Legit Reviews

XFX and Palit GeForce 9800 GTX Video Cards

Video cards are launching left and right these days and it’s been a confusing time for many consumers. Trying to tell people that many of the latest GeForce 8 series cards have the same core as the GeForce 9 series isn’t an easy thing to do. To complicate things even more, NVIDIA has been reducing the frame buffer size on the latest video cards. This is not only confusing to consumers, but the media as well. Today is no different, so sit back and we will try to walk you through what is going on with the GeForce 9800 GTX!

This is by far one of the toughest cards that we have had to draw a conclusion on since we started reviewing video cards when the site started back in 2002. The GeForce 9800 GTX is not faster across the board than the GeForce 8800 GTX that came out back in 2006 as the benchmarks showed. To many readers this may be a disappointment and we'd be lying if we said it doesn't bother us too. When it comes to just raw gaming performance the GeForce 9800 GTX is more of an evolutionary advancement than revolutionary. If you are looking to play at high resolutions with high anti-aliasing it seems that the GeForce 8800 GTX is still the best choice in the majority of the game titles we looked at here today...

Article Title: XFX and Palit GeForce 9800 GTX Video Cards
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/686/1/
MSRP: $299 - $349

I still think the frog is cool

Please sign me up for a frog poster!

good read, i thought the GTX was gonna be G94 NOT G92 i knew the 9800GTX wasnt much of an improvement over the 8800 going into this read, but basically less than 15 fps across the board and worse in some, come on

i still hate seeing ATI cards in the lightsmark comparison, i think we all know that ATI got the short end of the stick there(i know, i know, he was not playing favorites with the benchmark) but to us ATI owners(newly having a 3870x2 myself) it's kinda like a slap in the face compared to other benchmarks, having all nvidia flavors on top and all ATI on bottom

Well it all comes down to comparison. When you compare the 9800 GTX (G92) to the 8800 GTX (G80), it is most certainly an improvement.

I expect to see a new and improved core, just as happened with the 8xxx series, later this year. Keep your eyes peeled for the 9800GTS and 9800GT with the new core.

And as far as Nvidia vs. ATI...its not slanted, "IT IS WHAT IT IS".

i thought the 8800GTX was G92, it didnt change either?(along with Ultra)

very informative review. Nvidia i think all in all two words sum up this card: EPIC FAIL
@nate: errors i found:

Results: At a resolution of 1600x1200 with high quality settings the GeForce 8800 GTX pulls ahead and leaves the GeForce 9800 GTX in the dust. At 1600x1200 with high quality settings we know it is CPU limited at 50FPS as Quad-SLI and CrossFireX all come in at 50FPS and were removed from the chart. The Intel QX9650 might be one of the fastest processors money can buy, but it just happens to be limiting performance here.

i might be missing something with this one, but acording to the graphs the 8800gtx and 9800gtx did about the same in each test

i know this may seem like small stuff but this is a big review so i think it should be as close to perfect as possible

The GeForce 8800 GTX was 22% faster at 1600x1200, so it pretty much left the GeForce 9800 GTX in the dust in my book.

oh i see it now, i probably just had a brain fart. sorry about that

According to your article, the 9800GTX is more or less the same as the 8800GTX in terms of speed. At AnandTech, however, the 9800GTX is faster than the 8800GTX. I'll use CoD4 for example. At 1920X1200, the 9800GTX puts out about 39FPS in your article. In the AnandTech article, the 9800GTX turns out almost 54FPS with 4X AA turned on.

Now I understand different hardware will have an impact on performance, but the difference can't be that huge right? Both you and AnandTech were using the same NVIDIA drivers. The only reason I can come up with about this huge difference in performance is that either something went wrong with the test setups, or that the graphic settings are different from each other. I know it's hard to compare the same hardware on different review sites since the use of different hardware and settings make everything harder, but it's just weird to see that big of a difference.

The article about the 9800GTX can be found here.

Edit:On AnandTech, the 9800GTX is actually faster on most of the games they tested the 9800GTX, with the exception of a few games running at 1920X1200 and up. In your tests, the performance of the 9800GTX is almost the same as the 8800GTX and 8800 Ultra.

Sorry if I sound critical.

The addition of another QX9775 on the skulltrail platform might be the reason?

Dan

Well for starters you really can't compare the numbers...

My test system used a single Intel QX9650 at 3.0GHz and they used 2x Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 @ 3.20GHz, so they used a server platform for testing. They also used SP1 for Vista 64-bit and I used all of the patches for Vista 64-bit with all the Microsoft/NVIDIA hot fixes without SP1. As for higher frame rates... I use FRAPS in the toughest part of the game I can find. In Tomb Raider for example I played the game for nearly two hours to find the spot in the game that put the most stress on the cards and then saved the location, so I can run FRAPS in that section. Others might not do that. I know another site runs the opening cinematic for Call of Duty 4 where the chopper is going to the ship for their test... To me that isn't real game play. No worries on your questions, they are valid.

did palit make any changes to the reference designs like they did all there other cards

8800gtx woulda been an amazing investment when it first came out, two years and still going strong :-/ how long until a card comes that blows everything out of the water so i can buy it :D

maj0r_pawnage wrote: how long until a card comes that blows everything out of the water so i can buy it :D

GX2 i guess it DOES outperform 2 3870 X2's in some cases and scales impressively

skierkid450 wrote:

maj0r_pawnage wrote: how long until a card comes that blows everything out of the water so i can buy it :D

GX2 i guess it DOES outperform 2 3870 X2's in some cases and scales impressively

anything on the scale of the 8series :D

I have a question. Maybe I missed it, but which card, XFX or Palit, overclocked to 800MHz on the core?

xaim00 wrote:I have a question. Maybe I missed it, but which card, XFX or Palit, overclocked to 800MHz on the core?

Actually both were able to hit roughly the same speed... The core on the XFX was able to go a tab bit higher, but wasn't stable.... I was running benchmarks with the shaders at 2100MHz though ;)