Author: Ben Sun · 10-03-2008
NVIDIA has been releasing new high-end video cards nearly every six months for nearly 10 years now. The first video card on this release schedule was the Riva 128 card from 1997. This was followed by several generations of video cards including the GeForce FX, the GeForce 6800 Ultra. The latest high-end card from NVIDIA is the GeForce GTX 280 which much has been written about. But as was noted in the HD 4650 review, most sales are in the under $100 price range and not in the $300 range that the HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 260 would require. NVIDIA and ATI have released new cards for the under $200 price point, the GeForce 9800GT and the HD 4850 respectively. The Gigabyte 9800GT 512MB is the card on the review slate today.
The GeForce 9800GT is based upon NVIDIA’s G92a chip. This is the same core chip that is used on the GeForce 9800GTX and 9800GTX+ cards. As NVIDIA transitions their G9x core chips to the 55 nanometer process the GeForce 9800GT will be moved to the new process. The current 9800GT chips are based upon the tried and true 65 nanometer process that NVIDIA has used since the GeForce 8800GT was launched which was the same core as this one and as we’ll see is the same chip.
The 9800GT is a reuse of the same chip used on the 8800GT from early 2008. The key features remain the same with the 9800GT having 112 Stream Processors, 16 less than the 9800GTX and 9800GTX+ cards which have 128 SPs. The number of texturing units and ROPs (Outputted Pixels) are the same between the 9800GT and 8800GT cards as well, being 56 Texture mapping units and 16 pixels outputted per second.
The Gigabyte 9800GT has a core clock speed of 600MHz, which gives a pixel fill rate of 9.6 Gigapixels/second and a texture fill rate of 38.4 Gigatexels/second. 9800GT has a 256-bit memory interface, meaning that the Gigabyte 9800GT which has a memory clock speed of 900MHz/1.8GHz effective has a memory bandwidth of 57.6GB/second.
The 9800GT supports all of the DirectX 10.0 features found on modern games like Age of Conan, STALKER Clear Skies, and other games that have been released. The key features of DirectX 10 include unified shaders, Geometry Shaders, Texture arrays, Geometry instancing and more. The 9800GT has support for up to 4x MSAA and 16x AF in a single clock with 8x MSAA and 16x AF available in a single pass of two clock cycles.
The Gigabyte 9800GT is RoHS compliant. RoHS stands for the Restriction of Hazardous Substances in the manufacturing of electronic and electrical equipment. RoHS restricts the use of Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Hexavalent chromium, Polybrominated biphenyls and Polybrominated diphenyl ether to 1 part per 1000 or 0.1%.
The one feature on the 9800GT which differentiates it from the 8800GT is support for HybridPower. The Green Initiative, which calls for the lowering of carbon emissions and saving the environment, is something that computer component manufacturers are pushing and HybridPower allows users to use less electricity due to its functionality. The Gigabyte 9800GT can be turned off when in 2D mode, having the integrated graphics of the NVIDIA chipset motherboard take over. In this instance the power savings can be immense as the 9800GT has a TDP of 105W.
Gigabyte has transferred their Ultra Durable 2 technology over to the video card side from the motherboard side of their business. Ultra Durable 2 indicates their products use Low RDS (on) MOSFETs, Ferrite Core Chokes and Lower ESR Solid Capacitors on the 9800GT. The Low RDS (on) MOSFETs provide ultra cooling, the Ferrite Core Choke design provides low power loss, and the all solid capacitors provide a longer life than standard capacitors. Turbo Force combines Gigabyte’s T3 technology with their V-Tuner overclocking utility. T3 stands for Performance Assurance Tuning, Stability Tuning and Power Optimization Tuning. Gigabyte says that the Turbo Force technology enhances performance over 10% over standard tuning.
source : www.motherboards.org
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