NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTX was a high-mark for both the company and for the graphics industry launching DirectX 10 with a bang in regards to performance with one of the biggest leaps we've seen in sometime. The bad news is, that was back in November of 2006 and NVIDIA didn't launch the follow-up until last month. The good news is it is out now and for much less than the $600 price tag or so that the GeForce 8800 GTX launched with. As you might expect NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GTX has a lot in common with all the recent cards they have released in that it is based off the G92 core that the Georce 8800 GT ant GTS 512MB, and more recent GeForce 9600 GT all share. - AMDZone

ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX 512MB Video Card Review

To sum it up quickly the major difference between this and the G80 core the previous generation of DirectX 10 cards were based on is the die shrink to 65nm to cut down on die size, costs, and power consumption. It features 128 shaders with a default clock speed of 675MHz for the core and 1688MHz for the shaders with a 2200MHz memory clock speed with 512MB of memory using a 256-bit memory bus. This might seem a little odd to some people who know the GeForce 8800 GTX specs as that card featured 768MB of memory with a 384-bit memory interface, so higher in regards to the GeForce 9800 GTX.

At last NVIDIA have produced the follow up to the GeForce 8800 GTX and it definitely does not have the impact the GeForce 8800 GTX had but it does fix many of it's shortcomings in regards to heat and power consumption. It is also one heck of a performer. What we're more interested in seeing though is the true next generation follow up to the card from NVIDIA what they might have been working on up their sleeve the past one and a half years since the GeForce 8800 GTX's launch. As for the ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX card they've done a good job with it as usual for the company and you can't go wrong with picking it up.

Currently it can be had for about $310 after rebate from Newegg which is also a good price for the quality of the graphics card. From ASUS we look forward to seeing what they might do with the reference design and the only shortcoming we see is possibly the lack of a good software bundle.