The recent flurry of launches of video cards has really redefined what the industry is like on the market especially with the holiday season just starting. ATI and NVIDIA have completed their holiday lineups of video cards with numerous cards available across the myriad price spectrum. The high-end of the graphics card market is dominated by the GeForce GTX 280 and ATI's Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards at over $400, but what about the mid-range? NVIDIA's answer to the mid-range of the video card spectrum surfaced in the form of the GeForce 9800 GT and GTX products. And the GeForce 9800 GT is basically a rebranded GeForce 8800 GT, but with the extra HybridPower tehnology. - Motherboards

ASUS Extreme N9800 GT HybridPower Board Review

The GeForce 9800 GT retails in stores online for the reasonable price of $110 with the GeForce 9800 GTX+ being online for about $169. The price difference is large enough to call them just two different price ranges. ASUS manufactures computer equipment like motherboards and video cards so naturally, they have a GeForce 9800 GT card. The specifications of the GeForce 9800 GT might seem familiar to anyone with a NVIDIA graphics card of the last year or so. That is because the chip is based upon the same G92 chip that the GeForce 8800 GT was built upon with the addition of a few non-graphics features.

The GeForce 9800 GT has 112 stream processors, which is exactly the same as the first GeForce 8800 GT cards with a clock speed of 600MHz for the core. In fact the clock speeds of the core and shader are exactly the same as the GeForce 8800 GT cards, as well as the memory clock which is set at 1800MHz effective. The HybridPower term is NVIDIA's nomenclature for their power saving technology that when used in combination with a NVIDIA motherboard can save power. And ASUS in fact uses HybridPower on the name of their card, meaning that it is supported and this is actually a great way for saving energy.

ASUS has deviated from the standard GeForce 9800 GT reference design in a number of significant ways. The first change you will notice is their Glaciator heatsink. And the Glaciator is an ASUS exclusive fan design that is 80mm in diameter and covers the graphics chip. The fan is a 9-fin fan that effectively cools the entire card including the GPU and the voltage regulators that sits on a copper heatsink. Due to the height of the cooling solution the card takes up two slots on your system. Next to the cooling fan is another copper heatsink that covers the voltage regulators. Next to that are capacitors and a 6-pin power connection.

The copper heatsink keeps the voltage regulators cooler than being bare and should allow the card to overclock well. One thing to note on this card is the two SLI bridges on the top of the card. This means that this card can work together with two other GeForce 9800 GT's to play some 3-way SLI action. As usually ASUS is very generous with their bundles and the bundle included with their Extreme N9800 GT HybridPower video card is not an exception. The video card market is constantly changing with new cards released every six months or so and prices lowering to keep competitive in the market is very important.

And now ATI and NVIDIA have full lineups that cover the entire spectrum of price ranges from $40-549. The ASUS Extreme N9800 GT has several things going for it including a low price, performance that matches the competition at this price point and the features that matter for the holiday season including DirectX 10 and PhysX support. The price is competitive with the ATI card at this price point, the Radeon HD 4830 and with faster performance apparently in several other articles. Another positive is the silent operation of the card which is pretty interesting considering the huge fan and heatsink on the card.