Date:
Tuesday , May 27, 2008
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX

BFG's new OCX branding is the top of their 3-tier overclocking initiative, with OC and OC2 taking up the lower ranks. We're here to see if their GeForce 9800 GTX OCX is actually any better than a standard GeForce 9800 GTX!

Introduction

BFGTech needs no introduction. By offering high-quality products, good support, and lifetime warranties, they have carved a place for themselves out of the ferocious North American video card market. Their "by gamers, for gamers" philosophy and close relationship with NVIDIA has established BFG Technologies as a premium video card brand in the USA. Their own website states:

Many of our employees are gamers and PC enthusiasts, and we provide hardware and marketing that reflects our passion and excitement for the latest technology.

BFGTech produces video cards, motherboards, power supplies, and a host of other accessories. For this evaluation, we're taking a good long look at one of their latest video cards: The BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX.

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX GPU

NVIDIA launched the GeForce 9800 GTX GPU on April 1st, 2008, as a replacement for the highly successful and popular GeForce 8800 GTX. The GPU is manufactured on a 65 nanometer process and consists of 754 million transistors. It has 128 streaming processors and 16 ROPs, clocked at 675MHz and 1688MHz respectively. It also comes standard with 512MB of GDDR3 on a 256-bit wide memory bus. Interestingly, these specifications are a distinct step down from the GeForce 8800 GTX, which boasted 24 ROPs and 768MB of GDDR3 memory on a 384-bit wide bus. This decrease in memory bandwidth and ROP capacity has caused the performance of the GeForce 9800 GTX to suffer when performing multisampling operations at high resolutions. However, for most applications, the GeForce 9800 GTX slightly outperforms the GeForce 8800 GTX, though only by a margin that we consider almost trivial.

The GeForce 9800 GTX does, however, have its strong points. First, it uses 29 watts less power at load than the GeForce 8800 GTX. Second, it supports a new feature called Hybrid SLI, which essentially allows the video card to be shut down when not in use and when installed onto a compatible motherboard. Finally, NVIDIA brought hardware HD video decoding to the high end with the GeForce 9800 GTX, by adding a feature called PureVideo HD, which was previously found only on the mainstream NVIDIA GeForce 8600 and 8500 series of video cards. For more information on some of these features, please refer to our launch day evaluation of the GeForce 9800 GTX.

BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX

The new OCX moniker indicates the top-most tier of BFGTech's video cards. Prior to the OCX series, BFGTech offered OC and OC2 models of their video cards, with each successive OC level shipping with progressively higher clock speeds out of the box. A BFGTech product carrying the OCX label will have the highest clock speed that BFG believes is stable. The BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX has had the GPU core overclocked from 675MHz to 755MHz, an increase of 80MHz over the standard specification. The streaming processors also received a clock rate increase, going from 1688MHz to 1890MHz. That is a 202MHz increase in the shader core. Finally, BFGTech overclocked the memory on the GeForce 9800 GTX OCX to 2.3GHz, which is a 100MHz over NVIDIA's stock speed of 2.2GHz. In doing so, BFGTech brought the texture fill rate on this video card up by 2.5 billion texels per second, and the memory bandwidth up by 3.2 GB per second.

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We received our sample video card from BFGTech before the final packaging design was completed. The box it was shipped in was a generic black box with BFGTech branding, but without any model-specific information at all. BFGTech supplied us with a 3D rendered image of the retail package, which is shown above. The box is almost identical to the box that the original BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX shipped in on April first.

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The BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX is physically identical to the standard version we looked at in April. It has the same glossy black plastic heat-sink shroud, the same "titanium-black" dual-slot, PCI expansion bracket, and even the same sticker on the heat-sink shroud. In fact, the only way you can tell this is the "OCX" version is by the small "OCX" sticker on the fan hub. Apart from that, the physical appearance is identical. It is 10.5 inches long, 1.5 inches thick and 3.75 inches tall. The 6-pin power connectors are placed along the top edge, in order to prevent the power plugs from adding additional length to this already well-endowed video card.

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The backside of this video card is home to rather a lot of very small surface mounted electronics, as well as 14 screws used to affix the heat-sink to the PCB. On the business end of the BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX, we see a pair of dual-link DVI-I connectors and the standard HDTV/SVHS output port.

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Like most BFGTech bundles, this one is pretty spare. There is a single DVI to VGA adaptor, a single DVI to HDMI adaptor, an HDTV output dongle, and a dual-Molex to 6-pin auxiliary power adaptor. Alongside all that is a relative newcomer, which turns out to be a SPDIF cable for connecting your motherboard's onboard audio hardware to the video card, enabling full-featured HDMI output.

Inside a small black cardboard folder is found a considerable amount of paperwork. There is an installation guide, a a multimonitor setup guide, an HDTV setup guide, an invitation to BFG Gaming's annual LAN event, and a small ad extolling the virtues of NVIDIA SLI. Perhaps a bit more useful to some of us, the folder also includes 4 "Powered by BFG" stickers and a driver CD.

Competition

The BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX primarily competes against other GeForce 9800 GTX based video cards. But its price point also places in direct competition with AMD's ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2. And aside from that, we've found that the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT can offer an incredible value compared to its higher priced alternatives. So, for this evaluation, we are comparing the performance and image quality of the BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX with a standard reference NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX, an ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2, and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT.

We are looking to answer a few questions with this evaluation. First, does the BFGTech GeForce 9800 GTX OCX offer any concrete advantage over a standard NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX? Second, how does it compare with AMD's current high-end offering, the Radeon HD 3870 X2? Third, since it costs roughly twice as much at an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, does it offer a comparatively superior gameplay experience?

Price and Availability

BFGTech suggests a retail price of $399.99 for the GeForce 9800 GTX OCX. But we found it at Newegg.com for $354.99 USD, and at TigerDirect for $359.99 USD. Your mileage may vary.