Hardware XFX GeForce 9800 GT 512MB XXX Edition

CPUs are much more overclock-able, but seeing as it only has it's 1-4 cores and maybe a HT, they can overclock alot more..

Just curious BT staff, but were you bored? This card came out quite a while ago, and XFX still insists on these ridiculous prices

 

Great article, it's actually quite helpful to see that even the older "mid-range" cards have a lot of life left in them.

I'll second the request for F@H ppd evaluation, that would certainly be nice on a card at this price point (compare to 9800GTX obviously).

Finally, I gotta ask - how would a pair of these in SLI compare to a single 4870 (512MB/1GB) & GTX 260/280/285?

 

Glad to have seen the 4830 in the line-up. Although I can't stand the lies frothing from the mouth of the red carders, I was impressed when the 4830 came out at a decent price, with decent performance, and I concluded ATI finally hit a sweet spot where their latest technology core wasn't getting smacked down by years old NVidia G80/G92 at the same price point.
The whines that Nvidia needs new technology are so misplaced, and then the complaint that they need some new cards in the mid segment is ridiculous... the sad truth is their OLD CORES keep up with the latest, greatest, neutered core of ati- the 4850, and in some cases, like the Asus 9800GT Ultimate ( an 8800GTS core /full 128 shaders/ overclocked) for $120, they even smack the 4870 down in a lot of the games.
So anyway, the 9800GT is a great card, even with just 112 shaders, and the next card to get bang for the buck in the lineup is the 4830 - which produces playable frames without a superfreak rezz monitor.
I'd still buy the 9800GT before the red card, before the 4850 - even the 4870 because of CCC, driver issues, power consumption, Cuda, PhysX, configurable per game drivers, and low idle power - ALL OF WHICH go in NVidia's favor.
Glad there's a whole lotta raging red fans, though, I think it helps to drive down NVidia's prices, so people like me and my customers and friends wind up at advantage.
Better pray for ATI - it's sucked another near billion from AMD in losses.

 

At the beginning of 2012 you can buy a GeForce 8800GT or 9800GT from ebay for as little as £25 with delivery, I bought an 8800GT with large copper heatsink and fan at the end of november 2010 for £35 and a BFG 9800GT OC for £30 mid 2011. Both prices include delivery.
You will be hard pressed to get a an HD4850 though for less than £55 with delivery now. As you can see from the benchmarks they aren't worth twice the money. £55 is GTX260 money, I got a 216 version for £50 in October 2011 for again including delivery which will destroy any of the cards on this test. I gained 47% on my 3DMark Vantage score going from the stock 8800GT to the GTX260 on one of my systems.
I just clocked my 9800GT to the speeds of the XFX OC card on this review and it passed the Furmark stress test and did 3DMark03 ok with a 4.5% increase in score.