With both ATI and Nvidia releasing arrays of new cards every couple of months, it's not easy to decide which card to go in for. Recent high-end cards have already been replaced by ones that not only boast higher clock speeds but also built using smaller manufacturing processes. These cards deliver resolutions beyond 1600 x 1200, and allow you to play the latest games with the quality settings maxed out. The Zotac 9800 GTX+ ZONE from Zotac comes with a passive cooler to eliminate the noise generated by conventional cooling solutions.

FEATURES:
The 9800 GTX GPU uses a 65nm manufacturing process, with a total of 128 stream processors running at 1688 M Hz. The main advantage that the 9800 GTX+ series has over the GTX is a superior 55nm manufacturing process. The GTX+ still uses 128 stream processors with 512 MB of memory running at 1100 M Hz. The difference
is that clock and shader speeds are a little higher, at 740 MHz and 1836 MHz respectively. The Zotac 9800 GTX+ ZONE uses NVIDIA's reference PCB, the only change being the cooler.

The standard cooling system has been replaced by a complete self-contained water cooling system that requires no end-user maintenance. It consists of a water block that sits on the GPU, a pump, and a 120 mm fan on a radiator module which is connected to the pump and water block via a black hose. The whole unit comes attached to the graphics card and only requires you to mount the 120mm fan and radiator module to the rear or the side of the cabinet. Apart from the water cooler, Zotac has used a large aluminum heatsink across the entire PCB to cool the memory chips and adjacent components.

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PERFORMANCE:
The 9800 GTX+ ZONE gave overall 3DMark Vantage scores of 5936 and 3695 in Performance and High modes respectively. We added another GTX+ card in SU, which almost doubled those scores. We were able to push the core and memory speeds from 740/1100 MHz to 780/1200 MHz while maintaining the temperature at 65 degrees.

VERDICT: The card is a deceht overclocker and the water cooler does a decent job by keeping the GPU cool at 65 degrees. The card is big and occupies a lot of space. So make sure you invest in a large cabinet to house this mother of a card.
FOR: Good performance and overclocking capability, excellent cooling.