GeForce 9800GX2 was released earlier today and when we posted the first bit of news, there weren’t any reviews posted, but as the hours have passed, the reviews have been dropping in. GeForce 9800GX2 is based on the G92-450 core and is basically two cards slapped together and the cores connected via SLI. In theory, this would give us GeForce 8800GTS 512MB in SLI, but there’s actually more than that. We’ve been estimating the performance to be in the same area though, and we were more or less dead on.
GeForce 9800GX2 is an extreme high-end card and the performance is much like the previous GX2 card(s) from NVIDIA; extreme at very high resolutions, but when the resolutions come down 1280×1024 and lower, the card performs the same as a single GeForce 8800GTS, or worse.
It should be said, once again, that this is not a card for those of you who are gaming at 1280×1024 at most. This is a card for those of you with monitors capable of 1600×1200, 1920×1200, 2048×1536 or even 2560×1600. Slap some AA/AF onto that and GeForce 9800GX2 is your dream card. As a single card, it leaves all other cards far behind and NVIDIA has reclaimed the hill it lost to Radeon HD 3870X2 (at least in 0xAA/AF).
It comes as no surprise that GeForce 9800GX2 beats Radeon HD 3870X2 in most benchmarks, sometimes with quite a margin, and even more when AA/AF comes into the picture, but then you have to ask yourself how much you’re willing to pay. GeForce 9800GX2 will run you $599, Radeon HD 3870X2 will cost you about $430. You should check out the relative performance graphs techpowerup has compiled. That should send you off in the right direction.
We openly questioned the sandwich designed, but have to admit that NVIDIA has done a good job with the cooler. Most reviews show that there is headroom for up to 750MHz core clock and 1100MHz memory clock with the stock cooler. This will give you a substantial boost, I.e. at high resolutions.
Kingpin has found a way to fit the GeForce 9800GX2 with his Tek 4 liquid nitrogen pots and published some preliminary scores. More is coming. Several benchers are getting prepared at the moment and we should expect some real ORB rape over the coming weeks. Right now we’re curious to see if we will perhaps even see 35,000 points in 3DMark 06, 40,000 in 3DMark 05 is still up for grabs. 3DMark 03 should fly by 135,00 and only God knows where it will stop there. Quad SLI is going to move the bar to a whole new level there, anything else would come as a huge surprise.
Quad SLI is still missing, but expect benchmarks later this week. Official unveilment may not come until next week though. Until then you will have to settle for the reviews below:
:: MVKTech :: Bjorn3D :: HotHardware :: DriverHeaven :: HardOCP :: TechPowerUp :: Tomshardware :: TweakTown :: Legitreviews ::
