We saw the GeForce 9800 GTX+ launch a little bit back, but samples have been scarce and stock has been even harder to get a hold of. It's been a while since we've seen a card be a paper launch, but it seemed the GeForce 9800 GTX+ version was exactly that. It was designed to help draw attention away from the release of the new AMD cards. It didn't really seem to work, though as there seems to have been very little talk of people saying that they're going to wait for the release of the GeForce 9800 GTX+ edition. It looks like the card is going to start to hit the retail channel now with more and more companies having samples ready and stock shipping out to their distributors. - TweakTown

ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX+ TOP Video Edition Review

ASUS has actually gone through a bit of a box redesign with the latest line-up of cards. While you can't actually tell the difference from the picture, the boxes are actually a fair bit smaller these days. It's good to see they're cutting back on the old cardboard. Apart from this, though, the overall layout on the front of the box is pretty similar. Across the top of the card we have the ASUS logo and motto along with a picture of a girl towards the right side of the box. Across the bottom of the box we have the model along with the TOP logo that lets us know that the model is an overclocked one and under full warranty.

Turning the box over, we have some talk about the exclusive features that the ASUS card offers along with some of the main features of the card. We also have some recommended system requirements and other little bits of information. Looking at the card, you can see ASUS have gone down a bit of a different path with a full sticker going over the card with the same girl on the front. The whole thing looks pretty cool, though it's disappointing that you won't really be able to see it once it's in your case. Apart from that there isn't a whole lot going on thanks to the cooler covering the card from head to toe.

Looking around the graphics card, it carries all the normal traits. Across the top of the card we have two 6-pin PCI Express connectors while the other end of the card has two SLI connectors so you can have up to three cards in the system. Like we've already mentioned, the TOP models are overclocked out of the box. We move from the stock 738MHz core to 775MHz while the shader gets bumped to 1950MHz and the 512MB of GDDR3 goes to 2360MHz effective memory clock speed. Ultimately, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is just an overclocked GeForce 9800 GTX and an overclocked GTX+ is a GeForce 9800 GTX overclocked even more.

ASUS' decision to offer an overclocked GTX+ from the word go seems to be a good idea as it helps it stand out a bit more from just a regular GTX or an overclocked GTX. There isn't really a whole lot to say about the card. It's going to come in at a good price while offering some good performance. It's going to fill in the gap that's present between the GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce 9800 GT since the GeForce 9800 GTX stock has become quite limited. The only problem at the moment is the card is quite hard to get a hold of. While there was an official date, there was never really any word of when it would be arriving in store.

And it seems like stock is beginning to show up at places and over the next few weeks we should see more and more stock. While samples of the card are going to get out to websites around the world, everyone is really beginning to focus on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 which is just around the corner. The positive press from the Radeon HD 4800 series already on the market means that people are very keen to know what the new Radeon HD 4870 X2 is going to offer over the top GeForce GTX 280 from NVIDIA. At the end of it all, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ TOP version is a good performing card which should show up at a decent price level.

It would have been nice to see stock earlier, but that's not ASUS' fault. We're not sure if it was a matter of limited cores or rather getting rid of the original GeForce 9800 GTX that slowed the release of the card down, but the good news is it's coming very soon now.