As we looked at yesterday in NVIDIA's road map, the 9800 GTX isn't all that far away, possibly even arriving in late March.

And now the release of 9800 GTX seems even sooner, as Chinese tech site Expreview has gotten some interesting information on this new card. For starters, the have found out that the reference board design of the 9800 GTX will share the same cooler that is currently featured on the 8800 GTS 512 (G92 GPU). This is pictured below.

Additionally, Expreview has published a GPU-z screenshot. The cards' specs have been put into a handy comparison chart for your viewing pleasure:

The numbers seem about right, though the core clock at 675 MHz seems a tiny bit on the slow side (and far from the supposed numbers found on the road map from yesterday). Nonetheless, Expreview always manages to get hardware well in advance, so I have no doubt these should be the right specs; and the 9800 GTX should fly, 675 MHz core or not. Judging from the performance of the 9600 GT, the 9800 GTX (G92-420 GPU) should deliver somewhere around %175 (1.75x) the performance of a 8800 GTX I would guess, in detail maxed games at 1280x1024.  

Something else worth mentioning: 9800 GTX in SLI is going to be pretty mean. 9600GT SLI has been shown to out-pace a HD3870X2 often, so a pair of 9800 GTX's will probably be exceptionally fast. Three 9800 GTX cards in a 3-Way SLI setup will probably be enough power to actually do Crysis justice at extreme resolutions, and ultra-high settings -- not to mention enough GPU power to hit the framerate cap on virtually any other game out right now.

Hopefully, for the sake of gamers everywhere, ATI will be able to step up to the plate and find a way to get their shader clocks up. Or maybe -- with not all the much in the way of new cards rumored to be arriving soon -- ATI will just optimize and revise the HD 3850 and HD 3870, and concentrate on competing in the sub $200 market.