Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX Review

Features
By Florian Charpentier
published

Unreal Tournament III

The HD 3870 X2, for some reason, still refuses to apply antialiasing with Unreal Tournament III (unlike the HD 3870), but it still posted the best performance, though it doesn't really make a difference given the high performance level already achieved by the other cards. The 9800 GTX was especially at ease with this game, managing to beat out the 8800 Ultra and sailing past the 8800 GTS 512 MB by such wide margins (27% on average, and up to 40%) that the explanation, once again, can only be the lack of optimization of the 8800 GTS 512 MB's drivers.

Florian Charpentier
5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • BPT747
    Interesting results, I have found several card makers (Palit, Asus, Evga, and Zotac) that make a 1GB 8800GT(S). Since you were speaking of the memory limitations of the 9800GTX, I am curious how these cards would preform with the 8800 driver optimizations you mentioned.
    Reply
  • Spectere
    I purchased a GF9800GTX not long after it came out and the only time I recall hearing the fan spin up to high (which is fairly loud) is when the card first initialized itself when I turn my system on. I've logged many hours of game time on this rig and haven't heard it spin up at all. I'm using the ForceWare 174.74 drivers and an XFX branded card (if that would make any difference at all...probably not).
    Reply
  • teamjawbox
    Would an Intel Core 2 Duo Dual Core E6600 (2.4ghz) 1066FSB processor bottleneck the 9800GTX? Trying to decide whether to get one or not and dont want to get it and not see an increase in performance due to my processor. Thanks!
    Reply
  • ziegemon
    Processor bottleneck goes up to about 3.2 Ghz on my Q9450
    Reply
  • TiberiumSoldier
    i am going to buy an intel Core 2 Duo E8500 with ASUS or XFX or eVGA 9800gtx and 2gb Corsair Dominator ram.. is this a good option??? or i should buy an AMD Phenom 9600?
    Reply