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Today we are testing out the new ASUS Extreme N9800GT HybridPower graphics card which is set to cost $150 US. This new GeForce 9800 GT graphics card offers a few cool new features that not all 9800 GT products will offer, such as the upgraded cooler. While the Extreme N9800GT HybridPower does look impressive, we are still wondering why the 9800 GT even exists… No one saw this coming, we certainly didn’t and neither did Nvidia, but somehow, someway, AMD pulled off one of the biggest upsets we have ever seen in the graphics card war. Typically every 6 months if all goes to plan each manufacturer refreshes its graphics card products, with major releases coming every 12 months.  For the past few years it is fair to say that little has gone to plan for AMD/ATI, with their major release the Radeon HD 2900 XT being a power hungry inefficient gaming card. The Radeon HD 3870 was a huge improvement in terms of value, despite only being a fraction faster in most cases. Meanwhile Nvidia lived off the success of the GeForce 8800 GTX for around 15 months before releasing something new, and even then what they called new was hardly new at all. The “new” flagship product was the GeForce 9800 GTX, which was just a slightly overclocked, re-badged version of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 which was released some 8 months prior, making it roughly as fast as the original 8800 GTX. Still, even with almost no new performance enhancements, the GeForce 9 series was sitting pretty, with the Radeon HD 3870 X2 being the only real threat, and that was taken care of by the GeForce 9800 GX2. However the current situation has changed, and while the tides have not completely turned, they have moved in AMD’s favor. It is now Nvidia that are slashing prices like a mad man in order to try and remain competitive. The current generation GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 graphics cards are now competing fairly well with the Radeon HD 4870, though the cheaper Radeon HD 4850 is causing a few problems. Given that most consumers are only looking to spend between $100 - $200 US on a graphics card, the Radeon HD 4850 has become a seriously hot item at just less than $200 US. The once popular GeForce 8800 GT has never looked so unappealing at just $150 US. However Nvidia being the cunning animal that it is, has come up with an ingenious means to make the 8800 GT popular once again, and they have done this by calling it the 9800 GT. The new ASUS GeForce 9800 GT “HybridPower” edition costs an estimated $150 US, making it roughly $10 more than the same card in 8800 GT form. The key difference between the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT HybridPower and the ASUS GeForce 8800 GT is that the new version features support for OpenGL 2.1 and Triple-SLI support. The older ASUS GeForce 8800 GT still features OpenGL 2.0 support, along with the ability to be used in SLI mode. So then, for roughly $10 US more you get slightly updated OpenGL support and the ability to waste another $300 on two more 9800 GT graphics cards. Three of these cards in Triple-SLI would cost the same amount as a single GeForce GTX 280, while in most cases they would be slower and consume considerably more power. So then, this is not really a feature we are going to get excited about. Keeping all this in mind, the ASUS GeForce 9800 GT HybridPower is still an impressive looking graphics card, so let’s check it out in more detail… |
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