ASUS has expanded its TOP series of highly overclocked cards. The 9800 GTX variant is no different with some big numbers straight out of the box.
What the TOP line up of cards is all about is overclocking, and the 9800 GTX certainly doesn’t disappoint. While stock speeds on a 9800 GTX come in at 675MHz on the core, 1,688MHz on the shader and 2,200MHz DDR on the 512MB of GDDR3 memory, ASUS ramps this up with a core clock of 755MHz, shader clock of 1,840MHz and a very healthy 2,350MHz DDR clock on the memory.
This big increase in clocks manages to give you a fairly significant performance increase in everything you test; from 3DMark06 to Crysis. When compared to the stock 9800 GTX, the results show just how much work ASUS put into the TOP version to make it truly stand out from the pack, and that is really what the TOP line-up of graphics cards from ASUS is all about.
Outside of the performance side of things, the bundle isn’t all that exciting with a full version game being skipped. For a while now we’ve seen ASUS bundle Company of Heroes in the higher end models and it’s disappointing to have not seen it in the top end 9800 GTX package.
Apart from the standard array of DVI to VGA connectors, TV-out cables, manuals and driver CDs, the only other stand out in the bundle is the brown leather CD wallet. With that said though, there is the standard line-up of exclusive ASUS software included on a CD such as GamerOSD, SmartDoctor, Video Security and Splendid.
The 9800 GTX continues to impress and disappoint people all at the same time; while the card does offer some excellent performance and is one of the fastest cards on the market at the moment, there is no doubt many enthusiasts find themselves left with a sour taste in their mouth due to a limited performance increase over last generation 8800 cards. What the 9800 series has done however is make high performance computing more affordable with the card launching at half the price of previous speed demons like the 8800 Ultra. While the move to a 9800 GTX isn’t worth it for these users from a performance perspective, if you find yourself with a 7900 series card or below then you’re going to be extremely happy with the performance that the new series offers for the price.
The TOP version from ASUS kicks performance up a notch by giving us some massive out-of-the-box clocks on both the core and memory. Backed by a three year warranty and all the normal ASUS goodies, the 9800 GTX TOP is going to make any gamer happy. As usual the price comes into play, and the ASUS offering is one of the more expensive ones on the market. With that said though, the price really does seem to be justified these days from out-of-the-box performance alone.
The card ultimately does what it’s supposed to do, and it manages to do it very well with excellent performance figures from the word go. The card is really designed for people who want to get that big overclock and performance increase without having to get into third party software and spend the time mucking around getting the higher clock speeds.