After a long period of confusion in its product nomenclature Nvidia has finally acknowledged that it cannot go on like this anymore. However, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB still occupies the place between the GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9600 GT whereas the GeForce 9800 GTS seems to have been scrapped.

As we found out in our tests, the GeForce 9800 GTX delivers but barely higher 3D performance than the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB but comes at a considerably higher price. Coupled with its other drawbacks such as the long 27-centimeter PCB and two power connectors, the market standing of the 9800 GTX doesn’t seem firm. Those 5-8 percent of advantage in speed over the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB is surely not enough to make the GeForce 9800 GTX really attractive. So how can this product win the customer considering Nvidia’s prohibition to develop unique PCB designs for GeForce 9800 GTX?

There are indeed but a few ways a graphics card vendor can try. First of all, it is factory overclocking. It can help increase the performance gap between the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and GeForce 9800 GTX to such an extent as to justify the price difference between them. Nvidia permitting, many of its partners practice such overclocking. Zotac is among them. A part of PC Partner Group, this brand offers not only traditional solutions, one of which was reviewed by us earlier, but also provides a whole series of enthusiast-targeted pre-overclocked graphics cards under the common name of AMP! Edition. We will discuss the Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX AMP! today. The card may be the fastest GeForce 9800 GTX out there, so let’s check it out.