Palit 9800GX2 Review

Testing:

At OverclockersClub.com, we use a series of benchmarks to stress the graphics card. We will use a series of newer gaming benchmarks, as well as some that are more seasoned, to show how well the Palit 9800GX2 compares to some of the other enthusiast video cards on the market. We'll be using both single and dual GPU models to show the performance that can be gained from a dual card solution, if any at all.  All driver settings and clock speeds will be left at factory defaults for both the CPU and GPU, in an effort to minimize or eliminate any variables that could impact the results. The test system used in this review is listed below. After testing the card at stock speeds, I'll overclock it to see what kind of performance can be gained. All testing is done with the default settings in the respective Control Panels, as well as default settings in the BIOS of the motherboard used in this test.

• Processor: Intel Q9450 Core 2 Quad 333x8
• Motherboard: Gigabyte X48-DQ6
• Memory: Mushkin XP2 Redline 8000 2 x 2GB 5-5-5-12
• Video Card(s): Palit 9800GX2
• Power Supply: Mushkin 800 watt Modular power supply
• Hard Drive: Seagate 320GB SATA
• Optical Drive: NEC DV5700
• OS: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Video Cards:

• Asus EAH3870 X2 TOP
• XFX 9800GX2
• Visiontek HD 4870
• PowerColor HD 4850
• Asus EN9800 GTX
• XFX 9600GT
• XFX GTX 280
• EVGA GTX 260 FTW

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

• Palit 9800GX2 766/1105/1915MHz

On air with no voltage mods, it seems that the maximum clock speeds that can be achived are right in the neighborhood of 766MHz on the GPU cores and 1105MHz on the GDDR3 memory. I say this after benchmarking two reference design cards from different manufacturers that basically overclocked identically. The difference between the two cards clock speeds can be counted on one hand. The 166MHz overclock on the GPU core offers an increase in performance in many of the game benchmarks tested. Keeping the cores cool by manually increasing the fan speed to 100 percent does help in achieving a higher overclock, just not more that 766MHz on the core in this case. 166MHz on the core and 105MHz on the memory are respectable overclocks when it comes down to it. When the CPU speed is ramped up the 9800GX2 takes off. This card from Palit performed almost identically the the XFX model I looked at several months ago. Scores of close to 19000 in 3DMark06 with the CPU at 3.6GHz show the potential of the card. While you can always hope for more ultimately what you get on air is what you get.

Benchmarks:

• Video:

1. Crysis
2. Knights of the Sea
3. BioShock
4. Call of Duty 4
5. World in Conflict
6. Call of Juarez
7. Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
8. 3DMark 06 Professional