Conclusion
If you were expecting the GeForce 9800 GTX to shatter the performance of the GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra, you're no doubt pretty disappointed right now. Unfortunately despite the new name, the 9800 GTX doesn't break any new ground for NVIDIA when it comes to performance – the board is essentially a slightly tweaked GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB with the addition of 3-Way SLI support being its primary advantage. In comparison to the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, the clocks on the 9800 GTX are just 4% higher on the GPU, and 12% on the memory.
The card performs basically on par with the GeForce 8800 GTX based on our testing. As a result, the 9800 GTX will replace the GeForce 8800 GTX in NVIDIA's lineup, while the GeForce 9800 GX2 replaces the GeForce 8800 Ultra.
The way NVIDIA sees it, the GeForce 9800 GTX basically gives end users all the performance of an 8800 GTX card with all the benefits of G92; namely better power consumption thanks to the 9800's smaller manufacturing process, and better video thanks to its new VP2 video processor. The GeForce 9800 GTX also supports HybridPower. It does all this while selling for around $350, which is considerably less than the GeForce 8800 GTX when it was launched back in November 2006. That's their belief at least.
The problem though is that the graphics landscape has changed quite a bit in the past six months. As we stated before, the introduction of the GeForce 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512MB were game changing products that really raised our expectations when it comes to performance. Because of its conservative clocks, the 9800 GTX adds so little over the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB that a factory OC'ed GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB card like the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTS SSC should be able to outrun it in games! Because of this, we're really not sure why this GPU is needed at all. In our opinion, this card's introduction is only going to confuse consumers more because it adds so little over the 8800s despite the new name.
If there's one bright spot when it comes to this GPU, it may be overclocking. NVIDIA obviously bins the best G92 chips for use in GeForce 9800 GTX cards, and it definitely showed in our OC'ing results. We were able to hit speeds of 785MHz core/1229MHz memory! That's much better scaling than we were expecting considering the rather conservative stock clocks.
In all honesty, the excellent scaling we saw just confuses us more. With NVIDIA locking all of their board partners down to the same (stock) clocks for today's launch, you'd think it was because the GPU doesn't OC very far, but apparently it does. If they'd clocked the GPU a little higher, or at least allowed the board manufacturers to OC, the 9800 GTX would fare a little better in comparison to the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. Instead our impression is that it's just a mild performance upgrade over the GTS 512MB.
Fortunately we're hearing that the first factory OC'ed boards should be announced in the coming weeks. Hopefully these boards will really push the envelope when it comes to clock speeds, because as it stands now, we think most of our readers should probably save a little money by picking up the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and OC'ing it on your own.
