Product Listing

ASUS EN9800GT Matrix - Is This 'The One'?

By Kenny Yeo - 20 Oct 2008

Test Setup

Test Setup

As usual, we'll be putting the ASUS EN9800GT Matrix through its paces on our XP and Vista system. Readers of our 9800 GT roundup will know we encountered problems with the EN9800GT with our trusty Vista and again, the same problem arose.

We contacted ASUS about this and the guys at their R&D department reckoned that it could be due to our PSU. This was quite an oddity as we've ran extremely power hungry cards on the same PSU, which mind you, is a monster 1.2KW unit from Thermaltake. After replacing the PSU with an Antec Quattro 1KW PSU, the card finally worked. When we enquired further, we couldn't get a lot more details other than the sequence of starting the 12V & 3V3 lines affect power IC functionality.

We pressed on with testing the card now that it was working. Here the specifications of our test systems as listed below:

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

The last time we tested the ASUS EN9800GT Matrix, it was an engineering sample and so understandably, it did not perform quite as well as we would have hoped. This time however, with a retail version in hand, there can be no excuses, and it'll be interesting to see how it matches up with the other 9800 GTs.

Other key tests that we'll be paying close attention to include the temperature and overclocking tests. ASUS reckons that the EN9800GT Matrix can be easily overclocked to 750MHz at the core, 2000MHz at the memory and 1753MHz at the shaders, thanks to its Super Hybrid Engine, which is quite impressive.

Here's the list of cards and the tested driver versions:

  • Gigabyte 9800 GT 512MB (Forceware 177.79)
  • MSI NX9800GT-T2D512-OC (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)

And 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)
Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.