No, it's not an April Fools joke. Nvidia really has added a new high-end member to its GeForce 9 series of graphics cards - the GeForce 9800 GTX. The new card is already prominently featured on the graphics company's website, and several models have become available at Newegg. Those include: BFG Tech's BFGE98512GTXE GeForce 9800 GTX, eVGA's 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX, Leadtek's PX9800GTX GeForce 9800 GTX, Zogis' ZO98GTX-E GeForce 9800 GTX and Zotac's ZT-98XES2P-FSP GeForce 9800 GTX .All five models are priced at $329.99, and they all have the same specifications: 128 stream processors, a 675MHz core clock speed, a 1688MHz shader clock, 512MB of 1100MHz GDDR3 memory (that's 2200MHz effective), and a 256-bit memory interface. Considering the 9800 GTX is based on Nvidia's G92 graphics processor, those specs essentially make it a higher-clocked version of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB.

VR-Zone has rounded up a total of 15 different brands of GeForce 9800 GTX from ASUS, MSI, Leadtek, Inno3D, Sparkle, XFX, Foxconn, POV, Chaintech, Albatron, Elsa, Palit, Gainward, BFG, ZOTAC. Among all, it seems Foxconn is the most aggressively clocked at 780MHz core and 2.36GHz memories. I4U NEWS and Hexus.net have reviewed the new BFG 9800 GTX Video Card.� Neoseeker has posted a review of XFX 9800 GTX. And finally, HotHardware.com posted their NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX Round-Up

It's a weird situation to think that the 9800GTX is going to become available for the around the same price that 8800GTX cards are currently going for. But that's that thing to keep in mind with the 8800GTX -- while it offered a quantum-jump in performance over other cards when it came it out, it also initially sold for a price of somewhere between $600 and $650 dollars, whereas the XFX 9800 GTX is selling for somewhere around $330. At this price, it falls fairly nicely into the current NVIDIA line-up, that starts with the 9600GT (~$150), goes to the 8800 GT (~$200), then the 8800 GTS (512MB) (~$250), and ends with the 9800GX2 ($600). It'll be interesting to see if the price of the still-fast 8800GTX will now plummet, or remain close in price to the 9800GTX, for the time being.

As you saw throughout our benchmarks, the new GeForce 9800 GTX does not blow its competition out of the water, like the GeForce 8800 GTX did when it was introduced. Based on the GeForce 9800 GTX's performance alone, we're sure a many of you with 8800 series cards aren't going to be itching to upgrade just yet. That's not to say the GeForce 9800 GTX isn't superior to every other single-GPU powered NVIDIA built graphics card, however. Keep in mind, the new GeForce 9800 GTX offers full support for PureVideo HD, which the G80 based 8800 GTX does not. It also offers HDMI with audio through the use of an S/PDIF pass-through and adapter. And its power consumption is lower than the older GTX, while offering similar or better performance. Although it doesn't annihilate its predecessors like the GeForce 8800 GTX did upon its introduction, the GeForce 9800 GTX is definitely a solid offering. Owners of previous generation mid-range cards would be well served by a GeForce 9800 GTX.

For this review, as always, it comes down to how much you are willing to spend for the amount of performance you are after. As I suspected in my review of the recent XFX 9800GX2, that's the card that'll be king for sometime -- it does not appear that NVIDIA has anything radically different in the works that greatly surpass the 9xxx series of cards any time even remotely soon (in hardware development terms, of course.) Whether the next big thing from ATI, the RV770 (rumored to possibly be coming in May), will be able to offer a new plateau of performance above what is available now is unlikely (but not impossible.) However, while the 9800GTX offers a very good level of performance, it does have a difficulty facing the fantastic deals that can be found on 8800GT and HD3870 cards, for those looking from a bang-for-buck perspective.

Although it consistently out-performed the competition in the charts, it still would have been nice to see the 9800 GTX bring just a little bit more to the table. That may seem hypocritical to say -- but at times the performance gap between the 9800GTX and the 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512MB seemed just a little too small. However, the 9800GTX does make up this with its excellent overclocking potential, which is substantial indeed. A moderately overclocked 9800GTX can fairly be labeled as the new flagship of fast, in my book.