On 8th of April, NVIDIA gave their partners a green light on selling overclocked GeForce 9800 GTX cards. Hours later, we already have received a bunch of links to various GeForce 9800 GTX cards running at speeds higher than reference 675MHz. If you're keeping up with the latest equipment, you should already know that the GeForce 9800 GTX card is a good overclocker and that pushing it up to 800MHz is a piece of cake. We will demonstrate that with some help from our XFX GeForce 9800 GTX edition. The GeForce 9800 GTX is the latest card on the market and just like the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB it's based on the G92 GPU, built at 65nm process and packing 754 million transistors. - FudZilla

XFX GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB Graphics Card Review

The G92 in its new iteration underwent some minor changes and the only difference between these mentioned cards is the GeForce 9800 GTX's higher speeds, 3-Way SLI and HybridPower support. The GeForce 9800 GTX is here to replace the GeForce 8800 GTX, but also to fill the gap between GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and the GeForce 9800 GX2. The name GTX suggests it's a high-end card that should outperform the GeForce 8800 GTS, but you should know that the new GTX is significantly slower than the GeForce 9800 GX2. The GX2 card is also based on G92 GPU, or two of them to be more precise.

The GeForce 9800 GTX card's core runs at 675MHz, only 25MHz more than on the GeForce 8800 GTS card. The stream processor speeds aren't much higher than the GTS version. These numbers would make us think it's not a big speed increase over the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB video card. However, the 512MB of memory got a significant speed boost to 2200MHz effectively which is 260MHz more than the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB where the memory chips run at only 1940MHz. Just like the other GTX's, this card is 3-Way SLI and HybridPower ready, and while it will handle multimedia quite well, gaming is this card's trade.

We already mentioned that all partners offer non-overclocked cards, but also that we're testing a reference XFX GeForce 9800 GTX version. Still, don't lose sleep over it because with a little effort we pushed the card over 800MHz, and stopped at 815MHz core clock speed. The memory also got an excellent boost, and we pushed it up to 2460MHz effectively. This is great overclocking, and we've seen certain individuals managing to push their GeForce 9800 GTX cards over 840MHz by using just air cooling. We were running on a tight schedule, so we didn't have time for more, but the important thing is that GPU can go over 800MHz.

The GeForce 9800 GTX is one of the fastest cards on the market, and will prove to be enough even for the most demanding gamers out there. The card is widely available and should set you back around $330. At this price you get a 3-Way SLI ready card, so upgrading your system with one or two cards shouldn't be a problem, provided you're ready to pay the price. The XFX GeForce 9800 GTX runs at reference speeds, but don't let that put you off because this is a great overclocker. Powering it is done by two 6-pin PCI Express cables, and the fan can get a bit loud during 3D operation, but still not too loud.

The card is great for gaming, but HDMI and HDCP make it great multimedia card too. Of course, let's not forget Company of Heroes, a still very popular DirectX 10 game that you get in the box. Gaming, multimedia, overclocking, HybridPower and basically all the best that NVIDIA made through the years makes the XFX GeForce 9800 GTX a great choice.