Zotac 9800GTX and SLI review - Overclocking, Conclusion
Author: Luka Rakamaric
Date: 01 Apr 2008

Both the 8800GT and GTS were excellent overclockers, and we were surprised to see the GTX on only 25 MHz more than the GTS. We managed to get the card to 810 MHz for the CPU and 2330 MHz for the memory. Other combinations of overclocking just one component would probably yield better results. Also, turning up the fan speed could squeeze a few extra tens on the GPU clock.

Conclusion

So, basically we got another standardly great NVIDIA card. The 9800GTX is just that, an upgrade on the 8800GTS 512, with enabled 3-way SLI and the support for new NVIDIA HybridPower, that can totally disable the card when it’s not needed. This is a Vista-only feature so don't expect to run it on XP at any time soon. Tech-wise it works really good and with all of the things happening on the chipset front (780a chipset with integrated VGA, for example) this seems to be a very nice feature that will surely see the light of day in other parts of the business - for example new laptops. The cooler is also very quiet, which can be attributed to its size and the GPU’s minimal power consumption when compared to the old G80 chips.

We expect to see quite a few pre-overclocked cards in a couple of weeks so - stay tuned for those as well. But the fact of the matter is - even with some overclocked settings we tried out, we're pretty sure It will still be withing a couple of percent when compared to Ultra, while it?s equal or little bit better than the old GTX. We really believe that this card deserves a grand prix award, as it is the fastest single-GPU card available to buy today. The irony is, it is still outperformed by a card existing on the market for a year now. It almost reminds us of Intel's Tick-Tock strategy, with subtle differences - keywords are price and different chips, not technology process and chips themselves...