proving conclusively that, performance-wise at least, there was no significant difference between the new 9800 GT and the older 8800 GT. The ASUS EN9800GT Matrix trailed again and ASUS probably needs to tweak and refine it before releasing it.
Temperature
The old GeForce 8800 GT was, quite literally, a hot card. Running at 83 degrees Celsius, it was in dire need of a better cooler, and that was why we were particularly concerned about the Zotac 9800 GT AMP! Edition, seeing that it was the most highly overclocked, and yet still sporting what seems to be a reference cooler. Luckily, it topped out at 70 degrees Celsius, not cool, but considering its clock speeds and the fact that it doesn't have any fancy dual-slot cooler, we can't complain.
The ATI cards were pretty warm too, with the newer Radeon HD 4850 topping out at 72 degrees Celsius, and the older HD 3870 at 65 degrees.
The Gigabyte, Palit and ASUS cards which were all sporting radical coolers performed rather well. The Gigabyte and Palit coolers were particularly impressive, as they were able to bring operating temperatures down to around 55 degrees Celsius.
Power Consumption
Here, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 was by far the most power hungry card. It was measured at 350W at load, almost a good 100W more than any other card we have here.
Looking at the NVIDIA contingent, we can see that the two coolest cards were also the most power-hungry. Clearly, running these special coolers requires quite a substantial amount of juice. In comparison, the Zotac 9800 GT AMP! Edition and ASUS Matrix required less power. In the case of the ASUS, it certainly looked at first glance that the self regulating "Hybrid Super Engine" was working, but we can't say for sure without doing more thorough testing (which we may explore with a proper retail version in the future).
Overclocking
Next, we took the five NVIDIA cards and pushed them to their absolute limits by overclocking them, and quite amazingly, all four 9800 GT cards topped out at about 750MHz at the core. Memory was a trickier affair, with the Zotac and Palit cards topping out at almost 2300MHz, whereas the Gigabyte 9800 GT could only manage 1860MHz. For the case of the ASUS Matrix, we couldn't even tweak the memory at all, as it would crash before completing the benchmark test. Certainly, it was justifying its prototype sample billing.
As for the older GeForce 8800 GT, despite using the same G92 core as the GeForce 9800 GT, it maxed out at only 660MHz and 1900MHz, which represents a rather insubstantial 60MHz gain at the core and a 100MHz gain at the memory.
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.
Although ATI's 4850 is the logical mid to high-range card of choice, these 9800 GTs are still very decent options.
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.
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