Introduction

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We received a testing sample of Nvidia’s GeForce 9800 GX2 a few days ago and are able to report our test findings today. The card is not quite ready for prime time. For example, the drivers provide such poor performance that Quad SLI benchmarks had to be postponed. But, we are ready to report on our findings in other areas.

Nvidia 9800 GX2 manufactured by Point of View

Nvidia’s objective with the GeForce 9800 GX2 is simple, as with all very high end cards. The company wants to take back the coveted title of the most powerful 3D card that NVIDIA surprisingly lost by a small margin when ATI’s Radeon 3870 X2 came out. It doesn’t seem natural, even today, to build a card on two mainstream chips. Yet, as we’ve noted before, it’s a design that has some advantages from a production point of view.

We aren’t the only ones to think take this position. NVIDIA’s CEO himself stated last month that he was convinced the GeForce 8800 GTX remained the most powerful card and that a single GPU board was the best approach, though if a dual-GPU board was the fastest in the world, it would be accepted. Is that be the case with the GeForce 9800 GX2?


Talkback

darthpoik 19/03/2008 01:32
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darthpoik
Doesn't inspire much. I might stay with my 8800 gtx and just overclock it.
dobby 19/03/2008 02:26
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dobby
some nice footage comparing the 3870X2 and the 9800GX2

i like the nvidia chip here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU
two bit hit 19/03/2008 05:01
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two bit hit
Wow, Rick Rolling Dobby, nice and mature. The card looks great, I'm tempted to shell out for a good 24" monitor now.
kye3k1 19/03/2008 11:56
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kye3k1
I dont know whether I should blow all my money on this card or buy a 360

Tough choice
blazer666_uk 20/03/2008 02:45
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blazer666_uk
Ill keep my 8800GTX and wait a bit longer
BobWya 20/03/2008 01:58
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BobWya
I don't like the design of the 9800 GX2. Aircooling for it is a disaster.. How can you watercool this beast?? The performance is rubbish given the amount of room it takes up!!

I think most people were expecting the 9800GTX to be a 1Gb card with similar architecture to the 8800GTS but with a 512bit memory bus like AMD/ATI. A big disappointment about the memory architecture. Nvidia need a die shrink ASAP and a move to wider buses like ATI...

The problem of course is AMD/ATI not delivering in the processing power department with the 3870 (X2). Therefore there is no incentive for Nvidia to leap-frog a really powerful ATI GPU (like the X1900XTX situation).

Bob
Mugz 20/03/2008 04:50
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Mugz
It's cute. I was wondering when nVidia was going to do a DX10 dual-chip card.

*checks wallet*

*has wallet shot*
leexgx 25/03/2008 05:38
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leexgx
its realy 2x 8800gt cards in there not sure why thay called it an 9800 GX2 when it should realy be 8800 GX2 as its not useing the 9600 tech

1 9800 GTX card should be Close to this card perfoamce wise (seen what the 9600gt does and it only has 64 SP the 8800 gts has 128 SP)

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