Introduction

With AMD's recent HD 4850 launch, NVIDIA suddenly lost their good position in the price/performance segment of the graphics card market. To counter this the suggested retail price of the GeForce 9800 GTX has dropped from $269 to $199. Leadtek as one of NVIDIA's major board partners will be following that pricing model in the near future. Also a new card has been announced called the GeForce 9800 GTX+, offering higher clock speeds on a slightly die-shrinked GPU.

The Leadtek GeForce 9800 GTX we are testing today completely follows NVIDIA's 9800 GTX reference design specifications.

Packaging & Contents

Leadtek ships their PX9800 GTX in a brightly colored package that certainly draws attention. On the back you find some important product highlights and a carrying handle will helps you bring your loot home safely.



You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Quick User's Guide
• Driver CD + Neverwinter Nights 2 Full Game
• DVI Adapter + HDMI Adapter + TV out cable
• 2x PCI-E power cable
• SPDIF Audio cable

The Card

Like all recent NVIDIA cards, the GeForce 9800 GTX uses a complex cooler that covers the whole card. According to NVIDIA this design philosophy is supposed to deliver more of a "product experience" than just a graphics card. The cooler design requires two slots for operation.


The card has two DVI ports, basically the most common output configuration these days. In case you need an analog VGA port you can use the included DVI adapter. When using an HDMI adapter (included too), you will also have access to HDMI+HDCP+Audio, which allows easy setup of a media PC. To receive audio over the HDMI connection you have to feed in an audio signal via SPDIF cable, for example from your motherboard's on-board audio.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.