MSI GeForce 9800GT 512MB

For Linux desktop users interested in a mid-range discrete graphics card there are more choices than ever before with NVIDIA continuing to release new stable Linux drivers as they have done for many years while AMD this year has been making evolutionary leaps compared to their earlier state. AMD is now providing same-day support with all new products, CrossFire on Linux, OverDrive, and many other recently introduced features. NVIDIA and AMD are nearly at a feature parity and even in the past two months they both released new video APIs for Linux (PureVideo / VDPAU and X-Video Bitstream Acceleration, respectively) and they are now battling it out on Linux over performance. We recently looked at AMD's new ATI Radeon HD 4830 mid-range graphics card, but in this article we are comparing it to the NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT, courtesy of Micro-Star International.

Features:

- 680MHz Core Clock
- 1900MHz Memory Clock
- 512MB of GDDR3 Memory
- PCI Express 2.0
- PureVideo HD Technology
- OpenGL 2.1 Support
- NVIDIA HybridPower Supportive
- Two Dual-Link DVI

Contents:

The MSI packaging for the GeForce 9800GT is catering towards gamers and advertised on it is that this graphics card is NVIDIA PhysX ready, HybridPower ready, offers 512MB of GDDR3, Shader OC ready, and is part of MSI's gaming series. Inside the box the graphics card was well protected by a large soft Styrofoam cutout and the graphics card was within an ESD bag. Included with the graphics card was a quick user's guide, MSI Multimedia CD, component video adapter, HDMI audio header, DVI to VGA adapter, DVI to HDMI adapter, and video extension cable. Included on the MSI CD is the Windows driver, a program for obtaining updated BIOSes and drivers for the hardware, an MSI on-screen display program showing various system information, and a variety of other Windows programs. To Linux users, this CD will likely be of no value.