Yesterday NVIDIA launched their new GeForce 9800 GT series. You wonder why the new is in quotation marks? This time NVIDIA really went with the easy way. The GeForce 9800 GT is the same card with the same specifications as the GeForce 8800 GT. With the GeForce 9 series you get a few added features though, which are PureVideo HD and support for Hybrid SLI and HybridPower, the latter two working only on supported motherboards with chipsets from NVIDIA alone. At least Zotac had a little bit of creativity up their sleeves and created an AMP! edition card which comes with a cool orange PCB and higher clocks than the NVIDIA reference design, giving it some added value. - techPowerUp

Zotac GeForce 9800 GT 512MB AMP! Version Review

Zotac's package design is a bit unconventional since it uses a vertical design, other than that the box is like any other box from Zotac. The front shows the product highlights with more detailed specs on the back and the sides. The first you will notice when looking at the card is that it uses a bright orange colored PCB, just like Zotac's company color. Like the GeForce 8800 GT, the GeForce 9800 GT uses a single slot cooler too. Given that this is an overclocked product, a dual slot cooler would have been fine as well. The card has two DVI ports, basically the most common output configuration these days.

You may combine two GeForce 9800 GT video cards to run in SLI for increased performance. Triple SLI configurations are not supported with this card. What we wonder if it is possible to pair the GeForce 8800 GT and the GeForce 9800 GT in SLI mode. It should be possible technically since it's the same card anyway, NVIDIA's driver makers may have a different opinion though. Power to the card is supplied via single 6-pin PCI Express power connector. As mentioned before, the graphics processor has remained unchanged. The G92 has been used on other products before like the GeForce 8800 GT and GeForce 9800 GTX as well.

The chip we see here is still made in 65nm technology, but it is expected that NVIDIA will soon introduce a 55nm version of the G92 core. To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of ATITool's successor and our benchmarking suite. The final overclocks of our video card are 761MHz core and 2188MHz memory. Both overclocks are quite nice, considering that this is an already pre-overclocked product. When you put these overclocks in perspective to the clock speeds of the NVIDIA reference design, they become even more spectacular. Zotac's GeForce 9800 GT AMP! edition retails for around $179.

We must say that this has been the most boring product launch in a while. Essentially the GeForce 9800 GT is the same as the GeForce 8800 GT. Same performance, same specs, same GPU. The only difference is the nine instead of the eight in the product name, PureVideo HD and support for HybridPower. Are these worth making a new product? No, but we have to admit that the GeForce 9800 GT does fit in the NVIDIA product stack at this point, though the GeForce 9 series have not been about innovation anyway so far. Nevertheless the card comes at an attractive price and offers performance to play all of today's games.

Zotac added a custom colored PCB and higher clocks to their GeForce 9800 GT AMP! edition to make this product at least a bit more interesting. The higher clocks and high overclocking potential make this product certainly more useful, but you have to pay a price premium for it. Unless you need the GeForce 9 series features, stick with the GeForce 8800 GT and save a few dollars, unless the price difference is only $5-10 to get a GeForce 9 series card.