Wow ATI is really in for it bad!

Nvidia Readies Dual-Chip, Single-Chip High-Performance Graphics Cards.
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2, GeForce 9800 GTX, GeForce 9800 GT Approaching

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video [...] Cards.html

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/arti [...] VzaWFzdA==

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov

[ 01/03/2008 | 10:34 PM ]


Nvidia Corp., the world’s largest designer of discrete graphics processing units (GPUs), reportedly plans to update its lineup of expensive graphics cards with at least two new offerings later in the quarter. The most powerful of the novelties will carry two graphics chips, whereas another will feature single-chip designs.


The new top-of-the-range graphics card by Nvidia is called GeForce 9800 GX2 which is based on two yet unknown 65nm graphics chips with 128 unified shader processors inside. The board, according to [H]ard|OCP web-site, will be 30% faster compared to Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra and will enable 4-way multi-GPU configurations. The novelty will have 256 stream processors in total, but will rely on driver support to demonstrate its potential, just like any multi-GPU solutions.

The least expensive solution – Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX – is projected to be released in late February or early March and is claimed to be based on one GPU. The new model 9800 GTX will replace existing GeForce 8800 GTX, thus, should offer performance on par with GeForce 8800 Ultra and support 3-way SLI configuration. In addition, there will be a the least expensive version of GeForce 9-series called GeForce 9800 GT and due in March or April.

Based on information reported earlier, Nvidia GeForce 9800-series graphics processors will support DirectX 10.1 feature-set along with powerful video encoding engine and post-processor.

Even though the new GeForce 9800 GX2 is projected to offer performance only 30% higher compared to Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra, whereas the new GeForce 9800 GTX should outperform the 8800 GTX by a similar margin, the new lineup represents a great threat to ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2.

At present Nvidia sells GeForce 8800 Ultra for $849 in retail, whereas the GeForce 8800 GTX costs about $549 - $649. Provided that the new solution by graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices offers performance of the GeForce 8800 Ultra, AMD’s new dual-chip graphics card will have to cost the same amount of money as the new GeForce 9800 GTX. Unfortunately, dual-chip configurations offer performance advantages over a single-chip ATI Radeon HD 3870 only in cases when its driver can take advantage of multi-GPU ATI CrossFireX technology. Therefore, in all other cases the GeForce 9800 GTX will be faster compared to ATI’s dual-chip solution, making it very hard for ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 to finds its place on the market.

Nvidia did not comment on the news-story.

Is it just me or does that performance level SUK? 30% for the GX2? single gpu card equal to the Ultra? I want 75% better for a GX2 and 50% for the single chip card, or Crysis is still going to suck.

Thats what happens when you have no competition folks.

Well it seems NVidia is milking the G92 creating an 8800GTX G92 product called the 9800GTX. Now NVidia will put two G92 9800GTX GPU's on one card with only a 30% faster performance than an 8800GTX, while I believe that a single 9800GTX will have 30% more graphics power than an 8800GTX the duel chip card might exceed that by 60%. I guess time will tell.

Where the hell is the card said to be 2x times the power of the 8800GTX?

Not worth the $$$ imo...

I'll keep my 8800GT tyvm.

I still don't get it. For one, an 8800Ultra is not 30% faster than an 8800GTX as a similarly clocked GTX is equal to an Ultra both being essentally the same thing.

By that reasoning, a 9800GX2 with 30% advantage over a single 8800Ultra would have about a 40% advantage over a single 8800GTX.

A 9800GTX with a 30% advantage over a 8800GTX would only have about a 20% advantage over a 8800Ultra.

If you already have a pair of 8800GTX's in SLI or Ultra's in SLI, you already have more performance than a 9800GX2 but not more than two 9800GTX's. Which brings me to my point that the power increase sucks because we all know Ultra's SLI'ed and 8800GTX's Slied can't run Crysis with everything maxed at highest resolutions therefore, these new cards won't either.?????

None of that makes sense to me.

#1 - The 8800GTS is Faster than the 8800GTX. How could NVIDIA come out with an 9800GTX that is not any faster than the 8800GTS.
I can't imagine the only thing they would add is support for 3-way SLI.

#2 - They will be coming out with an 9800GT that is cheaper/slower than the 9800GTX which would make it slower than the current 8800GT/GTS cards? Totally illogical.

#3 - The 9800X2 being only 30% faster than an 8800GTX could actually make some sense. Since they will be sticking two 92 GPUs together, this would be a heat/power monster unless they did something such as cutting back the Speed the GPUs ran at to seriously cut their power usage. I could easily see basically two 8800GTS cards running at 65% speed to give 130% peformance boost but still not requiring massive PSUs and massive cooling.

TBO, I am going to wait this all out and see what ATi has to offer with their 3870 x2 chip. Maybe this will be able to scale better. That would be funny to put on my nvidia 780i mobo.... err... when and if it comes in.

I think they got their percentages wrong, I'm thinking that the single chip 9800GTX is 30% faster than the 8800GTX. The reason behind this is when the newer 8800GTS 512MB cards came out they were about 30% faster than the older 8800GTS 640MB card. Well thats my logic.

But this is not the 50% faster as they promised for the GTX.

I just bought an EVGA 8800GTS 512.

Looks like a may be in a good position for the step-up program!

I know it seems, based on this article, that the 9800 series of cards will not be much of a boost, but then, none of the information we are reading is official. I am still willing to believe that nVidia will not dissapoint us.

I hope.

Edit: Also, I imagine that the 9800 series cards will all support Tri-SLI. Probably with better scaling than we are seeing now. Not that I could afford 3 9800 GX2 video cards.

OOooooo 3 9800 GX2s..... 6 GPUS!!!!

That should be able to run Crysis on full. I hope.