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Before I start ... I have to say this. If you look at our graphic card section, you'll notice that most of the reviews are based on ATI Radeon cards. Let me explain ... it's not that I'm biased and prefer ATI Radeon cards over Nvidia, but for some reason most of the manufacturers that we deal with, are close partners with AMD/ATI. Although Nvidia Geforce cards have in the past been the prefered choice for gamers, ATI Radeon are seriously making big gains in the graphics card market. This is all thanks to their Radeon HD 48xx series of graphic cards ... and at that time, they were cheaper than Nvidia's equivalent, with performance that were just as good.

Palit Microsystems Ltd, is a dedicated graphics card and motherboard manufacturer with their head quarters based in Hong Kong. They own several other companies including Xpertvision, Vvikoo and Gainward. Palit is quite unique in the sense that, they are one of only a few manufacturers who are partners of both Nvidia and AMD. Normally, you're either partners with one OR the other ... rarely both. Here's a little blurb taken from their website.

"Established in 1988, Palit Microsystems Ltd. is well-known for manufacturing stable, excellent, and innovative graphics accelerators and motherboards. As one of the top PC components manufacturers, Palit continues to provide top-to-button graphics cards and motherboards with stable and excellent quality to the world. With headquarter in Hong Kong, factories in Mainland China, and branch offices in Germany and Taipei, Palit has developed worldwide sales network and cooperated closely with our customers."

Thanks to my friend at Palit, who I met in Computex 2008 ... we can now take a look at the Palit Geforce 9800GTX+. What makes this graphics card different from other standard Geforce GTXs, is the fact that this version, the GTX+, uses Nvidia's latest G92 GPU produced from their 55nm technology process. The actual GPU is clocked a little higher and it offers a higher texture fill rate of 47.2 billion/sec. Take a look at the table below.

When AMD/ATI released their Radeon HD 48xx cards, they were already using 55nm GPUs, along with support for DX 10.1, custom anti-aliasing, 800 stream processors, 2-Way, 3-Way and 4-Way Crossfire. With all these new exciting technologies, Nvidia was stumpped. A massive price war emerged, with Nvidia drastically lowering their prices.

Lowering prices is one thing, but what about the new tech stuff? Surely, Nvidia must come up with something "new" ... Well, finally after several months, Nvidia is trying to gain some respect by introducing their new 55nm GPUs in the form of the Geforce 9800GTX+. Incidently, Nvidia's higher-end Geforce GTX260 and GTX280 are still based on older 65nm GPUs. Nvidia plans to replace these older GPUs the newer 55nm GPUs over the next few months.

That's not it ... there's going to be a lot more to come from Nvidia. We've recently heard that they're concentrating their efforts on finding new ways to fully utilise the GPU, to maximise productivity in Adobe and other graphic intensive software. There have been rumours about turning their new IGPs into fully fledged CPUs, whether that will ever happen remains to be seen. But more importantly, Nvidia have introduced and delivered new and exciting technologies such as CUDA, Hybrid SLI and of course their PhysX technology.

Let's move on ... In this review, we'll be taking a look at the Palit Geforce 9800GTX+. It utilises Nvidia's new 55nm G92 GPU, which is slightly overclocked @ 745Mhz, and features 512Mb of DDR3 memory at 2200Mhz (1100x2). It supports DX10, PhysX, 2-Way/3-Way SLI and comes 128 processor streams as well as a 256-bit memory interface. The card comes with its own unique custom heatpipe cooler can takes up 2 PCIe slots. We're expecting good performance from this card ... and should compete very well against others in its class.

In our tests we'll be using several GPU intensive DX10 games ... with both 4xAA and 16xAF options enabled, as well as your usual 3D Mark 2005, 2006 and Vantage tests. Our test rig includes an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ default 2.4Ghz, Gigabyte GA-X48 DQ6 (X48) motherboard, Kingston HyperX DDR2 PC2-9200 2Gb Kit, PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 860W PSU and a 24" Samsung SyncMaster 245B LCD monitor. All-in-all, it's a decently spec'd system for DX10 gaming.

OK, let's not waste any more time and take a closer look at the Palit Geforce 9800GTX+ (512Mb DDR3) ...