PNY GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB XLR8 Video Card

Reviews: Hardware

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
PNY
Sep. 2, 2008

Specifications

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Introduction

Looking back, it's hard to fault anyone for every buying an 8800 GTX. It came out in November of 2006 and it is still to this day and excellent performer. And by excellent, I mean King Of The Hill good. Only recently have card been able to go higher up the graphs, and that's just unheard of.

So really, when you're reviewing the 9800 GTX, you're asking, is this finally the card that can replace the best? And, yeah, well. Sorta. I mean, if I put together a machine today, I would definitely buy one, and yes, it's cheaper than the 8800 when it came out, but it wasn't a clear victor--'til the price dropped to $200. No one's asking this card to beat a 200-series card, just improve on history. And of course, compete against the HD 4850.

To compete with the resident champion, we've gone back to the source: since I've had it, my PNY Verto 8800 GTX XLR8 has been my faithful companion on my bench, accumulating more work hours than any other component. We knock off together after work for beers, he's my best bud. Now I'm going to ask him to step into the ring, Rocky style, against a PNY Verto 9800 GTX XLR8. Worth the price of admission.

(Bam! Just like boxing!)

First Impressions

The stock 9800 GTX is, it's worth arguing, very pretty. It's squared off around the heatsink, curved around the fan, and completely shrouded. The openings are all functional, with a large opening for the blower fan and two six-pin power connectors side-to-side at the top. There are no gaps over the heatsink, and any air that passes through it will be exhausted, not ejected into the case. It is dual-slot, if you had any doubts, but with added clearance by the air intake for the covetable multi-card setups where the video cards are back-to-front.

There are two DVI connectors and a video-out DIN connector. The included accessories are: a video out cable for S-Video and component video, a 4-pin Molex-to-6-pin Molex power cable, a VGA adapter, a thick manual, and an installation CD. PNY offers four SKUs of GTX, stock and factory-overclocked, with and without [game]. This is the plainest of the lot, no game, no overclock.

A final touch of class is the black PCB. I loves me some black PCB. Which is also stock, but still; aside from the PNY sticker. It's a nice sticker, with yellow bands that come off a lot more grown-up than a girl-on-insulator, if you get my meaning. (I mean boobs if you don't.)

Specifications

Technical Specifications

- Bus Technology: PCI Express 2.0
- Memory Amount: 512MB GDDR3
- Memory Interface: 256-bit
- Memory Frequency (effective): 2200 MHz
- Memory Data Rate (effective): 2.32 GHz (vs 2.2GHz standard)
- Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec): 74.2 GB/sec. (vs 70.4 GB/sec. standard)
- Core Clock: 725 MHz (vs 675 MHz standard)
- Shader Clock: 1813 MHz (vs 1688 MHz standard)
- Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec): 46.4 Billion/sec. (vs. 43.2 Billion/sec. standard)

Key Features

- NVIDIA unified architecture
- Full Microsoft DirectX 10 Shader Model 4.0 support
- 3-way NVIDIA SLI(R) technology
- NVIDIA PureVideo(R) HD technology
- NVIDIA HybridPower(TM) technology
- Two dual-link DVI and one HDTV output
- High Definition 1080p Display Support
- Dual-link HDCP Capable
- PCI Express 2.0 support
- OpenGL 2.1 support

Minimum System Requirements

- Intel or AMD compatible motherboard
- At least 512MB system RAM
- PCI Express or PCI Express 2.0 compliant motherboard with one x16 graphics slot
- Two 6-pin supplementary power connector
- A minimum 500W or greater system power supply (with 12V current rating of 26A)
- 50 MB of available hard drive space
- CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
- Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, or Vista
- VGA or DVI-I compatible monitor

What's Included

- NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB PCIe Graphics Card
- Quick Installation Guide
- Installation CD, which includes: Detailed installation guide, NVIDIA ForceWare Drivers, Microsoft DirectX 9.0c, NVIDIA GeForce Demos, PNY and NVIDIA Desktop Wallpapers
- 1 DVI-to-VGA adapters
- "Y" Adapter Power Cable

Test Setup

In this review, we'll be comparing the PNY GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB XLR8 to:
- EVGA GeForce GTX 260 896MB FTW
- PNY GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB XLR8
- PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 512MB
- Chaintech GeForce 9600 GT 512MB

All cards were benched on the same test computer with recent drivers (April or newer).

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz

Asus Rampage Formula

2GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 800 @ 4-4-4-12 (Sponsored by Crucial)

Thermaltake Toughpower 1000 (Sponsored by Thermaltake)

Windows Vista Ultimate x64 (Sponsored by Microsoft)

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Page 1: Introduction, First Impressions, Specifications & Test Setup
Page 2: DirectX 10 Titles
Page 3: DX9, OpenGL, and Synthetics
Page 4: Video, Power, and Overclocking
Page 5: Conclusion

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