Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Review

Why oh why didn't toms compare it with 8800 gt/gts sli?

I got those too, but if i hit F5 the page would load properly.

In page two i couldnt sense whether is there was irony or not about the Voodoo "6" thing, but anyways, it's called Voodoo 5 5500.

I hope that these 17 fps
i hope they were some imature drivers glitch.

Link works now.

for $600 I still think its outragiously overpriced. I'd stick with an SLI solution like (2) 9600GT's or 8800GT or GTS's. Cheaper and performs better.

Already having an 8800GTX if multi gpu was of use to me (which sadly it isnt) my best upgrade would be a second card the same as I have already, which is pretty poor considering the age of the 8800GTX .

Price is way over the odds for performance I think. I think everythigns pretty much looking how we expected. Im rapidly loosing hope that the 9800gtx will be a "must have" for a high end rig, even for TRI-SLI purposes all rumours are suggesting the 8800GTX will be at least near to tri sli 9800gtx's... I really hope im wrong on that.

I want a new single GPU solution...

I agree, it's crazy that they did not do this comparison! This would have been extremely useful information.

Tom's please update your review!

I agre 9800GTX (maybe SLI)will be much better buy than GX2 in most ways but like u said we shall see

San Pedro > More simply, because we didn't had the time and because this setting is rarely used as it addresses a very specific situation. 4x AA is basically sufficient in most games to get rid of aliasing in the native resolution of displays. I also can't understand why nVidia would rather reviewers to use 4x AA in stead of 8x.

Looks like it kicks the **** outta everything. No questions asked but the price tag.... wayyy too much

£400+!! WHAA, no way!

8800gts sli beats it in every test at every res. Why would anyone buy the gx2? you could get an sli motherboard and two 8800gts for less.

Nice, this means my current choice at 2x 8800 GTS G92 stands! And yea, rediculously expensive....

I don't like the fact that alot of hot air gets back into the case... This will be a problem when you use 2 of these cards and will limit OC of the cards and the rest of the system.

Oh - that would be SWEET!!!!

/Edit: pressed the send too early. Post finished above. Sorry.

I tried to read this, seriously I did. I couldn't make much sense of it however. I thought the 9800 was supposed to have two 8800s on it. Why then does it have extra ROPs? It doesn't seem like two chips on two boards, from the specs page, its new chips.

Then came the game reviews. I think it was the test drive game where the 2560x1600 gave more FPS to the 3870x2 then when it tried 1920x1080. So if you want more FPS, you should just bump the res up higher?

I guess this shows why SLI/CF might not always be the best idea. AA might not work in all games. Games might not show any improvement at all. Special hardware is needed. (motherboard, PSU, etc) Graphical anomalies might be encountered. This review seems to only show that this is still the case.

I can't see all those people that claimed the GX2 was to be slower just slightly faster than the ATI 3870x2.
Still, I'm not a nVidia fan, but surely I like to discuss with people.
How can someone think that a card that was 5% faster than a single CPU card be still faster when that card was going to double (and with the new much efficient chip)?
All speculation were just smoke in the eye. This is clear, at least for me.
Now that this card has shown how powerful it can be, despite the price (it's a free market, if none is going to buy it the price will drop, as for anything else), nVidia clearly shown how limited is their vew on power gamers: if I had a 30" monitor and I still could not turn AA on due to lack of memory on a $600 gfx card I would get angry for sure! Do they think one would by one of those monsters just to play at 1280x1024? Come on nVidia, 512 MB more of DDR3 isn't that expensive for such a card. It's like having a Ferrari that is mounting 190/45 R14 wheels!

So, nVidia has buggy inefficient GPU, while ATI with 800MHz+ core and .55um production technology can't still beat it (even with 2 GPU vs 1).
So, what are you going to buy? A S3? Matrox?
I could not understand that comment of yours, really.

What is good about the release of this card is that ATI has now really to come up with something good to fill the current gap and most probably the future one when nVidia will really start showing its new cards after having finished playing with customers as it is doing now. I have hard time distinguish GT, GTS, GTX, both with G80/G92 chip, 256/320/512/738 MB! What a mess!

Thats it? $600 for THIS performance? sighhhhh.......

Somewhere in AMD Codename Thunder must be laughing devilishly.

the 9800GTX is a reaction not evolution

its the reaction of poor G92 yields, ati catching up and glory days of quad sli. heck 3-way sli hardly works and with a 3 month delay they still have no quad drivers.

evolution? no - just a mid term product to keep the sales wheel turning

good job THG do not recommend it!


this sums it up well:

get 2 8800GTS!

to be quite frank I don't really see any video card being worth 400+ at all. Wait a few months and something better will come out.... I mean, the 3870x2 is the closes to the super high end that's buyable at the price... But it's still way too expensive. I'll stick to the hd 3870 I just oredered until something in the lower end price range comes along.

I just got a real shocker:

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/5536480

anyone else see what I'm seeing? They claim to have a 1 gig version for sale. Luckily, I live 30 minutes from one of their stores. If this is the case, I might pick this up. I do have 2 GTS's on hold at the same store. I just noticed the 1 Gig GX2 30 seconds before I started posting this.

All of a sudden, I'm seeing this card in a different way.

What do you guys think? This card or 2 GTS cards? I know the price difference. I don't care. But 2 GTS's in SLI will still only be 512MB, right? That is what is going to seal the deal for me. I'm already running out of memory on my 8800gt believe it or not. COD4 @ 1920x1200 16xAF 4xAA cooks. I use v-sync, so it's practically pegged at 60fps. When I turn the supersampling on, my frame rate drops to the single digits. That's gotta be v-memory, right?

The only reason I bought the 8800gt was the price vs. performance. If it wasn't so inexpensive, I wouldn't have bought it. I saw the benches, then saw the price. And i was off to buy the card. But I was really waiting for a beefy 1 gig card. And the GX2 may be it.

I'll wait for some feed back before I make the jump.

EDIT: The store is not expected to recieve any until the 25th. And also in the article the card is stated to have a gig of mem but can only use 512MB of it. Whatever the hell that means.

Or if you really want to blow $600 plus, then wait a week for the 9800gtx's and Sli them..

Above should look like 135fps imo...

Well, first of all you guys asking about comparsions between SLI`s systems haven't read the first four phrases of this review: they had no time so they just threw it out now.

Having said that, all I have to say are three things:

1 - Good job Tom's, great review given the time you had. I would like to see 1680x1050 or 1600x1200 but I'll consider that this is still an unfinished topic.

2 - It was a predictable result, but it comes to my mind the concern that it is getting harder to consider buying an AMD/ATI VGA. And that does not come from a Nvidia user: I have one OC'ed X1900XT and am still waiting for anything worth to trade it. DirectX10 with low framerates on Vista? no Thanks

3 - Still waiting for a fair (wich means upper mainstream or enthusiast not breaking the U$450 barrier) VGA to beat Crysis' ass in a moderate res (1680x1050) in very high. I'll probably have to wait till Q1 2009, when the second wave of GeForces 10xxx or Radeons 4xxx comes out. Still waiting...

@ Aerobernardo... You are not ready to upgrade! Stick with your X1900XT.

I went from a single 6600GT to 8800GT in SLI. That's a good jump

Here in Australia the GX2 costs like $900, and the performance isn't that great. Either its that or the new drivers, I'll give it some time and will see again.

I only have two regrets with the 3870x2:

1. It had DDR3 and a DDR4 version is in the works.

2. It seems to be as much of a stopgap as the 9800gx2 because the 4xxx series is due in June. A 4870 should be as fast as a 3870x2 without worrying about games that don't support Crossfire. The 4870x2 should be 100% faster than a 3870.

As is, I don't know whether to move the 3870x2 to one of our other PC's this fall and get a 4870x2, or just get a 4850 that's clocked at 850 and do CrossfireX with a new board and power supply once Deneb arrives.

Overall image quality with ATI is a bit better in my subjective opinion; though Nvidia did correct the blur found in the 7xxx series with the 8xxx series. Nvidia tweaks for sheer framerates, but that can be dodgy at worst. Note Crysis' water not displaying perfectly in one driver release. Also, Linkboost on Nvidia boards creates inflated benchmarks for the 9600gt. and it's been reported that overclocked 9600gt's had to be clocked down to work on those boards.

So, how is it hard to buy AMD? I'd trade a few less fps for a better history of image quality along with more transparency, such that I can trust the benchmarks for an ATI card, but if a site doesn't do their homework with Nvidia, I can't trust those benchmarks at all.