The GeForce 9800 GX2 is the fastest graphics card at the moment, overtaking quite easily but also regularly the Radeon HD 3870 X2 (42% on average and between 33% to 57% depending on the resolution chosen). Today, NVIDIA has more experience than AMD when it comes to multi-GPU configurations, SLI being far more popular than CrossFire even if it targets a niche. That means certain games like Test Drive Unlimited, which aren’t profiled by AMD’s drivers, are profiled by NVIDIA. On a majority of games, the 9800 GX2 is faster, although it’s essentially just two 8800 GTS 512 MB configs with a slightly lower GPU clock, while the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is based on two Radeon HD 3870 configs with a slower memory clock. Yet, those two GPUs don’t running in the same league.

Having said this, we do not recommend buying a GeForce 9800 GX2 for those who rarely change graphic cards and want to invest in a very high end card and keep it for a long time. There are times when a card like this should excel, like in higher resolution and with demanding settings, but the 9800 GX2 is barely better than a simple GeForce 8800 Ultra. The blame, just like on the 3870 X2, is on the amount of memory being limited to only 512 MB, a quantity incompatible with the very high resolutions and even more with antialiasing. Numbers speak for themselves, when the 9800 GX2 out performs the 8800 Ultra (with 768 MB) by 29% on average and up to 41% in 2560x1600, activating antialiasing at this resolution shortens the gap to 13%! Yet, in many games, it’s the only mode that still isn’t smooth and the 9800 GX2 doesn’t deliver much.

At the same time, this card is clearly the new very high end from NVIDIA and it’s sold as so. The Point Of View model was announced at €500 ($791) and even with the lower price announced by NVIDIA ($600), the price difference compared to the 3870 X2 that we can find for less than $400, barely matches the average performance gap. The price-performance ratio isn’t the best and gets worse at very high resolutions even if this is typical with very high end cards.