This is kind of surprising - the 9800 GTX+ actually is using MORE power than the 9800 GTX original card. This tells me that NVIDIA basically "wiped out" any power advantages and savings they got with the 55nm product by pushing the clocks up to improve performance. Obviously I was expecting these results to be quite different, with the power savings and performance improvement for the new G92b over G92.
Performance, Pricing and Availability
In our first Radeon HD 4850 512MB preview we decided that it was a great performing card for the money - with an MSRP of $199, the then-$269-priced 9800 GTX wasn't nearly as attractive. Since then though NVIDIA has decided to cut the prices on the original 9800 GTX to $199 and offer up this new "+" model for just $30 more - $229 MSRP.
As we have come to learn from NVIDIA's launches though: we'll believe it when we see it. The 9800 GTX+ isn't even schedule to show up in the channel until the middle-end part of July giving AMD a larger window of opportunity than we initially thought.
Initial Thoughts
While I am really not a fan of doing these "rough cut" previews of products, the schedules from AMD and NVIDIA more or less dictated it for this instance. The joy of launch dates and changes is something I wish upon no one. We did get some interesting information from it all though - the AMD Radeon HD 4850 and the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ appear to be nearly equally matched in price and performance. We will have our FULL reviews of the HD 4850, HD 4870 and GeForce 9800 GTX+ cards in the coming week with many more games, benchmarks and hopefully some updated information on pricing and availability of all of these parts.