Overclocking The NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ Video Card

Overclocking The GeForce 9800 GTX+

The NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card was and still is a hot subject around the internet since it was announced by NVIDIA this past Thursday. The card will not be available to purchase until next month, so enthusiasts and gamers will have to wait for it to arrive if they want one. Many are asking if it is worth the wait as the ATI Radeon HD 4850 is available to purchase today for a reasonable $169.99 plus shipping over at Newegg thanks to a $30 mail-in-rebate. The MSRP on the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is $229, so is the GeForce 9800 GTX+ carries a 35% price premium on top the fact you have to wait to buy one. Our own performance testing showed that the GeForce 9800 GTX+ had a 10.4% performance advantage over the Radeon HD 4850 as you can below.

It seems most of the review sites around the web show the GeForce 9800 GTX+ about 10-15% faster than the Radeon HD 4850, but it really depends on what applications are tested and the platform being used. The performance lead by the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is nice, but does it justify the higher price if you are looking to just game?

Little detail is known about the new 55nm ‘refresh’ of the G92 core that is being used on the GeForce 9800 GTX+, so it’s tough to know what exactly NVIDIA did. Our sources inside NVIDA claim that they did nothing more than shrink down the G92 and didn’t do too much polishing. We’ve asked NVIDIA to provide some power specifications for the new core and haven’t been given anything solid yet. The ballpark figure that we were tossed is that the GeForce 9800 GTX+ TDP is within 10-15W of the standard GeForce 9800 GTX and that it is certainly below 180W. The one area that is still unknown is overclocking performance. The original GeForce 9800 GTX was found to be a good overclocker when we last looked at it in April 2008. Let’s take a look and see what this new card can really do when pushed to the limits.