BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,626
BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX - NVIDIA is launching the successor to the GeForce 8800 GTX! Will the new GeForce 9800 GTX live up to the impressive legacy of the 8800 GTX? Is the 9800 GTX an upgrade? Or is it a step backwards? We evaluate the new card from BFGTech.

The 9800 GTX is a not an upgrade for the gamer already using an 8800 GTX. There are a few reasons that the 9800 GTX is a better product than the 8800 GTX, but gaming is not one of them. If you are a gamer and were hoping to upgrade, today is not the day if you already own pretty much any 8800 series card. Here’s hoping real next-gen technology will be seen in a “9900” series soon.
Click to expand...
 
The only thing that impressed me was power consumption and the temperature of the 9800GTX.
 
quote of the day:

"The 9800 GTX is a not an upgrade for the gamer already using an 8800 GTX. There are a few reasons that the 9800 GTX is a better product than the 8800 GTX, but gaming is not one of them."



excellent direct answer then i guess i wont upgrade my 8800gtx sli
 
i havent been keeping up very well lately, so i should have seen this comming, but im rather dissapointed

yet another card which performs very similar to a 8800GTX. Nvidia is doing nicely with the lowering of its prices and offering new in between cards such as the 9600GT and the 8800GT, but the fact remains that they havent been able to reliably outperform a 8800GTX....

not that i care all that much, my GTS320 still serves me well, but the way this is going, either game-devs have to stop all the graphical enhancements, or SLI is going to be a requirement pretty soon for any enthusiast, with Quad-sli a very common thing for the high end people
 
8800GTX was released in 2006... when are we going to get some seriously new generation stuff :(

Very frustrating.
 
It would have been nice if you guys had compared the performance to the 9800 GX2... or will you do that in a seperate 9800 GTX SLi review?
The reason I ask is because I've been bitterly disappointed with 9800GX2 quad... in CoD4 I get lag!!! What the hell is that :mad: So if 9800 GTX sli is faster and more consistent than single gx2 I will change over (I'm already selling my second GX2 - I bought it on launch day so the [H] review wasn't out yet).

Edit* I wish I hadn't sold my trusty 8800 GTX, *sigh*... I'm longing for an alternative properly high end solution from ATI so I can give nvidia a slap in the face :mad:

Nope, all the information is already there for you to read. Will not be doing the work twice. - Kyle
 
well i was expecting this so buying 8800gts 512 is better idea i think
 
haha, you can thank ATI for this.. without any competition this is what we get.
 
Nice job on the review. Your temperature numbers for the GTS seem a bit high though. Idle of 73C?


Looks like I'll be keeping my 8800GTS until the next generation cards. Idling at 53C...

Yes, that one is a bit high from what might be considered the norm, but that is where that stock card lands. Different GPUs have different leakage. - Kyle

Thanks Kyle, just a little concerned. Have tested many G92's all idling < 60C. Must be my ice cold AC ;)
 
Another g92 variant...these cards (new 8800gts included, maybe even 8800gt) should have been the 8900, not a new series...8900gt, gts, gtx, and gx2, leavint the old 8800's alone...now we get crappy new 9800s :(
 
Excellent review. Much better than other sites Ive read so far.

In conclusion.. if you have any 8800 series card currently, its not worth the upgrade bang per buck wise.

But if coming from an older generation (6/7/8600/8400 series), then its a worthy investment at the current time (unless of course you can pick up a great deal on an 8800GTX / GTS 512)

My 8800GTX OC is safe for another year probably !

PS UK Pricing is £252 from overclockers for the 9800GTX, £405 for the 9800GX2, and £164 for an 8800GTS 512 or £200 for an 8800GTX.
 
Hey Kyle, no beef with your (excellent) review I was just wondering whether [H] will be looking at dual/tri 9800gtx performance in a future review, as you did with the 9800 GX2 (seperate review for the GX2 alone and in quad SLi).
Hope I didn't come across as complaining :)
 
lewchenko said:
Excellent review. Much better than other sites Ive read so far.

In conclusion.. if you have any 8800 series card currently, its not worth the upgrade bang per buck wise.

But if coming from an older generation (6/7/8600/8400 series), then its a worthy investment at the current time (unless of course you can pick up a great deal on an 8800GTX / GTS 512)

My 8800GTX OC is safe for another year probably !

PS UK Pricing is £252 from overclockers for the 9800GTX, £405 for the 9800GX2, and £164 for an 8800GTS 512 or £200 for an 8800GTX.
Click to expand...
get the GTS
 
Good review as always, but a truly disappointing product. Sure, the price is appealing, but I was expecting a performance increase of at least 30% over the 8800 GTX. This is a little more than an overclocked 8800 GTS 512, which begs to ask, why did NVIDIA launch the 8800 GTS 512 in the first place ?

The only 9 series GeForce worth while, is definitely the 9600 GT IMO.
 
Nice review, thanks. I have an order from one since I currently have an ATI X800 Pro. Unfortunatly here in Australia the 8800GTX is still $500AU which definetly makes the 9800GTX quite attractive...my preorder was for $420AU. I do agree that for 8800 owners it's an underwhelming card but.
 
Im surprised to see that [H] didint use the catalyst 8.3 hotfix drivers, they make a huge difference. And the 3870x2 has gddr3, not gddr4 like the 3870. But otherwise, good review.


8.3 CCC Noted on Test Setup Page. And trust me, they do NOT change performance in a HUGE way so as to change the strata laid out in this review. - Kyle
 
Smigit said:
Nice review, thanks. I have an order from one since I currently have an ATI X800 Pro. Unfortunatly here in Australia the 8800GTX is still $500AU which definetly makes the 9800GTX quite attractive...my preorder was for $420AU. I do agree that for 8800 owners it's an underwhelming card but.
Click to expand...

The 9800 GTX is an attractive product, to everyone without a 8800 card, especially considering the price, but it definitely doesn't break any performance barrier, as is pointed out in the review. I say you've made a good decision, but as a whole and 18 months later, this is a disappointing product, because it really does not bring anything new.
 
Another great review. Will we be seeing a review in the future of the 9800GTX in SLI (or TRI SLI)? I'm in kind of a weird spot right now, as I could upgrade my 2 512 GTSs to 9800 GTXs for roughly 100-150$and trying to figure out if I should scratch that itch XD.
 
another vote for keeping my 8800gtx sli, how disappointing :mad:, if it had been as bit better I would have considered it to keep my electricity consumption down, would have liked to have seen sli scaling in this review plus tri sli
 
for me, comming from a 6600GT, the 9800GTX looks worth it - so I'll be getting one
 
Gott said:
The only thing that impressed me was power consumption and the temperature of the 9800GTX.
Click to expand...

While this might seem to be a small thing, it is actually quite huge. Proper thermal management and control of power is one of, if not the most important aspect of IC design. The fact that nVidia, while not providing a better significantly better "gaming experience", is putting themselves in a good position for a nice release this fall with the 99xx series.

The same writing was on the wall with the Pentium M series from Intel when the AMD 64bit series was beating up on the netburst style P4. Most of knew that with that processor architecture that AMD was in a world of hurt in a less than a year.
 
Thanks for the great review... but I want to see how this puppy does in SLI.
So on that note will [H] be doing a review of the 9800GTX in SLI or tri SLI?

EDIT:
imho the 9600GT in SLI still seems the best bang for the buck ;)
 
AthlonXP said:
haha, you can thank ATI for this.. without any competition this is what we get.
Click to expand...

You know, I don't think we can really blame ATI anymore. Look at the performance from these cards, with the exception of Crysis we can really play any game at 1920x1080 at high settings with solid frame rate.

I beleive that this situation we are in now is something were not really used to, hardware being ahead of software for an extended period of time. Look at how long the 8800GTX has been out, but it still dominates, look at the performace capabilities of the 9600GT, look at the fact that ATI has not released a high end part, that their best is siimply 2 mainstream gpus on a single card and performs well for what it is.

It's the game devs we need to focus the blame on for not pushing the limits.

And sure some one could mention Crysis but I think we all know that the code is garbage and they spent all that time from the game delays to duct tape, glue and what ever else methods to get the code stable enough to release the game.
 
Thank you [H] for the excellent review: I wonder if its SLI performance has better scaling than the 8800GTS/GTX. In any case, as was reported elsewhere, the 9800 series will supposedly be a short lived line as the 9900 series is due out in summer.
 
Trepidati0n said:
While this might seem to be a small thing, it is actually quite huge. Proper thermal management and control of power is one of, if not the most important aspect of IC design. The fact that nVidia, while not providing a better significantly better "gaming experience", is putting themselves in a good position for a nice release this fall with the 99xx series.
Click to expand...

With better cooling, I can only imagine how far you'll be able to push this (and newer) card before it becomes unstable.

If we see better power consumption, lower temperatures from here on out, I'd say we'll see something that will be a shocker in the very near future. nVidia's stand on those two components is a good thing - we're just stuck in a time where AMD/ATi has been lacking behind.
 
GenBanks said:
Hey Kyle, no beef with your (excellent) review I was just wondering whether [H] will be looking at dual/tri 9800gtx performance in a future review, as you did with the 9800 GX2 (seperate review for the GX2 alone and in quad SLi).
Hope I didn't come across as complaining :)
Click to expand...

I don't see us spening the time and money to cover it. Scaling beyond SLI pretty much sucks and I don't see us suggesting it widely any time soon. We have some other projects that are a higher priority now and you guys will likely agree when you read the upcoming content.

I would suggest the 9800 GTX SLI is going to note fare well against 8800 GTX SLI due to the 9800 GTX "SURELY" being hampered by memory bottlenecks at that point. I have to ask, "Why?" too. There are hopefully some upcoming 2008 titles that will give cause to look at it in the future. Maybe FarCry 2, STALKER: Clear Sky, Fallout 3, or Borderlands, (maybe Alan Wake.) will give us reason to hope for next-gen tech. :)
 
indeed, I can't wait :D

annoying though that this info about 9900 is appearing, there's always news of something better that makes you wonder if you should wait
 
Great review Kyle. I like the very straight-forward honest comparison you have done.

Even so, I don't own a 8800 series card so I will likely upgrade to this since it does seem like a marginal improvement overall.

I also agree with others that its the game devs and the popularity of "last-gen" game consoles like the Wii that are stagnating the release of true next-gen tech. The software simply isn't there.
 
Unless nVidia has something better up their sleeve, I'll probably step up to this as late as I possibly can... would've liked the whatever's-coming-after-the-9800s, but this isn't too shabby at all. :)
 
As poorly as the new 9800 GTX performs, I keep hoping this is an April Fools joke. But I know it aint :(

ATI/AMD isn't bringing any competition to the table yet, so why should NVDIA burn the midnight oil trying to bring out some new tech. The thing is, this card WILL sell with its Green improvements (that most people who buy it will never use) and Tri-SLI (ditto) and HD playback enhancements (which other tech will most likely render redundant).

I guess what it all comes down to is [H]ard Gamers don't drive the industry. I wonder how many people will see the "98" and configure their next Dell with it.
 
Looks like Q3/Q4 will be the real upgrade time for both camps.

Just wondering how many of these will sell since there is no real value in replacing current 8800xxx cards.
 
Well I just bought a 8800GTX and it looks like I made a good move, maybe in less than 90 days we will see something better that may allow me to "step-up."

Thanks for this review [H], have been waiting for it.
 
You guys have got the stupidest review system known to man, and it's getting worse.

Who even decides which settings you turn off and why is the allowable framerate different from card to card? I honestly think knowing your previous Nvidia fanboy status, that you cant be trusted to not be really short thrifting ATI cards with some of your settings choices (giving ATI cards a raw deal by turning down settings on ATI that have little performance impact, but then show up in a box as clearly inferior to the Nvidia card). For example, for all I know some random hypothetical setting like "shadow aliasing" may have no impact on ATI framerate, but if you turn it to low instead of high, the framerate might stay the same, but now in the settings box, it makes the ATI card look inferior. (and who decides which settings are important anyway?).

THE BOTTOM LINE IS YOU ARE NOT MAKING EQUAL COMPARISONS. PERIOD.

I'm not claiming 3870X2 is as fast, we all know from other apples to apples reviews that it isn't. But still.

And "gameplay advantages"? has it really come to that that you have to explain what 4X AA does over 2XAA in a little box called "gameplay advantages"? You have to spell such trivialities out?
 
Why did you waste a whole page explaining the differences between the 8800GTX and the 9900GTX when you could just have said "its just a GTS with higher clocks, oh and an extra sli connector"
 
Awesome review, Mark.
I would have liked to see some IQ pictures, but hey, I can't complain too much.
That cooler is interesting. I like the fact that Nvidia actually cares about the aesthetic component of their cards, making the shroud sleek and nice.
I would have liked to see a bigger performance delta from the 8800gtx.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top