Testbed:

Motherboard:
EVGA 680i SLI (Provided by EVGA)

Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition (Provided by Intel)

Memory:
OCZ FlexXLC PC2 9200 5-5-5-18  (Provided by OCZ)
        during testing CL5-5-5-15-CR2T 1066MHz at 2.2V

PSU:
OCZ Silencer 750 Quad Black (Provided by OCZ)

Hard disk:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Provided by Seagate)

CPU-Cooler:
Freezer 7 Pro (Provided by Artic Cooling)

Case Fans:
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 12 PWM
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 8 PWM

Vista 32 SP1



Gainward’s 9800 GT Golden Sample card didn’t outperform HD 4850 in Vantage Mark, but it scored 5210 marks and took the place right after 9800 GTX. Geforce 8800 GT lost to Gainward 9800 GT by about 4%.

Reference speeds for Gainward Bliss 9800 GT Golden Sample card are 650+ MHZ/ 1625+ MHz/ 1900+ MHz, but using ExpertTool we easily overclocked it to 700MHz/1760MHz/2000MHz. Vantage Mark immediately benefitted from this and we see a 6% better score (329 marks improvement). Overclocked Gainward Bliss 9800 GT GS managed to beat Geforce 9800 GTX card.



To see whether overclocking has any real-life benefits, we took Unreal Tournament 3 out for a spin. Gainward managed to come close and even beat 9800 GTX.



The new Gainward 9800 GT at reference 650MHz ended up somewhere between 8800 GT and 9800 GTX. Radeon HD 3850 managed to spell many troubles for mid-range Geforce cards.



Not bad at all, we’d say. In Company of Heroes, Gainward 9800 GT is just slightly slower than 9800 GTX (2fps at the highest resolution which is 7%), and at the same time it manages to beat HD 3850.



Call of Juarez didn’t seem to like Nvidia’s cards and they lost the battle even to HD 4850. Overclocked Gainward 9800 GT almost ran on par with 9800 GTX, but apart from GTX 200, Nvidia’s cards couldn’t provide playable framerates.

 

 

Conclusion

Graphics is undoubtedly improving, but sometimes old equipment is being sold under a new name. This Nvidia’s marketing move where they decided to rename 8800 GT and sell it as 9800 GT in order to better suit the needs of the market isn’t necessarily bad, as we didn’t lose anything, but end users are confused with the numbers. There are two types of 9800 GT cards – those with HybridPower (55nm GPU) and those without it (65nm GPU). Architecture-wise, there are no differences apart from saving power with HybridPower, but that works only when combined with an appropriate Nvidia chipset with integrated graphics.

We all know that 8800 GT is a great card, and Gainward Bliss 9800 GT Golden Sample is a new name that will do it justice. Of course, in order to please the ever-demanding customers, Gainward decided to use a specially designed cooler that improves cooling as well as introduce some nice overclocking potential. The card is overclocked from 600MHz to 650+MHz by default. We once again see Gainward’s “+” after the numbers, which means easy overclocking. The card’s shaders run at 1625+MHz, and the memory at 950+MHz. Gainward used 1024MB of GDDR3 memory on their Bliss 9800 GT, but they used Samsung’s fast memory that runs at 1000MHz (2000MHz effectively).

Bliss 9800 GT Golden Sample is a good card that will set you back about €130, whereas Bliss 9800 GT version with 512MB of memory is priced at about €100. The higher price is, of course, due to 1024MB of memory and better cooling that will make overclocking a breeze. The card is ready for anything modern games might throw at it, and it’s hard not to recommend it. However, we still think that the main flaw is the price.