PNY GeForce 9800 GTX review

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The PNY GeForce 9800 GTX is, in essence, a G92 graphics card with superior specifications.

So what else is new? Well, PureVideo HD offers very smooth HD video playback. And while three-way SLI isn't a brand new feature, it is something that nVIDIA is really pushing with the PNY GeForce 9800 GTX.

Standard SLI allows you to connect two similar nVidia graphics cards together and spread the workload amongst them. As you can guess from the name, three-way SLI lets you link up as many as three cards in a single PC.

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to test this feature - with samples of the PNY GeForce 9800 GTX extremely scarce at the time of writing this, the chances of us getting two, let alone three of these cards seems remote for the time being.

Not that this is currently a realistic proposal for typical customers. For best three-way SLI, you're almost certainly going to want a motherboard with the rather extortionately priced 790i (or possibly the 780) chipset.

And since each card itself needs two power connectors, a trio of them will need a massive six spare connectors. You're probably also going to need a PSU that can produce in excess of 1100W. Indeed, you'll do just as well looking at the Quad-SLI capabilities of the also new 9800 GX2 – a card that itself comes with two cores, and so Quad-SLI will only require you buying two rather than three cards. It's also safe to say that, of today's games, Crysis is the only one that really needs either Triple- or Quad-SLI.

What the PNY GeForce 9800 GTX does have is a very competitive price. It should be hitting the shops at a price that's a good £50 cheaper than the 3870 X2's. Given that it competed very well with the X2 in our games testing, this is a fairly good deal. It actually beat the X2 in World in Conflict, notching up an almost 10 percent increase at 1,440x900.

Even at 1,920x1,200, the PNY GeForce 9800 GTX was able to go head to head with the X2. The X2 turned the tables in Crysis, itself inching ahead by around 10 percent in lower resolutions with the highest detail settings (although the fight was rather more equal with lower detail settings), and the X2 was also faster in Company of Heroes.

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If you run your games at a resolution of 1,440x900 and don't feel the need to push the detail settings to their fullest, the PNY GeForce 9800 GTX is a very good card that can keep up (and sometimes even beat) the X2 or a couple of GTs in SLI formation. It's not bad over 1,680x1,050 either, although the X2 does start to show its extra clout here. Given the price though, this is an extremely good product for those who want impressive performance without needing every detail setting pushed to the max. As a superior alternative to the 8800 GT and GTS, it's a no-brainer.

• 

  BFG GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC

  As can be discerned from the name, the 9800 GTX+ OC is a slightly enhanced version of the 9800 GTX graphics card.

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  Asus GeForce EN8800 GT graphics card

  Reasonably affordable, but packed with acres of speed on both DirectX 9.0 and 10.0, the Asus GeForce EN8800 GT is a versatile card you can enjoy right now. And, when the price falls in a year or two, you can buy a second Asus GeForce EN8800 GT and unlock yet more performance.

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  Asus GeForce 8800 GTS HTDP 320MB

  Following on from the excellent PNY 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS card comes this even better version from Asus. Not only is it cheaper, but it comes with a free copy of Ghost Recon. And this is one of the best deals on the market.

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  Gainward BLISS GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card

  Technically, the GeForce 8800 Ultra is the most powerful graphics card you can buy - but it is tricky to source. As a consequence, the fastest card you can lay your hands on may be the Gainward BLISS GeForce 8800 GTX.

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  PNY GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB

  The PNY isn't going to be a stunner two years from now, but it's cheap enough that you can buy it for the strong framerates on current games. Then a couple of years from now you can buy something more adept at handling Vista and DirectX 10.0 than anything available today.