Most of our video card experience has been with mid-range cards. We are not what you would call a hardcore gamer, though we like gaming but don't really have the time to spend doing a lot of gaming, nor the cash to go out and spend some bucks every time a new game comes out. If you are like us, and have been happy with mid-range cards, spend a few hours at your favorite game played at the highest settings, using anti-aliasing and higher resolutions while using an upper end card, and you'll probably realize that you've been in denial for all of this time. Today we will be looking at the ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX TOP edition, a factory overclocked version of NVIDIA's newest video card. - ThinkComputers

ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX 512MB TOP Board Review

The Extreme N9800 GTX TOP edition comes in the same box that all of the latest ASUS video cards come in. On the back of the box are the features and specs, and inside of the false top are more features. As with most ASUS products, the outer box is merely a sleeve containing another box. Open the inner box and you see the bundle, along with the video card in its protective foam compartment. Face it, we enthusiasts see beauty in most computer hardware. We mean, we can see a powerful processor, and consider it a thing of beauty, though the aesthetics aren't much to most people.

The ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX TOP version is definitely the most beautiful piece of hardware we have owned and excepting some spectacular case paint jobs, probably the most beautiful piece of hardware we have seen. The molded plastic fan shroud covers the entire top of the card. It is black and very shiny, not cheap plastic shiny, but shiny with depth like a show car finish. The graphics on the shroud look like they were airbrushed on, and are really incredible. The Extreme N9800 GTX TOP edition is factory overclocked, with the GPU running at 755MHz, shaders at 1840MHz and the memory at 2350MHz effective.

As we mentioned in the introduction, this wasn't just an article of a video card, it was our first real opportunity to get up close and personal with a high-end GPU. As always, there is the bigger and better, and today the GPU snob will probably say you can't game without a dual-GPU video card. To be honest, we really can't imagine a GeForce 9800 GX2, the twin-GPU version of the GeForce 9800 GTX. We consider the GX2 kind of like the Ultra in earlier GeForce series, the over the top card for the few that are willing to pay an extra two or three hundred dollars to say they have the best there is to get currently.

For the gamer accustomed to the mid-range card, the ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX TOP edition is awesome indeed. Its incredible looks alone tells that this card is something different. The performance over the entire field of the last generation of mid-range video cards, along with today's middle of the road card, is nothing short of spectacular. The Extreme N9800 GTX TOP is undoubtedly a viable step-up for anyone with mid-range card. Not only did the card outperform at equal settings, it performed well at higher settings, though it does have its limits. That's why there is the GeForce 9800 GX2.

At the time of writing, the ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX TOP version isn't yet at my favorite online retailer, but the non overclocked version presently sells for $340. We see no differences in the two excepting clock speeds, so we would expect that the factory overclock to sell for under $400, which is about the price of the GeForce 8800 GTS upon its release, and a couple of hundred less than the eForce 8800 GTX edition.