9800 GTX a solid performer?

I saw Newegg dropped the price for the Evga model to $199. That's as cheap or cheaper as most 8800 GTS (G92) models. Has this card had any sort of recurring issues? I googled a bit and didn't find anything concrete.

I have a Antec NeoHe 550 W so I'm not sure how it's going to hold up with the newer cards; my res is capped at 1680x1050 anyway.

Maybe this would be a good last upgrade for me? $199 seems really reasonable.

I currently have a 8800 GTS 320 mb/Athlon X2 6400+.

(stimulus check just arrived hehe. Have to support the economy).

i would say go for it. as the driver for it is really stable now.

the HD4850 is good as well which performing at the same level as the 9800GTX but the driver still got some iron out to do.

at last the PSU of yours will do the job nicely!

They dropped it because of the release of the 4850.

I wish the review for graphics cards wouldn't use overclocked parts, the point is to get an idea of how performance will be for YOU so its misleading to show a review with an overclocked cpu (but what really bothers me is when they use 1600+mhz DDR3 ram)

Anyway, I think you should wait a few weeks to get the 9800GTX+, it will be faster, more energy efficient and about the same price.

Sorry but that all i play Crysis on is Vary High

The 9800GTX is about the best you are gonna get unless you go with the 9800GX2, or go SLI, or spend a bundle on one of the new nVidia 280's.
It's an absolutely great buy for $200.

Personally, if I was in the market for a new card....I think after years of owning ATI cards, and the experience I have had since buying an 8800GTS 512, I think I would prefer at this point to stay with nVidia.
The 4850's have not been around long enough for anyone to make a decent opinion of them yet IMHO. After a couple of months, shoot they all may start exploding causing unfortold injury to thousands of people while they are gaming away.......

Hey since you are in the market for a new video card, why not get a 4850.

Its got some better features , new architecture , DX 10.1 , Lower power consumption, takes up less space .

The thing is that i was wondering the about the 9800gtx the other day but decided in favor of the ATI 4850.

The reason for the drastic price drop is because of the new competition brought by the Radeon 4850. The two cards are now the same price. The 9800 GTX does not "get raped sideways" by the 4850; rather, they have been trading the top spot back and forth during the more credible reviews. In my opinion, the two cards are equal right now. I bought another 9800 GTX to SLI for the current price because I am limited by my 780i mobo and my existing 9800 GTX SSC, but the ATI option would be great as well. I plan on OC'ing the cards to around 800/2000/1200. The best thing you could do, though, is to wait till the 4870 comes out and take its performance into consideration (as well as the likely price drops of other cards that it will cause). Either way, you should definitely upgrade because the 320 MB GTS is getting outdated fast... if it was the G92 version you could probably hold off for awhile yet.

It depends on the game.

Unreal Tournament 3:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_4850/17.html
G92 8800gts/9800gtx, and even the puny 9600gt far outperform 4850.

Quake 4:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_4850/13.html
Scroll down to 2048x1536 resolution, and see just how far 4850 beats gtx280.

A benchmark on a single game (CoD4, etc) is worthless. You can't make blanket statements on overall performance based on one game. On average, 4850 perform about the same as g92 8800gts/9800gtx at stock clock rate.

The advantage for 4850 is it scales better on higher resolutions for most games. As resolutions get higher, fps loss for 4850 tends to be smaller than rival g94 based gpu.

The disadvantage is it runs hotter and does not overclock well.

@ dagger.. i never made blanket statements based on one game... i had to give one link ainnit ....

the fact that 4850 performs better at higher res is itself a better choice for me .... whichever the game.

moreover i would never back my opinion with performance comparison for older games like quake 4. anyhow all this can lead to 500 posts so lets not get into it. that goes for jorqian too.

Hello, who are you?

To answer iluvgillgill's qn... no 9800GTsuX for me. i MAY buy either a 4850 or a 4870 ... Xfire it with my 3870 on my EX38. There might be zero advantage of 3870 with 4850/4870 Xfire but i'm gonna get it anyway.

I play Crysis on very high AA off and get around 20-32fps. Sometimes as low as 10 in very intense scenes like the tunnel underground or the end in the rain. But overall it plays well on very high. I'll bet a $200 card will play Crysis with all the bells and whistles by the end of this year. Maybe sooner.

I'm not getting it!!! The 4850 performs about the same... show me a benchmark where it rapes it sideways. From what I've seen is it beats it by 1-3FPS sometimes.... and other times the GTX is faster. So for the same price it all comes down to preference and power consumption. Because essentially they perform the same!

Thnks for replies.

I'm gonna wait and see how ATI's latest sort themselves out.

^... no one listens...lol...

for people asking for "a benchmark where it rapes the 9800"... a difference of 9 FPS is quite large ...and thats in the same link thats been posted earlier.

ATI is back baby ...and there smokin hot hehehehe

I wont be ditching my 2900XT card until I can find a reasonably priced graphics card that can run Crysis on Very High with a little AA and smooth FPS.
My next card might be another ATI, but my experience with them has not been great because I find their drivers buggy and some games just run terrible on ATI hardware. My experiences with Nvidia has been much better and I find they perform more consistent in most games.

What I find extremely interesting is, the use of Crysis as any qualifier, is that unless thats your particular game of choice , it holds no merit over any other game. http://techreport.com/articles.x/14967/7 I use more than 1 sire for a better idea as to performance. The TR is very reputable and shows no such differences, in fact it shows it beating both GTX's in crysis, which like I said , is just 1 game, and not really indicative as to the makeup of future games. This oc myth has to stop, as people that actually own the cards refute it, and its still stuck within the CCC. Its time for W1zzard at TPU to make it oceable as well as others

^.. isn't the revised price $299?

That benchmark is not meaningful. It only shows 1920x1200 on high and very high, and gives nothing on lower resolutions. The problem is, on those settings, neither of them get playable frame rates. Very high shows 4850 at 13.0-14.9fps, compared to 9800gtx at 13.0-14.fps, a 0.1fps difference. High range from around 17-20/21, still not playable.

Now look at this Crysis benchmark, covering a large range from 1280x1024 0xaa to 2048x1536 4xaa on high. 1280x1024 with 2xaa is the highest resolution that is still playable, with 4850 average 36.9fps, and 9800gtx average 39.9, both very playable.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_4850/8.html

i'd never heard about GTsuX280 for $499 .... anyhow this is a link for a comprehensive 9800GTX+ vs 4850 .....

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/731/11/

apart from COD4, 4850 is just a LITTLE behind the 9800GTX+....is the performance difference worth the price difference of 40 bucks.... IMO, no.

I don't understand the beta drivers argument. Yes, ATI's drivers will of course get better. However, the news has been out that along with the PhysX driver, Nvidia is also releasing another Forceware driver that should boost performance significantly. Now, I think both cards are about equal and both great buys at $200 (you can pull up benchmarks with ATI winning, you can pull up benchmarks with the 9800 winning, etc). The only reason I'm defending the 9800 GTX here is because with all the 4850 hype, it seems that people think a $200 9800 GTX is a poor buy when truthfully there is not a huge difference between the two. For people with SLI boards, the 9800 GTX SLI is a no brainer. For people with Xfire boards, waiting to see how the 4870 does is probably the best option IMO.

This is why... like i've stated in the past... that it all comes down to personal choice. You either buy the 4850 or the 9800GTX! both perform relatively the same as far as price/performance from what I've seen from the benches. So it all comes down to personal preference and who can come out with a more overclockable card. I will put my money on 9800GTX as outperforming the 4850 only because it's a dual slot cooler and overclocks extremely well. But for the majority that dont decide to overclock the 4850 might be the way to go!

Look at Toms charts, compare those numbers on older drivers with the 3xxx series to what we are seeing now in these new previews