Zotac GeForce 9800 GT AMP review

Overclocked to the max, but does it make this a tempting card?

Zotac
Cranked up clockspeeds are not quite enough for Zotac's 9800 GT

TechRadar Verdict

Cranked up clockspeeds are not quite enough for Zotac's 9800 GT

Pros

  • +

    Low price

  • +

    Decent performance

Cons

  • -

    Slower than some similarly-priced rivals

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Is this a GeForce 8800 GT by another name?

A die shrink of the G92 chip to 55nm aside that'll be an affirmative.

All the key hardware features, including 112 stream shaders, 16 ROPs and a 256-bit memory bus are exactly the same. Frankly, NVIDIA has gotten itself muddled with its GeForce 8 and 9 series chipsets.

Nevertheless, an effort has been made to give this board a lift. Along with the snazzy orange PCB, Zotac has cranked up the clocks. The core frequencies take a big jump from 600MHz to 700MHz, while the shaders are up by 200MHz to 1,700MHz. That's enough to lift it to 9800 GTX levels of performance most of the time. Hurrah!

However, it remains much slower than HIS's similarly overclocked Radeon HD 4850. Haroo. But it's still an attractive board at under £100.

Contributor

Technology and cars. Increasingly the twain shall meet. Which is handy, because Jeremy (Twitter) is addicted to both. Long-time tech journalist, former editor of iCar magazine and incumbent car guru for T3 magazine, Jeremy reckons in-car technology is about to go thermonuclear. No, not exploding cars. That would be silly. And dangerous. But rather an explosive period of unprecedented innovation. Enjoy the ride.