XFX PV-T98G-YDLU GF 9800GT 600M 512MB DDR3 DUAL DVI TV PCI Express Card

This is an excellent performance video card with a decent bundled game. It's slim enough to not overhang the next slot in your PC, comes with a power adapter if your system is too old to have a 6-pin PCIe power connector, and runs silently at idle (the onboard fan is very quiet). This card fit in my Dell Inspiron 530 desktop without any problems. While it is PCIe 2.0, it should run in any PCIe 16x slot albeit with less bandwidth (which is how I'm using it).

On my Dell Q6600 quadcore system, using the free FutureMark 3dmark06 benchmark, this board scored 11881 3DMarks (vs 5728 for my fast XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT XXX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Ready Video Card (Dual DVI/S-Video). More than twice as fast...sweet! Note the benchmark is DirectX 9, not DX10.

The windows drivers for this board are part of...Read more

This thing is pretty sweet! After my 8800GTS 320MB got busted (heat issues - lasted me 1 yr 8 months), I ordered this as replacement... This was way cheaper (at the time of purchase) and was able to outperform my old card! I do get some choking before on some games like Oblivion and Crysis, but now, I barely have any and there was a 10-15 FPS increase across the board using the highest settings!

Plus this came with a COD4 which seals the deal for this sweet thing as the best bang for the buck card! I admit I must have gotten the one with a free FarCry 2 since I already have COD4, but I'm not complaining.

Everyone says there is a heat issue, but that's kind of expected already... I just got a PCI system fan exhaust blower for only $3, and placed this right under the video card and it keeps the high temps at bay... running at 50's idle and 70's under load... not too much of an issue for me.

Overall, I am happy with this!

After my 7600GT died with 5 popped capacitors, I ordered this 9800GT as replacement.

The performance simply a lot better than 7600GT. But be prepared that this card is 9 inch long and make sure you have the space to fit it in. The card runs a little hot, so I bought a PCI slot blower under my card. Now it runs at around 56C idle, about 80C under load.

My CPU is a AMD X2 4200+ with AM2 socket, it became a bottleneck for GTA 4 performance. However, I can still run the game at medium quality with some settings tuned down. No complains with playing COD4, Fallout 3, NBA 2k9 at max or almost max quality on my 19" widescreen.

In a few words, this card is the best a budget gamer can get. Plus, as others mentioned, it came with COD 4 full version.

AND DON'T FORGET THE REGISTER WITH XFX TO GET LIFETIME WARRANTY!

Note: My card died on me on August 24th, 2010 due to excessive heat. I did add a cooling fan right below it but I guess that...Read more