Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT Sterling Heights MI

While some people might be wondering why these two cards from apparently different series have been paired up for review, some readers will be more familiar with Nvidia's befuddling, bewildering and discombobulating naming shenanigans of late. The GPUs used in these cards have only one difference, which is that the 9800 GT has a tiny chip that enables a pretty useless feature, Hybrid Power, that's only compatible with a handful of undesirable motherboard chipsets with integrated graphics.







The 9800 GT and 8800 GT are based around a GPU manufactured on a 65nm process, which runs at 600MHz. The card features 112 stream processors clocked at 1.5GHz and 512MB of GDDR3 memory running at 900MHz (1.8GHz effective).







It was no surprise that the cards scored identical frame rates when playing games. Both cards ran X3: Terran Conflict and Fallout 3 smoothly at 1,920 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 8x AF. Unfortunately, the more demanding Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead were too much for these identity-challenged GPUs. Warhead was particularly troublesome, as it just kept crashing. Even at our lowest test setting of 1,280 x 1,024 with 2x AA, the GPUs failed to produce a smooth frame rate in either game. However, Folding@home is one application in which these cards really stand out. Both models will produce 4,459ppd, which is significantly more than that managed by even a high-end ATI GPU.







The results speak for themselves. Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead will be on most gamers' lists, and the GPUs' poor performance means an upgrade is recommended. However, they're definitely worth holding on to for those who want to contribute to medical science as part of Custom PC's Folding@home team.

Author: James Gorbold & Mark Mackay

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