Palit 9800 GTX: Review and SLI testing - PAGE 3

Box

On the front of the bright green Palit 9800 GTX box we have a large Frobot, 'GeForce 9 Series' written in sparkling letters, and a 9800GTX sticker listing features.

On the back of the box, some very brief technical specifications are offered, in 12 different languages.

Bundle

The Palit 9800 GTX comes with a driver CD, a quick installation guide, a DVI to VGA adapter, and a S -Video out cable. Additionally, this package comes with Tomb Raider, Anniversay edition. While this game is nice to see, as bundles go for other 9800 GTX's -- and other higher-end cards in general -- it would be nice to see a bit more, such as a HDMI adapter, SLI bridges, SPDIF cable, molex to PCIe power adapter, or something similar.

Overclocking

While the default performance of the 9800 GTX is quite good, the real strength of this new video card lies in its overclocking potential. Our last adventures in overclocking a 9800 GTX turned in some excellent results, with a roughly 17% gain in performance, once pushed to the limit.

Using RivaTuner and running the fan at 100%, we are able to reach a very solid overclock, but not to the extent as we did with our last 9800 GTX. Often overclocking is like that -- luck plays a significant role. While the stock clocks of the Palit 9800 GTX are 675 / 1100 / 1688 (core / memory / shader), we were able to overclock our Palit 9800 GTX to 806 / 1212 / 1958. Particularly with that significant shader clock increase, the 9800 GTX absolutely laughs at any game running at these speeds. The only game that will not absolutely fly on an overclocked 9800 GTX right now is Crysis.