NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 Reviewed (Verdict: Pwns Radeon HD 3870 X2, But...)

via Gizmodo


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Nvidia's headlining GeForce 9 series card, the monstrous 9800 GX2, officially launched today. It pulls an old trick out of Nvidia's hat—melding two GPUs onto a single board—so you can actually go quad-SLI for a mere $1200. It completely crushes ATI's top-of-the-line dual-GPU Radeon HD 3870 X2. But is two times the GPU necessarily two times the awesome?

It's running the same GPU series as the 9600 GT, 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512MB (not be confused w/ the regular 8800 GTS). Actually when you look closely at the number of shader and stream processors and their clock speeds, it turns out the 9800 GX2 is basically two slightly underclocked 8800 GTS 512MB GPUs strapped together, and this plays out in the virtually indistinguishable benchmarks too.

Here's the rub: The 9800 GX2 is over 600 smackers. You can run two 8800 GT cards in SLI at $200 a pop and get almost the exact same performance for $200 less. So the real conclusion is that the 8800 GT is still the best card out there for the money.

Being that the 9800 gx2 is on one board I am guessing that even if you only have one pci express slot you can use this. If that is true I suppose the advantage would be to gamers that do not have sli motherboards. Personally I would just get a new sli motherboad considering I could get each 8800gt around 200 bucks like stated and a good sli motherboard for less than 200.

I have a question though, if this technically goes in one slot then how is it in comparison to one of the best cards out now like 8800 ultra running alone without sli. I know the ultra's are pretty expensive as well but what would be better. :)

I wish my PC had some PCI Express ports. I'm still 6 years behind in technology. :(

Time to upgrade your motherboard maybe? Or get a new PC if you have enough money for one...

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Originally Posted by GODZEROXX

I have a question though, if this technically goes in one slot then how is it in comparison to one of the best cards out now like 8800 ultra running alone without sli. I know the ultra's are pretty expensive as well but what would be better. :)

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Price wise, once the 9xxx takes off, drop a few on an 8800 Ultra. The performance isn't that much of a difference between the two anyway, what, maybe a 20% gain in performance with the 9800 GX2 over the Ultra (which is sure to drop in price). Personally, get the Ultra (after a price drop of course), unless you got the money and fancy yourself a graphics whore, then jump on the GX2.