Related Articles

Impressions

As mentioned, the 9800GTX shares many similarities with the 8800 GTS 512MB, and these similarities hold true when it comes to appearance. The 9800 GTX is a bit longer than the 8800 GTS 512MB, in part to accommodate the second SLI connector, which allows for something the 8800 GTS 512MB can not do: run in a 3-way SLI setup. The 9800GTX is a very long card, and will most definitely hang off the end of your motherboard. The 9800GTX is also very thick, and it takes up every possible millimeter allowed for its designation as a double-width card.

So far, every 9800GTX released has followed the standard reference design, and our Palit 9800 GTX is no exception. Appearance wise, there is nothing that separates it from our recently reviewed XFX 9800 GTX, besides the sticker bearing the Palit logo, and the infamous cyber-frog Frobot. Underneath Frobot, the cooling is supplied by an array of heat fins, which are cooled by a fan placed just right of the GPU. Thanks in part to an extended plastic shroud, the cooler pushes most of the exhaust hot air out of the bracket, out of your case. Another favorable attribute of this cooling solution is that it is fairly quiet: only when the GPU is very stressed does the fan get loud enough to really notice.

The 9800GTX has a trouble-shooting LED on the end of the card, which changes colors depending on any problems that you might run into. This move to use LEDs appeared recently with ATI's HD3870X2, and then on the 9800 GX2 -- making it seem likely that all future higher-end cards may contain this feature. Another specification of this card that stands out is the S/PDIF connector along the top of the card, which when used with a optional dongle (which is unfortunately absent in the Palit 9800GTX bundle) audio can be transmitted from a sound card to your video card to be channeled through the HDMI output.

Specifications  

In many respects, the 9800 GTX can be seen as a overclocked 8800 GTS 512MB with higher quality GDDR3 memory. However, as testing has shown, 9800GTX cards do have superior overclocking potential, on average, compared to their 8800 GTS 512MB brethren.

Leading to disappointment among many of members of the gaming public, the 9800GTX actually has less memory bandwidth than the 8800 GTX. This has been only the second time that that NVIDIA has released a subsequent high-end card that is has less memory bandwidth than the previous flagship model. NVIDIA has countered that their internal testing has shown this not to be a severe limitation to the 9800 GTX's performance -- and in most situations this may be true, but common sense says that at extremely high resolutions, the 8800 GTX's 384 bit memory interface will give a natural advantage in comparison to the 9800GTX.

Left image: Asus EN8800 GTX, Palit 9800 GTX, BFG 8800 GTS 640MB       Right image: Palit 9800 GTX beside a Asus EN8800GTX

Two of the more notable features that the 9800 GTX has -- that are not found on the 8800 GTX -- is HybridPower capability, and the potential for 3-way SLI. HybridPower is an energy efficient feature that allows your system to run in reduced power mode when in 2D mode, only supplying full power to your video card when more GPU performance is required (such as when you are playing games.) While this feature is great to see, it unfortunately is only able to be taken advantage with HybridPower capable motherboards, which so far, have not yet been released. 3-way SLI is a welcome feature to have -- but out of the gates, it will only be the extremely few that will want to shell out the money for three 9800 GTX cards. However, if you have the motherboard that supports 3-way SLI, having three cards could become a reasonable upgrade path down the road, when say, two years from now, you might be able to pick up a used 9800 GTX for maybe $150.

The Palit 9800 GTX is also HDCP capable, and with the PureVideo engine, can decode high quality DVD movie and video with only putting a minimal strain on your CPU. The 9800 GTX also is supports DirectX 10.0, OpenGL 2.1, and Shader Model 4.00.