XFX 9800GTX+

Justin Robinson discovers that good things come in incredibly large packages.

Amidst the chaos of our site redesign and mag reworking, we had a package turn up on our doorstep in the middle of a hectic amount of running around and some occasional swearing. So when we got some spare time, we decided to give this card some much-needed loving.

And some loving it deserves, with an imposing size and glossy black plastic cooler. Covered with a sticker depicting some kind of ethereal lightning powered engine, this is a reference-designed board, so we can’t really expect all that much variation or surprises. That is, apart from the LED on the PCI bracket, whose only function seems to be lighting up green if the card has sufficient power, and red if it does not. This serves to slightly pimp up the back of your computer, though it is ultimately quite pointless. Unlike the GTX200 series cards, the back of this card is laid bare – this might prove to decrease temperatures slightly, but it’s much of a muchness.

The whole package is kept rather cool by the stock cooler, idling at 43 and peaking at 58, generating 52dBA and 59.5dBA respectively. This is mostly due to the 55nm revision of the G92 core, which is more power efficient and therefore generates less heat. This has also allowed XFX to bump up the stock frequencies to 765MHz, a 27MHz addition. Memory is stock, however, but is more than fast enough with an effective 2200MHz on a 256-bit bus, with 512MB of GDDR3 providing ample space for most games in the market now.

Gaming performance is pretty good, with solid framerates in both Company of Heroes and Crysis. Both 3DMark programs were also rather good, returning scores that would have made benchmarkers from a few years ago wet themselves.
Included in the bundle is a driver disc, the usual adapters for VGA to DVI, and a PCIe 8-pin to 6-pin cable – great for those running power supplies with hardwired 8-pin PCIe power cables. No game is present, which is slightly annoying, as it doesn’t cost too much more to throw one in, but the package still feels complete with one.

If you’re in the market for a pre-overclocked card, or want another one to chuck in SLI, this card is a great choice – provided you can pick it up at a good price. If you were looking to buy a card new standalone card we’d suggest something else, but for what it is this card is pretty damn solid.