9800GTX overtakes 9800GTX+

HILBERT HAS GONE BONKERS again, and again it’s over a 9800GTX (not the “+” version) Black Edition from XFX. As GPUs go, this is clocked insanely high – even higher than a “+” – while costing a bit more too ($249), 756MHz/1890MHz/2288MHz (GPU, Shader, RAM) to be more precise. So it does offer a bit more oomph than your standard GTX. We have to agree with Hilbert, no matter which way you look, the mainstream is as good as it’s never been before. Rated M for Mature, tho’, there's an "F" word in there somewhere.

TweakTown takes a look at a bit more XXX action with a XFX GeForce GTX 280. Apparently the high memory clocks (2500MHz) and the factory overclock are the card’s greatest achievements. Although it surely offers the highest single GPU performance on the market today, it doesn’t offer GX2-squashing numbers… and it comes at a price, a pretty steep price (we couldn’t find it in the article but we found a listing for around $800 USD). Catch it here.

With DDR2 reaching bargain-basement prices these days, some of you out there might even consider maxing-out their boards right away so you can doodle on Photoshop or RAMdrive to your heart’s content. Well, packing 4GB o’RAM onto a DIMM isn’t cheap, as TechPowerUp discovered when testing the Winchip DDR2 667 16GB Quad Kit. Sure you have enough RAM to run RAMdrives (which was the target of TPU’s testing), but just how many of you can spare 999 buckaroos? Brave thing to do… foolish, too. Read the review here.

Club OC is also reviewing the HD 4850 today. Identical to the reference design, this particular card came from Sapphire, but shows the same behaviour world+dog have noted: great performance across several benchmarks, high heat, slow fan. Joe does focus a bit more on the fact that power consumption is pretty reasonable for a card of this performance. Well, don’t take our word for it… read on.

Boot Daily is doing a bit more of the HD4850 song & dance, but in Crossfire mode. So far Crossfire has only provided substantial results when paired, rather than tripled or quadded, and in this case, it’s should to should with a GTX 280. Fanboyism will be even more relevant when picking a card, as performance vs. price is almost equal in the high-end. Read the review here.

Fledgling Expreview has published a review (we won’t risk saying whose it is) on the HD 4870 and HD 4850. We’re presuming you’ve heard enough of the HD 4850, so pay attention to the 4870-specific parts of the article, including page 20 where it faces off with the GTX280… if you can open the review, that is. We’re sure the site is swamped by users right now… Try and catch it here. µ