9800GX2 impressions

Thanx for the info mate  
Well actually thats not cooler than 8800GTX/ULTRA

My 8800GTX (@ ULTRA ) idles @ 59c and goes to 76
Also if u asked here i wouldnt have recommended u to upgrade to a 9800GX2
For 1680x1050 your 8800GTX did the job

While your card may run cool, certainly I have seen many GTX owners ( including myself) that have had to deal with their cards running in the 80's and 90's. It was a generalization. Also, I point out that I DO NOT recommend other GTX owners to upgrade. I was just noting that if they are going to, that they will see performance gains, and a card that CAN overclock well, and run cool. ( at least cooler than expected cmon now.)

I have two issues with this card, both of which deal with heat related issues.

First is the way in which the card cools itself--which is to pump all that warm air right into the center of the case. Depending on the type of case you have, and hardware configurations, this seems a little counter-productive in regards to cooling, almost exactly like peeing in the wind, if I can be so vulgar. The one solution I see includes a case that has fully open drive bay area (i.e. Lian-Li PC80 or 60, Tt Armour, CM 830 series--just to name a few). With this type of cae you can reverse the overall airflow, including the rear fan and CPU cooler, to send all the air out the front of the case, instead of blowing the now-warm air back onto and into the cards. Not only that, but the airflow's path is as important as its speed and volume, meaning that a nice smooth airflow, that doesnt change directions, is the ideal way of evacuating the warm air--sort of like a wind tunnel, eliminating areas of turbulance that allow the warm air "bubbles" to remain stagnate.



Secondly, if you are to quad-Sli these, the top card's already poorly designed cooling vents will be blocked off by the card below it. Unless I am incorrect, no quad-Sli supporting boards have more than one slot between both PCI-E 2.0 slots--as if the board companies have not seen all these new 2-slot cards. So...where is the heat supposed to go? In this case, what little air can escape from the top card is going right onto the back of the second card...huh? That makes no sense.

The second problem isnt just related to this card and sli boards--it affects any similar board when using a 2-slot cards in crossfire or sli configuration when there is only 1 slot between PCI-E slots. Although most other 2-slot VGA cards exhaust the hot air out the back, this configuration still restricts the amount of cool air entering the card.

I just recently built a system using two 3870X2's. When chosing an X38 mainboard, my main requirement was that the PCI-E 2.0 slots were more than one slot apart for that very reason. For GDDR3 memory, the Gigabyte EX38T-DQ6 is the only board on earth with this configuration.

I'm tired of all these multi-media boards for gaming--how about a GAMING board for gaming; 4 PCI-E slots and one PCI for sound--how hard is that? What in the world am I going to do with 3 pci-x slots?

Yep i know what u said but i was talking generally about it  
also yeah u are right some 8800GTX users complain about the temps

Thanks for info   When the next drivers come out which will hopefully fix the AA issues make sure to let us know!!

Also can you test crysis very high no AA for me, thanks.

yeah thats the test i want too
Crysis with 1680x1050 resolution + Very high + no AA

Personally I cant wait for price to come down to £300ish so I can get one over my current 8800GT  

1920x1200 for w/e reason seems to be where this card really picks up though. Hard to tell without driver optimizations though, if AA doesn't work then theres probably a lot of things that are needed to simply run the game well that don't work too.

You are using the newer drivers though right?
http://downloads.guru3d.com/

£300?im not so sure.but im sure Nvidia will drop the price on the 9800GX2 but not sure if it will go anywhere near £300 i live in UK also.I have the same wish as you.but to be honest im more interested in the 9800GTX.

9800GTX wont do much better than my card atm, only one pci-e16 slot so im not gonna use crossifre/sli.

GX2 is already down to £380, compared to the £440 price when it very first came out. It'll drop eventually. More so when ATI bring out their revised 3870X2  

WELL THE 4XXX SERIES IS COMING OUT!SO SCARED!!!!LOL

so how much is the 9800GTX going to be when release.it has much much better overclocking potential than 8800gtx i heard!but from quite alot of sources so i guess its true.

where do you get your parts from anyway?OCUK?Scan?

Well you cant really compare 9800GTX to 8800GTX, completly different. 9800 is very similar to 8800GTS 512 and it will be a little more overclockable. Thats about it though. I doubt 9800GTX will be faster then 8800GTX in most situations.


I get mine from overclockers.co.uk and scan.co.uk

Also, Id take the next gen ATI being awesome with a pinch of salt... and even if ti is 50%% faster thats only just ahead of GX2 atm, even with these early drivers  

i do really do think it will be faster than the 8800GTX.even at the same clock dont forget the G92 core are more efficient.thats been prove when the 8800gt 512 compare to the 8800gts 640 which is got wider bandwidth and more memory but the 8800gt still wins inl the games and benchmarks

It had more SP's though, whereas 9800GTX and 8800GTX have the same amount. It will have higher clocks yes but 256bit vs 384bit where bandwidth matters quite a bit it will fall behind. Then theres also the fact that GTX has 24ROPS while 9800GTX will only have 16. Clock for clock 8800GTX still comes out king, just depends on how high the 9800GTX can clock.


Will be better in msot other ways though, less heat and less power consumption. Tri-Sli should improve a bit too, they would be silly if they havent found a way to optimize it yet because atm its just pointless. From what Ive seen even the new quad-sli works better than tri-sli.

as i have posted somewhere else Nvidia have something up theie sleeve.something new and big and better must be coming out or under development.how can a top end have 256bit bandwidth right?

product will only improve or stay still like have the 384bit bus or more!just like the 9600gt got 256bit bus grow from 128bit from the previous gen 8600gts.

The bus bandwidth isnt as important as the amount of memory, partially solved by a compression of data. The rops, you could be right, though maybe 24 is overkill. The 9800GTX card will tell us that.

yeah just wait for 1 april.fools day.do you think Nvidia is tricking us with a joke again?by releasing it earlier or later?as they always feel like doing!lol just like the GX2 i think i got push back 1-2 weeks right?

Heres more on the compression thing, a little vague Ill admit, but a difference maker for sure :" The differences between G9x and G8x are small, but even so details were light. Their compression technology has evolved to provide higher effective bandwidth between the GPU and framebuffer. We would love to provide more details on this and the other changes, but NVIDIA is still being a bit tight lipped." Thats from anands review of the 9600gt

i guess as technology gets better and Nvidia got so much money and time to develop their technology after their 8800GTX is so successful!and if their product doesnt get better than i guess the Nvidia boss will cut their pay of sack them!lol
just a quick question have are keep an eye on intel's new Nehalem CPU?you think its gonna wipe out AMD from how much new technology is pack inside that thing?!

This is OT, but who knows? AMD has Fusion as an answer, if it performs good enough. It could even outperform Nehalem in some things, but who knows

well i mean now amd is better than intel only at memory speed and latency because its got built-in memory controller.but hehale, is gonna have that as well.and the gen after nehalem is gonna have gpu as well.intel sure is gready wanna eat up the whole IT market.imagine it team up with microsoft!!!NO!!!!!

Intellisoft? OH NOOZZZZ

Very well, I will see what I can do. Vista is acting up on me so I am only using XP atm. Does anybody want to see the hacked version of Crysis in all of it's glory ? IMO it looks just as good and runs better.

Yes pls  

Hmmm every time I startup crysis my computer shuts down at the nvidia/intel way it's meant to be played screen. what on earth.

Here is the most advanced version other last versions its indeed alot better thant the last ones and makes the game alot better

http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/crysis/tool/21700.ht...

it has ULTRA QUALITY option too  

here is my results :
I set everything @ ULTRA HIGH with this spec:
Core2Duo E6600@3.2
ASUS P5KE- WIFI
SEAGATE BARRACUDA 500GB 16MB
OCZ VINDICATOR CPU COOLER
OCZ 4GB REAPER DDR2 800 4-4-4-15
OCZ 8800GTX @612/1080(=8800ULTRA)
OCZ PROXSTREAM 1000WAT
THERMALTAKE ARMOR
LG M228WA MONITOR
XP 32 + SP3

Resolution : 1680x1050 with 0xAA

The first mission ( Contact )
Max FPS : 62 (yeah when i was looking @ the sky   )
Average FPS : 23
Min FPS : 18

mm from what I know ultra high changes visuals rather then enhances them right? Whats the difference for you between ultra high and very high?

Some of the lightings are better

Like I said, I will try and run Crysis with your exact settings Maziar, right now I am having trouble starting Crysis. It helps too that our CPUS are very similar. Anyways, back to the drawing board.

i cant spot much of a difference.but frame rate doesnt seem to drop.

Crysis @ 35-40 FPS AA @ 1920X1080 = Worthless.. Crysis has now been out how long?

A card that even though Nvidia took their sweet time in getting the drivers right and delayed the release, still has driver problems = Worthless

A card that "points inward" and traps the heat only to dissipate it through tiny slots not even exiting the case = Worthless

Running quad SLI without drivers and a heat problem as well as a horrible electricity bill = Worthless

If I were running the show I would have the whole marketing department and the developers line up and get it over with. "You're fired, you're fired, you're cool, you're fired, you're fired, you're fired, pack your *&%$ and get out, You're finished, you're fired".. on down the line.

ATI needs to get it's head out of it's %SS and we might see Nvidia taking the GPU production a little more seriously.

I'm not wasting another (typed letter) on this topic

Blackwater11

9800gx2 is a good alternative to a heater

Hahaha, this is the exact reason I made this thread... to disprove some lingering concerns about the GX2. Yes, the cooling solution isn't the BEST, but it is very good imo. It is quiet, even when it runs 'hot' ( it only ever gets into the high 70's and low 80's C for me) Also, I am actually seeing a temp drop in my cpu/system temps ever since I installed. Because the GTX I had used the HR03 Plus cooler which ALSO dumps heat back into the case. and it is a 60 dollar cooler! Supposedly the best air cooling option. Anyways, don't just hate the GX2, it didn't do anything to you. Just because it's 'not worth upgrading to for me' doesn't make it garbage. And no, let's not fired all Nvidia's GPU squad. = )

ACtually it is pretty worth it...equalling the Ultra in Sli mode or getting more in benchmarks.

look at this...

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14355/5

Change your sig to reflect your new purchace  

Well i have two 9800GX2s amnd the Lian Li P80. At idle my cards ran at 60c,and unserload around 78c-80c. With the P80 i removed the solid side panel and replaced it with a windowed side panel from a Lian Li G70 which allowed me to install a 120mmx 67cfm fan pushing the hot air from the GX2s out of the case. The other guy was wrong when he said theres only one slot
between the two 9800GX2s.There's a PCI-e slot and also a PCI slot.Your forgeting the 780i and 680i have three PCI-e slots as well as the new 790i ultra which i just ordered. The 9800GX2 can be on its way to being that fastest card nVidia has made if they keep their word and release good Quad drivers

the gx2 are better value the 2 ultras anyway when it first came out.or even now!!

At $600.00 a pop it better be something else .... but what I've been hearing it is not !

At the prices of the ultras were when they first came out .... were the biggest rip off in years !

the price have gone down already depend where you live.

Haha, ok give me a second. I forgot I was still sporting the GTX in my sig. I just sold my GTX for a paltry 200 dollars to a friend of mine. Great deal for him, espescially because it came with the HR03 cooler attached.

Hope this is better

yep its better now  

I think the XFX 9800 GX2 is a better deal than the BFG...I have the BFG...but yeah XFX offers double life time warranty.


BTW!!!!!!

REGISTER YOUR BFG PRODUCTS WITHIN 30 DAYS NOW TO RECEIVE THE LIFE TIME WARRANTY, OTHERWISE IT EXPIRES!!!

BFG changes the rules...so now you have 30 days to make the lifetime warranty count!

Yea, I went with BFG for the sole reason of getting the 6 to 8 pin adapter for my PSU. Newegg doesnt even sell them, they are hard to find. So thats why I went w/ BFG

I have been trying to get you guys some good Crysis screens, does anyone know how to enable ' ULTRA High Graphics ' in Crysis, please let me know, I have been looking around the web and I am confused.

are you in xp or vista?

Crysis was very bad coding don't get too excited..I was doing 70 fps when it drops to 20 for no reason in the same area I was in....no action...very poor coding even with patch 2

I am doing XP at the moment, I can switch to VIsta if necesarry, so how do I enable Ultra High mode ? In crysis...

Oh, by the way, I just ran Crysis at Veryhigh (hacked XP) with 2XAA at 1680x1050 and I get from 30-50 fps, usually hovering at 35. It looks gorgeous.