BFG needs no introduction. By offering high quality products, good support and lifetime warranties, they have carved a place for themselves out of the ferocious video card market. Their by gamers, for gamers philosophy and close relationship with NVIDIA has established BFG as a premium video card brand in the US. BFG's new OCX branding is the top of their 3-tier overclocking initiative, with the OC and OC2 edition taking up the lower ranks. The new OCX edition is designed to unlock maximum performance and deliver best in class gaming experience. We're here to see if their GeForce 9800 GTX OCX version is actually any better than a standard GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card. - HardOCP

BFG GeForce 9800 GTX OCX Gaming Version Review

NVIDIA launched the GeForce 9800 GTX in April this year, as a replacement for the highly successful and popular GeForce 8800 GTX. The GPU is manufactured on a 65 nanometer process and consists of 754 million transistors. It has 128 streaming processors and 16 raster operation units, being clocked at 675MHz and 1688MHz speed respectively. It also comes standard with 512MB of GDDR3 memory on a 256-bit wide memory bus. Interestingly, these specifications are a distinct step down from the GeForce 8800 GTX card, which boasted 24 raster operation units and 768MB of GDDR3 memory on a 384-bit wide bus.

The GeForce 9800 GTX card does however, have its strong points. First, it uses 29 watts less power at load than the GeForce 8800 GTX. Second, it supports a new feature called Hybrid SLI technology, which essentially allows the video card to be shut down as such when not in use and when installed onto a compatible mainboard. Finally, NVIDIA brought hardware high definition video decoding to the high end with the GeForce 9800 GTX, by adding a feature called PureVideo HD, which was previously found only on the mainstream NVIDIA products.

And a BFG product carrying the OCX label will have the highest clock speed that BFG believes is stable. The BFG GeForce 9800 GTX OCX edition has the GPU core overclocked from 675MHz to 755MHz, a full increase of 80MHz over the standard specifications. The streaming processors also received a clock rate increase, going from 1688MHz to 1890MHz. And that is a 202MHz increase in the shader core. Finally, BFG overclocked the memory on the GeForce 9800 GTX OCX to 2300MHz, which is around 100MHz over NVIDIA's stock speed of 2200MHz. The OCX version is physically identical to the standard version though.

Basically, we have seen absolutely no added value in this higher clocked video card using the GeForce 9800 GTX graphics core. It may get you bragging rights, and it may inflate your e-peen score, but it isn't going to improve your game play experience. It may even have a shorter lifespan than the slower versions of the same GPU, due to its greater power consumption and thermal output, but that is why you would want to buy from a company with a solid track record of warranty and service like BFG. With today's current games, there isn't anything to really set this video card apart from a standard clocked version.

The BFG GeForce 9800 GTX OCX offers no advantage over a standard clocked GeForce 9800 GTX for the few extra dollars you will be expected to pay for it in terms of real world gameplay. So the OCX moniker seems to be more for benchmark monkeys than gamers. This time round, we have to suggest save your money and overclock your on your own. More to the point, neither this overclocked GeForce 9800 GTX or stock clocked version can justify the premium prices in the face of the excellent performance of the GeForce 8800 GT, which can be had for about $135 after rebates.