XFX 9800GX2 512MB Black Edition

The 9800GX2 is back in black, but is it any better? Josh Collins finds out.

Last month we touched on the fact that the price of the 9800GX2 cards is a sore point. The XFX 9800GX2 Black Edition takes that conundrum to the next level.

With a hip-pocket-burning $890 street price, you’d want this card to ship with a bucket load of street cred to boot... but then, this kind of stuff isn’t considered cool in the mainstream anyway.

So with our wallet stung, we’re left hoping to God there’s a performance reason for purchasing.

The angels must’ve heard our pleas because the XFX card does at least deliver in the performance stakes. This is due to pre-overclocked frequencies on this card. This particular sample sports a 700MHz core, 1050MHz (2100MHz effective) memory and 1700MHz shader. For perspective, the reference design features a 600MHz core, 1000MHz (2000MHz effective) memory and 1500MHz shader.

The pre-overclocked frequencies aren’t only a marked improvement on the reference clocks but also result in a marked improvement in performance over the reference frequencies.

As a result, the XFX 9800GX2 Black Edition lays claim to the crown in terms of class leading performance. And rightly so, pulling a clear 5fps ahead of reference cards in Crysis as well as 1k and 5k marks ahead in 3DMark06 and 03 respectively.

Thankfully, XFX appears to have gotten sick of bundling aging game titles. The hardware comes hooked up with a copy of Assassin’s Creed for PC.

While the increased performance and decent game bundle is a rather solid improvement over the other offerings in the market, the price simply devastates the gain made by these improvements.

In the end, $800 is simply too much to pay for a hassle free and guaranteed overclock bundled with a slightly newer game.