We received a lot of criticism in our March System Builder Marathon over the use of two 8800 GTX graphics cards, where many users felt the 9800 GX2 would be a superior solution. Our reasons for not previously choosing the higher-priced model was that the drivers were immature and the cards we’re quite ready for full competition. And even though the 9800 GX2 began overcoming those challenges before our March Marathon was published, questionable performance level increases in SLI mode had left us very comfortable with our decision.

Further driver development has shown real performance improvements for the 9800 GX2, so we were finally ready to reconsider our choice. Based on sample availability, we again chose Gigabyte as the supplier.

Gigabyte’s GV-NX98X1GHI-B features the full set of reference specifications, using two 600 MHz G92 graphics processors and 1 GB of GDDR3-2000 memory. It therefore appears rather ordinary in the world of 9800 GX2’s, and we might have found a better-priced brand had we actually been forced to purchase our cards. Still, we hope that readers will consider warranty and technical support in addition to price when making their purchase.

The 9800 GX2 is two complete graphics cards tied together in one package, and questions still loom about the efficiency of “four way SLI” configurations using two of these dual-GPU units. Popular support among readers, rather than our own experience, is our main reason including the configuration in today’s build.

By now many of you are probably wondering why we didn’t choose a pair of the new GTX 280 graphics cards for our highest-priced system. This marathon was in fact supposed to run two weeks ago, prior to the release of the GTX 280, and an announcement date had not even been set during this article’s planning stages when we procured components. We’re sure many of you have experienced the let down of ordering parts and watching as new ones are released before you’ve even gotten your newly-outdated system running, and our experience should provide some consolation.

Other factors that might have prevented us from using the newer graphics technology include price, where a pair of GTX 280 cards would have broken our $4,000 total system budget, and fear of the unknown, as the new cards had not been tested yet.