After ATI's successful launch of the Radeon HD 4850, NVIDIA realized that their GeForce 9800 GTX is slightly slower than the competition's product. In order to fix this problem NVIDIA quickly announced a new GeForce 9800 GTX+ which is identical to the GeForce 9800 GTX, but uses a die shrinked 55nm version of the G92 running at much higher clock speeds. And as always, Zotac has created an AMP! edition card which runs at even higher clocks for added performance. That means that Zotac is really going for a very fast product that should bring your gaming experience to some new levels though by keeping the video card running as cool as before but surely at the higher frame rates.. - techPowerUp!

Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX+ AMP! Version Card Review

The Zotac 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. Other than the little plus on the sticker, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ version looks identical to the GeForce 9800 GTX in every aspect. Just like its predecessor it uses a dual slot cooling solution that looks very stylish thanks to the curved surface. The card has two DVI ports, basically the most common output configuration these days. The cooler is unchanged from the non-plus GeForce 9800 GTX card.

And it uses a complex base plate to cool not only the GPU core, but also the memory chips and the voltage regulation circuitry. Just like the GeForce 9800 GTX, the GTX+ edition supports SLI and 3-way SLI mode and two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors supply the required power to the card. Next to that the Zotac comes with high-end GDDR3 memory chips which are made by Samsung being marked as 0.8ns. And that means these are rated for 2400MHz operation. Removing the heatsink we noticed that Zotac used a bit too much thermal paste on the GPU, but underneath we found the 55nm 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 card are 832MHz core and 2398MHz memory. While the memory overclock was to be expected, because the memory chips are specified to run at 2400MHz, the core overclock is very nice. Even on a pre-overclocked product, we could increase the clock by another ten percent. NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GTX+ announcement came right in time for the Radeon HD 4850 launch, to slow down its momentum. The move from a 65nm to a 55nm GPU design does offer some benefits.

First of all the production price of the GPU goes down. This means that the card could be offered cheaper than the original GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card. Second, the heat output under load is reduced as well, allowing higher clocks while staying in the same thermal and power budget. While the GeForce 9800 GTX+ version is faster on paper than the Radeon HD 4850, we seriously doubt you will feel the difference while gaming. Considering other metrics like price to performance and performance to watt, both the normal GeForce 9800 GTX+ and the AMP! edition lose against AMD's Radeon HD 4850 offering.

One advantage these GTX+ cards have, is that they have more overclocking headroom left than ATI's offerings. Zotac's GeForce 9800 GTX+ AMP! edition is a bit too expensive for the performance added. So if you are looking for an easy solution that is faster and does not require tweaking, then the Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX+ AMP! edition is for you.