We believed that the Radeon HD 4850, priced at around $199 at launch, offered GeForce 9800 GTX matching performance, and that the $299 Radeon HD 4870 fell somewhere between GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce GTX 260. NVIDIA instructed its partners to drop reseller buy-in prices such that the GeForce 9800 GTX would be available to the consumer for $249. NVIDIA's retort against the salvo of AMD cards is more than just reducing pricing on incumbent models. But rather, it's to introduce a new SKU that's intrinsically cheaper to produce. So welcome to the all new GeForce 9800 GTX+ version, based upon the 55nm manufacturing process and bumping GTX speeds up a touch. - Hexus

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ Graphics Version Review

Available from next week, in quantity, according to NVIDIA, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is nothing more than a die shrink that's accompanied by higher frequencies for the core and shaders, as compared to present GeForce 9800 GTX version. The half-node process, 55nm, does a couple of things for NVIDIA. For one, it matches what AMD has been doing since last November. Secondly, it makes the GPU cheaper to produce. There has been no further architectural tweaks to speak of, and it's sensible to presume that it will benchmark akin to the number of pre-overclocked GeForce 9800 GTX's currently out in the marketplace.

We know that NVIDIA hasn't changed the power consumption limits on the 55nm based GeForce 9800 GTX+ card, as compared to the 65nm  GeForce 9800 GTX, and that's manifested in practically identical temperature readings. Somewhat contradicting the information provided by NVIDIA, the reference GeForce 9800 GTX+ pulls around 20W less than a regular GeForce 9800 GTX, matching the figures of the Radeon HD 4850. Pushing the reference card provided significant benefits. We managed an overall speed of 805MHz core, 1997MHz shaders and 2670MHz memory. The latter frequency in particular, being impressive.

When hard launched later on this month, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ card will offer significant competition to the excellent Radeon HD 4800 series, provided that it ships with a UK street price of $279 or so. We can say this because it's based on the incumbent GeForce 9800 GTX. Indeed, the base clocks for the GeForce 9800 GTX+ are in line with a number of factory overclocked GeForce 9800 GTX's, such that the performance has been predictable for a while. We're sure to see heavily overclocked models that encroach upon the Radeon HD 4870's $299 retail cost, and it will be interesting to compare the two, in a head to head battle.

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ edition is old technology that becomes viable because of its revised price point. But there's now more to deciding on a graphics card than just looking at pure numbers. NVIDIA has built a CUDA ecosystem around GeForce 8 series and GeForce 9 series cards that will enable, as early as next week, PhysX support for present and upcoming gaming titles. How it will play out against AMD's Havok alliance is open to serious conjecture, but the situation will become clearer in the next three months or so, and it will only be good for the consumer, as far as we're concerned.