Wednesday, September 24th 2008
ASUS Launches 9800 GTX+ ''Dark Knight'' Edition...Seriously!
NVIDIA seems to have made an exception with the GeForce 9800 GTX / GTX+, for allowing its partners to design and sell non-reference design graphics cards based on the said GPU. Earlier we had seen pictures of a card designed by Palit, perhaps the first non-reference 9800 GTX+, taken during this year's NVISION event. It's ASUS now, with their non-reference GeForce 9800 GTX+ accelerator branded as EN9800GTX+ DK/HTDI/512M, in which "DK" abbreviates Dark Knight.
The card uses a custom PCB designed by ASUS, the power inputs are pushed to the posterior end of the card, a black metal railing is seen covering the side of the card (XFX style), the center of attraction is the large cooler designed by ASUS. It consists of aluminum fin arrays on either sides of a fan, to which heat is conveyed by four heat-pipes. The has a double-slot design, sports 512 MB of GDDR3 memory and is 3-way SLI capable. The card can be pushed as far as 735 MHz (core) and 2,200 MHz (memory). ASUS has set up its product page already.
Source:
Hexus.net
The card uses a custom PCB designed by ASUS, the power inputs are pushed to the posterior end of the card, a black metal railing is seen covering the side of the card (XFX style), the center of attraction is the large cooler designed by ASUS. It consists of aluminum fin arrays on either sides of a fan, to which heat is conveyed by four heat-pipes. The has a double-slot design, sports 512 MB of GDDR3 memory and is 3-way SLI capable. The card can be pushed as far as 735 MHz (core) and 2,200 MHz (memory). ASUS has set up its product page already.
31 Comments on ASUS Launches 9800 GTX+ ''Dark Knight'' Edition...Seriously!
its stupid and ridiculous the amount of cards the same name and core, 9999GTS-+= xxxOC edition alpha male plus with a 50mhz extra on the memory and a new cooler
pure crap if you ask me :banghead:
i feel ripped off when the next month they bring out a card exact same core but with better cooling and more on the core/mem sucks for us
you (Asus) call it "dark Knight" but where is the black PCB & Uber sexy matt black cooler???
A few things with this G.card doesnt make sense.
- they give it a cheesy name but ok fine but wheres the black PCB??
- wheres the matt black 'sexy' stealth-bomber-a-like coolers??
- why the hell call it "Dark Knight" but theres no hint of batman about this card.
----obviously they cant ship it with a real sexy cooler as that would make the ROG series cards pointless.
theres nothing 'REALLY' that special about it IMHO might as well just call it 'black edition' like some of AMDs cpus
next up - 'Joker Editon' - so why so serious???
Don't know what temps this will get and noise, as it doesn't look like a PWM fan (just two wires if I see correctly). Biggest fault in ASUS is however their website. It took over 5min to get the bloody product page open and their website has been like that for years. So glad I don't have to download any drivers there anymore :)
Do you mean there are too many different 9800GTX+ cards? What does it matter, competition is good.
He's lamenting that they will toss out a GTX+ and then tweak a memory clock and release it as a new card with a different sku and title. It's why nVidia was receiving fire to change their line-up to make it simpler. Honestly if you go into a computer store, looking over the clerks shoulder into their locked up cabinet, do you know the difference between an Asus EN9800GTX+ ES/512M/XOOC and an ASUS EN9800GTX+ DK/HTDI/512M? Competition is good, but within the own company itself isn't competition, its just confusing the customer.
Unfortunately nVidia didn't do a bang up job of cleaning up their naming with the G200 series and all the manufacturing companies made it worse all the same by adding their own to the title. Does it really need an 'EN' in the title? I know its Asus by the fact it says Asus in front, the EN is just redundant in my eyes and confusing in other customers eyes.
then there is the same card but with an oc and something else
too many variations of one product its hampering the market
people dont know whether to wait for the a new revision or the oc version or what?
:D
or having all those sizes of coca cola those mini cans to the 2 litres
or having 8 sport version of the same ford focus
4 different versions of the exact same card is a no no i dont want an oc edition then a silent edition and a version with a new cooler then having 512mb 1 and 2 gb version of all those cards then a version with unlocked shaders comkes out and they do all the same
or they rename the card from 8800gs to something else add a faster clock speed sell it as a new card, then you get oc'd version of that card and all the other versions
then on the lower end cards you get the exact same card with Gddr 2 and 3 and in 256 nad 512 and 1gb variety
its like saying heres a bmw now 6 months later heres the exact same bmw but with 50 more horse power
i feel raped when i spend money on a card then blam out of the blue a new version of my card with new cooling and slightly more shaders comes out then blam an oc version of that card comes out
or OHHHH a xxx edition
idk, personally, I agree a lot of the time there's hardly any difference in cards released by the same company, but here's what I think should be offered for every gpu by every company:
-bare minimum, lowest capacity vram, lowest clocks, stock cooling
-moderate clocks and vram, better air cooler
-highest clocks and vram, best air cooler
Then for only the most popular cards they can try making "special" versions like:
-small, silent, single-slot (so obviously only on popular low-mid gpus since the top-of-the-line ones are too hot and the pcb's are too large)
-maybe different color pcb or some form of "extreme cooling" like liquid cooling kit with everything integrated and ready out-of-box or some shit, as long as the extra features are all significantly different from their main lineup
As long as the naming scheme is consistent and it's easy to tell everything apart (which it probably never will be either) then it should be fine. Sometimes it's nice having all the extra variety for niche shoppers, cuz sometimes you're looking for a card that can meet some very specific requirements . . . but like I said, I agree that a lot of the shit is exactly the same.
Hopefully that wasn't in too bad taste.:laugh:
There are 11 9800GTX+ cards, and 17 HD4870's. Even if you include the original 9800GTX in the count, it is still only 16 to 17, ATi still has more options and there are 25 HD4850's. So please, get your facts straight before you start bashing.
This is how the graphics industry is, I wouldn't want to live in a world where each card only had one option and one option only.