Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Review

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HybridPower

Supporting the latest version of PureVideo HD (a first for a very high end NVIDIA board) and Quad SLI (it'll be possible to pair two 9800 GX2 on an NVIDIA platform when the drivers become available meaning next week), the 9800 GX2 is the first card to support HybridPower. HybridPower is the most interesting of the two Hybrid SLI technologies (with GeForce Boost for entry-level boards). It can totally deactivate the 3D card when using office applications, thus only using integrated graphical circuits in the event where a 790i is on the motherboard. Even if 3D cards have made some progress over the years, they still waste much energy when you're not running 3D applications, which is most of the time for many users.

The GeForce 9800 GX2 has some additional components that wake up a deactivated card (NVIDIA refused to say more). Requests to activate or deactivate a card are sent through the SMBus on the PCI Express bus. This is the first time this bus has been used and a graphics card must be compatible to respond to the requests. It must also have upgraded power supply stages and the capacitors, so it can react very quickly. Even though we weren't able to check since we did not have a compatible platform, we were able to see that it did work well a few months ago with beta drivers. At that time, activating or deactivating the cards could only be done manually and there was a delay of a dozen of seconds.

Florian Charpentier
7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dwfresch
    This author continues to refer to ATI as AMD in multiple articles. Not only does this bring into question this author's competence, it also causes me to question the accuracy of all articles on Tom's Hardware since the editors have overlooked such a blatant error.
    Reply
  • ProphetMK1
    I am wondering about your competence. What does it matter if he refers to the parent company of ATI. If you aren't aware or have been MIA from the tech world in the last year. AMD owns ATI at a large 5.4 billion dollar so far debt that has yet to help my AMD shares.
    Reply
  • AvatarC
    I think you owe an apology to the site, dwfresch. When was the last time you visited www.ati.com and what did you first notice?
    Reply
  • honestly, i know amd owns ati, but the two are totally seperate entities. the product solutions for one are different and when i talk about graphics card, i refer to them as ATI or NVIDIA, rather than AMD and Intel. If I stood up in front of you trying to convince you to gain our market share and talk to you about our products, im not going to say "The new AMD Radeon HD 3800 Series" because its NOT AMD, its ATI. And if i make simple stupid errors like that, how do you know that the rest of my information is right? My facts on resolution, memory bus, core speed, may all be just as wrong as getting the ACTUAL COMPANY NAME THAT PRODUCED THE PRODUCT wrong. Attention to detail gentleman. Having 200 cars isnt the same as having 500. Having a Mayback Exelero isnt the same as a Kia Rio. The LAPD is not the NYPD. Get the drift? Thank you
    Reply
  • Its AMD NOT ATI, and I think the above comment has lost the point completely tbh.
    Reply
  • aww yer ana a 550watt power supply
    Reply
  • listen what is the best value for money graphics card that can play crysis cuz im upgrading with a 64 bit 3.06 gig hert processoer asus p5n sli and a gforce 7600GT
    so yer i dont wanna spend grands on my rig id b happy with a rig thats 80% up dere with the market cuz getting 100% up with the market is to expensive
    Reply