Nvidia just released a "new" video card called the GeForce GTS 250 which has been generating quite a bit of buzz. While it is targeted at the low to mid range gaming performance market, the interest has been in the fact that this is yet another release based on their G92 GPU.
While we do not have one of these new GTS 250 cards on hand, we do have something that might be confused for one if you just saw some of the key features and specifications. The Sparkle GeForce 9800 GTX+ was selected from the large inventory of
video cards at
Geeks.com for this review, and can be seen in the promotional image below.
Before looking at the sample provided for review, let's take a look at some published data on the
Sparkle GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card. The bullet points below cover some of the highlights from the list of features and specifications found at
the product listing on the Geeks.com website.
Features and Specifications:
» NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX+ chipset
» 512 MB GDDR3 memory
» PCI Express 2.0 bus type
» Core Clock: 738 MHz
» Memory Clock: 2200 MHz
» 256-bit memory interface
» 1836 MHz Shader Clock
» 400 MHz RAMDAC
» NVIDIA Unified Architecture
» Full Microsoft DirectX 10 support
» OpenGL 2.1 optimizations and support
» Advanced Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing
» Inverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction)
» Certified for Windows Vista
» NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology (requires other compatible components that are HDCP capable)
» HDMI Ready
» Dynamic Contrast Enhancement
The typical 9800 GTX has a GPU frequency of 675 MHz, the memory runs at 2200 MHz, and the shader clock is 1675 MHz. So, we can see that the "+" on this model implies a respectable overclock across the board.
Where things get interesting in terms of the new GeForce GTS 250 cards is that this older Sparkle card not only features the same GPU, but the CPU, GPU, and shader clock frequencies are all the same, too. Unfortunately, the new GTS 250 cards are set to launch at around $129, while this GTX 9800+ still costs more than $150 (which is still quite a competitive price compared to other 9800 GTX+ cards).
