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ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GT 512MB AMP Video Card
Introduction
One of the greatest things about fabrication processes is that they can be shrunk. Assuming that your architecture is forward-thinking enough, and it navigates issues with power plane-mapping and transistor leakage and all that, you can take your design, make it smaller, run it faster, and use less power. ATI has reaped great successes going from 65nm to 55nm, and NVIDIA is going the same way with their G92 parts. This process will take their 8800 GT, an excellent performer at the time of its release, rename it 9800 GT, and reap away. I mean, that would be the way to do it if you wanted to make any sense whatsoever. Because this is a regular ol' 65nm part. This naming debacle, as frustrating as it is, belies some real amazing progress. And I'm not talking about the addition of HybridSLI to the 8800GT, and certainly not triple-GPU SLI (because you can't do it with this excellent card, and if I knew who's brilliant idea that was, I'd tell you now) or any of the other subtle advantages 98 has over 88. The progress is this: when the 8800 GT was released, it cost about three hundred dollars. One year later, games aren't more demanding, but it can be had for close to a Benjamin. But Zotac doesn't stop there, they take a well-binned example of G92 prowess, overclock it, and give you a copy of XIII Century: Death or Glory for your trouble! Did I mention it only costs $120?     The Card & Bundle This card uses the same single-slot heatsink NVIDIA's been using all year. It's modified from last year's single-slot heatsink with a bigger fan and fan opening for quiet cooling. While it's easy to associate single-slot with ineffective, this reference Cooler Master design has been a reliable source of peace and quiet. Now, with a card overclocked like this example, we'll see. The heatsink is black, but the PCB is a nice navy blue--I first thought it was black, in my torch-lit cave. All of the design is reference, and the card is nondescript compared with other mainstream cards of the current generation. The sticker's got a dragon on it. Not a wench riding a dragon, nor a dragon huntress. If there wasn't an SLI connector at the top, along with a single 6-pin auxiliary power connector, you might not know that it was, in fact, a video card. Without cheesecake, not even the dual-DVI connectors would grant that insight.         There's a familiar bundle, complete with video breakout cable (component and s-video) VGA and HDMI adapters, audio patch cable (for audio over HDMI) 4-pin-to-6-pin Molex adapter, manual, driver disk, and XIII Century game disk.
Page 1: Introduction, The Card & Bundle
Page 2: Specifications and Setup Page 3: DirectX 10 Titles Page 4: DX9, OpenGL, and Synthetics Page 5: Video, Power, and Overclocking Page 6: Conclusion 
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