XFX GeForce 9800 GTX Black Edition

Man I tell you, it's mayhem in the graphics arena. Who expected that shortly before summer 2008? Last week AMD delivered a can of whoopass at the doorsteps of NVIDIA with the launch of their Radeon HD 4850 series of products. A highly versatile and performing product for merely 199 USD.

NVIDIA however wouldn't be NVIDIA if they didn't adapt to the situation at hand and aim to match the performance of AMD's lovely new little gem. In fact one or two days before AMDs launch we received some info that NVIDIA would be doing three things to react on the AMD Radeon HD 4850.

1. Release a new SKU under GeForce 9800 GTX+
2. Lower prices, GTX for 199 USD, GTX+ for 229 USD
3. Release a new driver boosting some extra performance

All in all a really exciting time if you are in the market for a mid-range graphics card. Seriously up-to this moment the 9600 GT and 8800 GT pretty much were the two leading mid-range products under the 200 USD price range. That dynamic now has shifted, and you guys really need to thank AMD for that.

That being said, NVIDIA planned this market reaction pretty well, reviewers white-papers were ready, the driver popped out of nowhere onto the NVIDIA FTP-sites and sure .. the GeForce 9800 GTX+ was born.

Well hey, it's the stuff we live and breathe for, but today we take a little de-tour as there are products out there more interesting than that GTX+. The card being reviewed today is the XFX GeForce 9800GTX Black Edition. The fun thing is, it has even faster than GTX+ clocks and will be priced at an amazing 239-249 USD. What we'll do today is have a look at that Radeon HD 4850 performance and compare it with the default GeForce 9800 GTX and then the XFX GeForce 9800 GTX Black Edition.

Initially we also wanted to downclock the GTX BE to a GTX+ and look at that performance, but since NVIDIA already shipped out a reference GTX+ and they do claim it to have slightly better thermals due to a die-shrink, we'll do that card in a separate article.

This review will not be as in-depth though as we merely want to show you how the GeForce 9800 GTX BE roughly performs in combo with the new driver versus the Radeon 4850. So a swift overview of XFXs Black Edition offering, then the benchmarks in all mentioned conditions and then some of you guys will probably will run to the store. The XFX XXX and Black editions obviously will fall in price hard as well. I mean if they don't ... people will just buy the regular 9800 GTX or Radeon 4850 at 199 USD.

Prices for mid-range just won't get any better than this anytime soon folks.  Lovely isn't it ? :)

The photo is a bit dark, but it suits the theme quite well I think :)