GeForce 9800 GT Roundup (EVGA, ASUS, Gigabyte & Palit)

Palit 9800 GT 512MB Sonic (NE/980TSXT352)

Product Number: NE/980TSXT352
Manufacturer’s Product Page: Palit Microsystems Ltd.
Price: Click here to compare prices
Warranty: 2 Years


From looking at the specs alone, it seems like Palit has taken the stock 9800 GT and added a bit of spice to it with some not so insignificant overclocks. The core gets a 50Mhz bump to 650Mhz while the memory grabs 100Mhz (DDR) more as well. Palit has priced this card a bit below even some stock-clocked cards at about $160 but you don’t get any of the bangs and whistles such as HybridPower and a HDMI output. You also get what some would call a cut-rate warranty which currently stands at a paltry single year. This is pretty much at the bottom rung when it comes to Nvidia cards but 2 years is still longer than most of us keep our cards.


From one card to the next, all of Palit’s Nvidia boxes are almost the exact same with very slight changes. This one includes the usual Palit Frog along with a few logos listing the features of the card. Palit has always garnered our appreciation for listing the actual clock speeds of their cards right on the front of the box which means the customer won’t need to search high and low or them in a retail store.

The accessories which come with this card are completely bog-standard with a Molex to 6-pin power adaptor and a DVI to VGA dongle being the only extras other than the driver CD and installation booklet. However, the two Palit cards in this roundup are the only ones to include a game into their accessory packages. While Tomb Raider isn’t exactly the most popular franchise anymore, the Anniversary edition Palit has here should keep you entertained for a couple hours at least.


When you get your first glance of the Palit 9800 GT Sonic, there will be no mistaking that this is one unique card which has been custom built by Palit. Not only does it come with a custom heatsink but all of the ram chips are also covered by a piece of shaped aluminum in order to dissipate the heat they generate. Even though there are many detractors of this kind of heatsink configuration since all of the heat generated by the core will stay within the confines of your case, the G92 core does not produce an huge amount of heat so the negative impacts will be minimal at most.

We have also come to know Palit for having a somewhat unique frame of mind when it comes to audio and video outputs on their cards. With this card they have forgone any departure from the reference design and have stayed the course with two DVI connectors and a single TV-out port.


While the Palit Sonic is much like the Gigabyte 9800 GT we saw previously in that it has a completely custom PCB, it remains the same length as a reference card at 9”. Since they had basically a blank slate to work with, Palit’s extensive team of engineers significantly beefed up the power distribution section by adding 4-phase power, higher-rated capacitors and industrial spec’d inductors. They also included an S/PDIF connector on the card but unfortunately, the lads over in the penny-pinching department cut out the S/PDIF connector from the accessory package.