It's a great time for those in the market for a new video card, in just a few short months we've seen the debuts of over half a dozen different boards. At the high-end, high priced segment we have showcased such great offerings from NVIDIA as the GeForce GTX 280 and ATI's Radeon HD 4870 X2, while at the other end of the spectrum the mainstream budget cards releases are almost too plentiful and mediocre to mention. Though the high-end may grab the headlines, where the real interest lies, for buyer and manufacturers alike, is in the highly profitable mid-range market. Recently either NVIDIA has been releasing a competitor to an ATI card or vice versa to oofer the best deal for money. - Benchmark Reviews

Palit GeForce 9800 GT Super+ Graphics Style Review

In the recent clamor of releases NVIDIA has quietly slipped in the GeForce 9800 GT card, seemingly from nowhere and without much publicity. Essentially a re-packaged GeForce 8800 GT, which has a few added features and a new very attractive price. Apparently the GeForce 9800 GT has become quite popular and seemingly gained enough market traction from consumers for AMD to notice and even have a competitor lined up for early fourth quarter this year. Featuring NVIDIA's popular GPU, codenamed G92, the Palit GeForce 9800 GT shares the same 65nm technology as its predecessor the GeForce 8800 GT graphics card.

Why the change in naming then? The GeForce 9800 GT has two notable updates from the GeForce 8800 GT. The first is the added HybridPower technology that brings greater energy saving ability to the desktop, allowing the PC to switch off the discrete graphics card when not needed in favor of the intergraded built in motherboard GPU. And the second is the planned transition to a more efficient 55nm manufacturing process expected in September, just as the GeForce 9800 GTX was transitioned to 55nm with the iteration of the GTX+ edition. This die shrink will give the GeForce 9800 GT all the same perks as the GTX+ version.

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB Super+ graphics card uses a dual card slot design because of the improved active cooling design offered exclusively by Palit. The board is cooled with an exceptionally quiet on-board smart fan, even when playing the most intensive 3D games, the GeForce 9800 GT Sonic remained whisper quiet. Since we're sure you spent plenty of quality time reading through the myriad of features and specifications, you already know that you can use the GeForce 9800 GT for something other than playing video games. The HDMI functionality is a new direction for NVIDIA graphic cards.

When NVIDIA first launched the GeForce 9800 GT product line, we weren't exactly impressed with thin single card reference design. There just wasn't much more to the card than a thin PCB covered by a shroud of plastic. So we're thankful that Palit went to the design table and recreated their own version of the GeForce 9800 GT from the PCB up. We've already admitted our love for the burnt orange color they used, so it's no surprise that we're a big fan of the appearance, but the added memory heatsink really sets the appearance of this product apart from the rest. The craftsmanship and construction are what set it apart.

In conclusion, the Palit GeForce 9800 GT Super+ makes a very good choice for gamers who want to step-up into PCI Express 2.0 and take advantage of good middle-end graphics without the extra cost. The Palit GeForce 9800 GT Super+ provides excellent cooling improvements over other single slot solutions, and will work very well in home theatre PC environments where airflow and noise are kept to a minimum. Our benchmark results showed that the GeForce 9800 GT was not that far behind the GeForce 9800 GTX card's performance, but the gaming experience made good use of the large video frame buffer available.

While value is a relative subject, the performance and functionality appear to have some credence in relation to the product cost. If you're a gamer on a very tight budget, than the GeForce 9800 GT is an excellent product worth consideration, but make sure you'll need all of that extra video memory before you make your purchase and if so just go for it.