Introducing the KFA2 Line
A new comer to the US graphics card market, Galaxy brings their KFA2 brand of products to our test bench with the promise of great performance and even better prices. How does this “new” GeForce 9800 GT product compare to some other similarly priced products? Is it worth a look for your next system build?
Introduction to the 9800 GTThe GeForce 9800 GT is a curious beast – it was soft launched (meaning no big announcements or seeding from NVIDIA) at the end of July without much fan fare. When asked NVIDIA about the product at the time of its release to partners, they were more than willing to admit that the 9800 GT shares pretty much every facet of its technological innards with the GeForce 8800 GT. What NVIDIA has added this time is support for Hybrid Power (included at the card partners discretion…ugh), the ability to completely turn the GPU off when not in use in conjunction with supported NVIDIA chipset motherboards, and a planned move to 55nm process technology. Other than that, you probably already know this product:
Now just take that top line, scratch out the “8800 GT” and substitute “9800 GT” and you have this “new” product down to a science. So all we are really getting is a new name to make this particular G92 part fit in with the current GeForce 9-series and GeForce GTX line up of GPUs.
The Galaxy KFA2 9800 GT 512MB Card
Galaxy might be a new name to many of our readers but they will more than likely be a familiar face in the coming months and years. As one of NVIDIA biggest partners in the Asia and Europe markets, Galaxy is finally starting to push into the US market with a new local team and a new brand called “KFA2”.
Being a new player in the market we had the new guys on the block send us a handful of KFA2 cards to start sizing them up against the competition. One thing you won’t find in Galaxy’s early venture to the US market is the super high-end product that is giving other partners fits: no GTX to be seen with a KFA2 brand on them. The reasoning is purely for business purposes as they see the high-end card having more issues (price drops, return rates) than the mainstream cards that allow them to streamline the operation.
The design of our KFA2 9800 GT card is unique in that it doesn’t use a stock NVIDIA heatsink design. With a touch of blue and yellow the two-slot cooler is nothing fancy but gets the job done while remaining relatively quiet.
The design of our KFA2 9800 GT card is unique in that it doesn’t use a stock NVIDIA heatsink design. With a touch of blue and yellow the two-slot cooler is nothing fancy but gets the job done while remaining relatively quiet.
The now classic pair of dual-link DVI connections is shown here along with the HDTV output port. While the bracket is not dual-slot the cooler most definitely is and the KFA2 9800 GT will require two slots in your case.
The GeForce 9800 GT of course supports SLI configurations, but not 3-Way SLI as we might have hoped.
The 9800 GT requires a single 6-pin PCIe power adapter to fuel the gaming power inside.
We can see from this photo that the Galaxy KFA2 9800 GT is still using the 65nm revision of the G92 chip – the 55nm was first introduced in the 9800 GTX+ line of parts but should be finding its way down into other G92 parts by the end of the year.
For those interested in what the new guys box and packaging will look like when it arrives at your door, here you go. Simple and to the point, nothing flashy and NO giant armor-clad ninja women.
Inside the box you’ll find some installation instructions, a driver disk, a copy of the Galaxy Xtreme Tuner overclocking application, a PCIe power adapter, S-Video cable, DVI-to-VGA adapter and the HDTV component output dongle.
