NVIDIA&#039;s riposte: the GeForce 9800 GTX+

Final thoughts

When hard-launched later on this month, GeForce 9800 GTX+ will offer significant competition to the excellent Radeon HD 48x0 series, providing that it ships with a UK street price of £149 or so.

We can say this because it's based on the incumbent GeForce 9800 GTX. Indeed, the base 738MHz/1,836MHz/2,200MHz clocks for the plus variant are in line with a number of factory-overclocked GTXs, such that the performance has been predictable for a while.

NVIDIA and its partners had been able to charge a serious premium for the GeForce 9800 GTX because AMD previously had nothing to compete with it in that £175-£200 space. That, clearly, changed with HD 4850 and 4870, and NVIDIA's only riposte was to drop pricing and announce an 'all-new' SKU.

An aside, we're rather vexed that NVIDIA's promised reductions on the old GTX haven't been implemented by the the majority of the UK channel, for various reasons, and this procrastination has given time for AMD to exploit its new GPUs to the fullest.

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ cannot come soon enough for the green team, because it's not winning a whole lot in the crucial £115-£175 sector right now - the two numbers bookending HD 48x0 pricing.

We're sure to see a gaggle of heavily-partner-overclocked models that encroach upon Radeon HD 4870's £179 etail cost, and it will be interesting to compare the two, in a head-to-head battle.

It was patently obvious that NVIDIA had to transition to a 55nm manufacturing process in order to reduce costs and pass on those savings to its partners and, ultimately, the end-users.

GeForce 9800 GTX+, then, is old technology that becomes viable because of its revised price-point. At a maximum of £149, including VAT, it makes decent sense; any higher and it's a pointless introduction.

But there's now more to deciding on a graphics card by looking at pure numbers. NVIDIA has built a CUDA ecosystem around GeForce 8-series and 9-series cards that will enable, as early as next week, PhysX support for present and upcoming gaming titles.

How it will play out against AMD's Havok alliance is open to serious conjecture, but the situation will become clearer in the next three months, and it will only be good for the consumer, as far as we're concerned.

Bottom line: a much-needed SKU from NVIDIA is manifested by a financially-efficient manufacturing process allied to a slight clockspeed bump. Nothing really new, folks, but pricing should be the product's saviour.

HEXUS.certification

The reference card passed all of our tests without failure, hence the HEXUS.certification. We'll pass judgement on partner cards in due course.

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MiB

HEXUS Where2Buy

TBC. However, you can purchase a Leadtek GeForce 9800 GTX, from Scan, for just £117.48, including free shipping.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If NVIDIA chooses to respond, we'll publish its commentary here verbatim.