Even though it’s still a week or so to go before GeForce 9800GX2 will be officially unveiled, Chinese website PCOnline has already posted the first review. Do keep in mind that the drivers are premature and buggy, for example, the card refuses to work in 3D on X38, even though it is suppose to work. However, if you want to run Quad-SLI you will need an NVIDIA chipset. The overall performance is, as expected, just breathtaking at high resolutions. The Radeon HD 3870X2 gets whipped in every benchmark, brutally with AA/AF activated.
Amusingly, you need to activate SLI in the control panel for the card to work properly, whether this is also a prematurity or something people will have to get used to, remains to be seen.
Alas, water cooling is the most extreme cooling you will ever see with these cards due to the design, but that will probably still be enough to reclaim the 3DMark 03 crown. The other benchmarks will probably need two or three 9800GTX under some LN².
Stories are also going around that Quad-SLI will not be available when the GeForce 9800GX2 hits the market on March 18. The reason is suppose to be the drivers and poor scaling of more than two GPUs.
