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Tags : 512Mb DDR3   G92   Geforce 9800GT   Gigabyte   Graphic Cards   nvidia   Reviews   zalman cooler  

Introduction Specifications Photos and Pictures A Closer Look and Installation Test Setup, Procedures and GPU-Z Benchmarks: F.E.A.R. (DX9) Benchmarks: Call of Juarez (DX10) Benchmarks: Crysis (DX10) Benchmarks: 3DMark 2005 Benchmarks: 3DMark 2006 Benchmarks: Vantage and Furmark Overclocking Verdict and Conclusion

Nvidia's Geforce 9800GT ... It's the replacement for the 8800GT. But Gigabyte's version offers a lot more than meets the eye. 

 

INTRODUCTION 

What we have here for review is Gigabyte’s version of the 9800GT. Nvidia’s decision to release the 9800GT is timely in that the arrival of ATI’s HD 4000 series has been widely acclaimed. Whilst the 9800GT is clearly no competition for the 4000 series at high resolutions, and you will unlikely see a 9800GT in an extreme performance system, Nvidia do not want to see a decrease in their market share. One way to do that is by releasing a product that will fit nicely into the midrange market at a competitive price. Companies make much of their money from the mid and lower range of their products. Whilst the high end cards will grab the limelight, and the attention of reviewers and consumers alike, it is these less powerful offerings that will grab the lion share of the market.  This explains why Intel holds first place in desktop graphics arena. Nvidia did see a dip in sales in the first two quarters of 2008, and have repriced their product range to both meet the competition from ATI, and the effects of the world wide financial down turn.

The GV-N98TZL-512H comes equipped with 512mb of DDR3 RAM running at 1800Mhz (900Mhz x2), a 600Mhz Nvidia G92 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), and a nice copper Zalman heatsink. The Zalman keeps the 65nm GPU very cool without the need for you to rush out and buy some ear plugs or an aftermarket cooler. Gigabyte must be commended for providing a decent heatsink, as this inclusion will hopefully satisfy most consumers wanting to replace the standard offering, and thus prevent them from invalidating their warranty.

 

 

With the Gigabyte retailing for around £100, it’s not going to make a big dent in the wallet. If you want to run modern PC games at resolutions exceeding 1600x1200 with maximum detail, then this card is not for you.

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However, if you are happy to game with low to moderate AA and AF settings at lower resolutions, then a 9800GT may be an attractive option.

Before I get on to the review, I just want to air a general note of concern about graphics card builders, and their sometimes bewildering naming policy. If you don’t want to hear my gripes then move on quickly.

As you probably know all too well by now computer hardware continues to develop year by year. What was top of the tree 12 months ago will invariably be pushed aside by its more muscular and feature packed successor.

The big two, Nvidia, and ATI (AMD), tend to explain this performance increase by changing a few numbers. For example the GeForce range in the recent past has included the 5000, 6000, 7000, 800, and more recently the 9000 series. The 8000 range included the 8400, 8500, 8600, and the 8800. In general, the higher the number, the better the performance. Nvidia has skipped the 10000 series, and instead has opted to name its latest GPU the 200 series. So far, so good.

 

 

However, the situation is made a little more complex in that within a specific product range, again we will look at the GeForce 8 family, we see the inclusion of an accompanying suffix. Nvidia tend to stick to the same suffixes such as Ultra, GTX, GTS, GT, and GS, again to help the poor consumer know what they are purchasing. Again each suffix will indicate how fast each card is. However, the general public do not always grasp the subtleties of this naming structure, and will sometimes hang on to the notion that more of something is a good rule to stick by, no matter what the name.

My time in computer retail often brought me in contact with Dai Public (Joe’s Welsh cousin) who would unwittingly believe that graphics card A with 512mb of RAM was always better than graphics card B, which only had 256mb of RAM. The fact that the A had a faster GPU and RAM, didn’t mean too much to the poor bloke. So Dai would go home install his new card, if he hadn’t spoken to me, and then wonder why his new card rendered his new game a slide show.

 

             

 

I believe that graphics card producers and retailers owe it to the customer, and to their own business ethos, to be informative as possible in order to avoid such happenings. A disgruntled consumer may well be put off upgrading their beige box after such an incident, and thus miss out on the many benefits the modern PC has to offer. It’s easy then to see how the PC industry can also lose out.

You are probably wondering why I am raising this issue instead of getting on with the review. Well it’s like this. The 9800GT in its current guise is really a slightly tweaked 8800GT, and I mean ever so slightly. A quick visit to http://www.nvidia.com/ will reveal that the 8800GT specs are pretty much identical to the 9800GT specs (see below). So if you have already determined that the 8800GT (A) was not the upgrade path for you, then the 9800GT (B) should also be discarded. If however, after doing some research you think the 9800GT is a good choice, then I believe this Zalman shod offering by Gigabyte is certainly a worthy option. Not only do you get what it says on the tin, it is a 8800/9800GT, you get a little bit more if you wish to squeeze every last drop out of it. I managed to get the review sample running at 750Mhz (GPU) 2200Mhz (RAM), 1875Mhz (Shader) putting it on par with the 9800GTX. But before we look at the overclocking performance, let’s first look at the specifications.

 

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Introduction Specifications Photos and Pictures A Closer Look and Installation Test Setup, Procedures and GPU-Z Benchmarks: F.E.A.R. (DX9) Benchmarks: Call of Juarez (DX10) Benchmarks: Crysis (DX10) Benchmarks: 3DMark 2005 Benchmarks: 3DMark 2006 Benchmarks: Vantage and Furmark Overclocking Verdict and Conclusion