Even as the market for graphics boards heats up this holiday season we do see companies like ASUS making an attempt to stand out from the crowded retail shelves. Trying to get away from the standard reference design graphics boards, the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix offers quite a bit above the rest including a custom cooler, overclocked specifications and software that will let users push the card even further. The GeForce 9800 GT edition from NVIDIA's line is actually a reincarnated GeForce 8800 GT. And it is a very confusing lineage that lends itself to a daytime soap opera. Though you can't argue with the results, their G92 based GeForce 9800 GT is a great performer for the price. - PC Perspective

ASUS Extreme N9800 GT 512MB Matrix Board Review

ASUS' attempt to make their GeForce 9800 GT Matrix feel better than a normal GPU starts even with the packaging. The boxing gives us the feel of a high quality device more in the vein of an expensive home theater device than your standard video card. Getting to the heart of the matter by looking at the ASUS card we can clearly see this is far removed design from the NVIDIA reference cards we know. Their card is surprisingly light as the cooler that wicks the heat away from the GPU is composed of mostly aluminum fins. And the fan itself is interesting, quiet at low speeds but very load at high speeds.

The back of the card is completely bare of any of the 512MB of memory the card sports but does have the ASUS super hybrid engine that allows for custom clocking and fan speed support. You can see fins along the fan on the cooler, which have a very peculiar texture on them that grabs your finger like it's going to cut it, but hasn't thus far in our testing. The single 6-pin power connection is all that is needed to power the GeForce 9800 GT graphics card. The GeForce 9800 GT does not officially support the 3-way SLI technology even though the card sports the necessary SLI connection for it, and as such is somehow misleading.

And the answer from ASUS is that because the GeForce 9800 GT Matrix shares some manufacturing options with other boards, the connectors were left on for easy transition.Thus if someone were so inclined, they could likely modify the firmware in such a way to activate that second SLI connector and perhaps get a set of GeForce 9800 GT's working together. You can see by peeking under the heatsink why the card is so light, the aluminum fins are surrounding mostly by air as the heat from the GPU is transferred via heatpipes to the complete heatsink to easily reduce the hotness from the graphics core.

The ASUS GeForce 9800 GT Matrix card runs at 612MHz core, 1500MHz shader and 1800MHz memory clock. These rates are higher than the reference speeds but the real magic comes into play when you can overclock these clock speeds thanks to ASUS' custom cooling solution. We have come to know and love the G92 from NVIDIA, after all we have had dozens of graphics cards built around this technology over the last twelve months. The GeForce 9800 GT solution is a great gaming performer that we have seen drop in price over that same period and would wager that you could throw even the latest PC games at it easily.

Overall, the Matrix has a complete package for gamers as well as enthusiasts that want to mix some gaming and home theater action. You can find the ASUS Extreme N9800 GT Matrix card for about $129 at a handful of online retailers. About a year ago, this same technology, but running a few clocks lower, would have cost you more than $260 so to say that gaming prices on the PC have dropped significantly would be an understatement. These GeForce 9800 GT's primary competitor, the AMD Radeon HD 4830 512MB, is going for about $119 making the debate for the best mid-range graphics a continuing process.

The ASUS Extreme N9800 GT Matrix graphics card is one of our favorite new low to mid-range graphics cards that you can pick up today for well under $150. If you are looking for an upgrade to an aging GPU of your own and don't have much money to spend, this overclocked G92 based product will fit the bill perfectly.