Gigabyte 9800GT Review

Introduction:

So many video cards to choose from these days. The market stratification is just amazing. At this point, there is probably a card for that will suit the need for just about any purpose you can imagine. For the enthusiast and gamer though, the choices are a bit more limited due to the needs ("Wants" as I am so often told) of the systems we design and build. There is the all-out bench rig, that needs the best of the best, all the way down to the casual gamer that is comfortable with medium quality settings and a low resolution. Somewhere in between is where the majority of consumers make their purchase. The 9800GT falls somewhere in the middle of these two performance extremes.

The Gigabyte 9800GT comes equipped with a Zalman heatsink to vastly improve the cooling performance, which in turn, could lead to higher overclocking potential. With clock speeds of 600MHz on the GPU core, 1.5GHZ on the 112 shader cores and 900MHz on the 512MB of GDDR3 memory, the 9800GT has on paper the same specifications as the 8800GT that came to us last year. So just where on the performance ladder will the 9800GT perform? Let's take a look.

Closer Look:

The packaging of the Gigabyte 9800GT shows a warrior princess ready for battle with ironically enough a Heads Up Display over her left eye. This is no doubt a subtle reference to the Gamer HUD application included with the bundle. Other highlights on the front panel are the fact that the 9800GT is Zalman cooled (a bonus) and is Hybrid power ready. The rear panel illustrates the Ultra Durable 2 properties and shows highlights of the Gamer HUD software and its capabilities. The main features are listed in 9 different languages highlighting their global business.

Pulling the inner box out gives us a glimpse of the 9800GT tucked up under the manual. The 9800GT is encased in a foam block as well as an anti-static bag to prevent damage. The included adapters are seen behind the card.

The included bundle contains the manual, driver disk, 2x DVI to D-sub adapters, a DVI to HDMI adapter and a power adapter in case your power supply does not have the required 6-pin PCIe power connection.

Let's see what the 9800GT looks like and how it comes apart.