Even though Radeon HD 4850 was still covered by the NDA, stores all over the world started selling the card early. Since it was already out, AMD decided to lift the embargo and let reviewers publish benchmarks. NVIDIA decided to counter immediately by announcing a new version of GeForce 9800GTX, called GeForce 9800GTX+. The “new” card sports a core clock of 738MHz, shaders operating at 1836MHz, but the same memory chips. NVIDIA also announced a price cut of the “old” 9800GTX to $199, while the overclocked version will cost $229. On top of that, NVIDIA announced that it will enable PhysX on these cards in the near future. The only problem is that we seriously doubt that overclocking 9800GTX is enough to break Radeon HD 4850.
