We have with us an ASUS special edition series video card that is equipped with a large heatsink for better performance but also better overclocking capabilities. ASUS presents the GeForce 9800 GTX+ Dark Knight TOP edition card ready to rumble on the PC. And in fact ASUS has released several GeForce 9800 GTX+ versions and this time they have combined their TOP edition with the more silent Dark Knight version. That give us a mix between quiet though overclocked, which is actually a nice twist from ASUS to bring to these GeForce 9 series graphics cards. And although we all thought this refresh GTX+ wouldn't have been a real success the variations being released just beg to differ. - t-break

ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX+ DK TOP Graphics Review

The box got is a two tone silver and black with features details written on it and more in-depth details about it behind the front cover. ASUS custom built their GeForce 9800 GTX+ on an all blue PCB with a huge heatsink that covers the GPU. There are two DVI output ports on the back along with an TV outport. And a metal protection with the ASUS logo on it covers the top side of the card. The only part on top not covered is where the two SLI connections reside. And the heatsink is the best feature on the card. It transfers heat from the GPU to cooling fins via four heatpipes. The memory chips have no cooling devices attached.

Since it is a custom PCB, ASUS re-located both of the 6-pin PCI Express power connecters to the rear end of the card. We see that Hynix memory chips are in use on this card and they are clocked at 2360MHz. These chips run cool enough to have no need for any form of cooling to be installed on them. And the ASUS Extreme N9800 GTX+ Dark Knight TOP edition features are quite exceptional, especially their quad heatpipe heatsink on the GPU which cools their board exceptionally well while keeping the noise levels down to the minimum. Topping that is the custom designed PCB which has a better voltage circuit.

When having a look at the benchmarks we can see that this ASUS' version of the GeForce 9800 GTX+ card cleanly beats another special edition GTX+ which had already beaten the original reference GeForce 9800 GTX+ version. We also tried overclocking the video card with the help of RivaTuner and we ended up with 845/2450MHz and 2050MHz as the shader clock. Temperatures were a stable 41°C at idle, and 63°C during load with stock clocks. With the overclocks applied we got 42°C at idle and around 64°C again at load which as you can see it is almost no different from the original temperature readings, a great added value.

With all the praise well deserved, we did however find a few drawbacks with this card. There is an issue with the SLI connecter location. When using this card with other reference GeForce 9800 GTX+ cards in a 3-way SLI config. The 3-way SLI bridge will not be able to connect because the card's SLI connecter is moved by 2-5mm toward the PCI bracket from its original location. Also, the memory chips have no cooling solution applied to them and rely on the fan used on the heatsink as their source of cooling. While this may suffice for normal operation, it would've been much better to have cooling applied to them for better overclocks.