PALiT Geforce 9800 GTX Graphics Card ... affordable SLI for high end users?

INTRODUCTION

A flurry of video cards have been released in the last few weeks. A mind boggling assortment ranging from the 9800GTX+, GTX260, GTX280, ATI 4850 and ATI 4870. However, the card I will be looking at today from PALiT multimedia is the slightly older variant of the 9800GTX+ the 9800GTX. 

 

The NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card is mainly just a die shrink of the G92-based GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card. The original GeForce 9800 GTX has a core frequency of 675MHz and the 128 processors cores (shader clocks) operating at 1688 MHz. The new 55nm 9800GTX+ die is able to run a core clock of 738 MHz and a processor clock of 1836 MHz. The memory remains the same at 1100MHz. However, the new die shrink comes with a higher cost as the 9800GTX+ has a MSRP of around $229.00 in US funds. 

 

One might wonder with all the new hardware on the market, why consider an older variant? Well for starters the new releases have pushed this product into the MSRP of $199.00 US funds. Taking that into account, and the fact that this particular product can be configured into an NVIDIA 3-Way SLI configuration (imagine Tri-SLI for sub $600.00 price), this card could still be very enticing. While the 9800GTX+ is the newer faster flavor, budget SLI enthusiasts may wish to invest in the older variant.