Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Review

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Specifications

Point of View supplied the sample card. It is identical to the reference design except for a sticker. Bundles will vary. Point of View will provide a DVI to VGA adapter and a PCI Express 6 pin to 2 Molex adapter, which is quite obsolete for such a card.

Outputs include two DVI-I ports and an HDMI port. Like the 9600 GT, the 9800 GX2 has an HDMI-in, located next to the additional power connectors for linking with the motherboard's PCB or a sound card.

Main Cards Specifications
GPU HD 3870 X2 9800 GX2 8800 Ultra
GPU clock 825 MHz 600 MHz 612 MHz
Shaders clock 825 MHz 1500 MHz 1512 MHz
Memory Clock 900 MHz 1000 MHz 1080 MHz
Width of the memory bus 2x256 bits 2x256 bits 384 bits
Memory Type GDDR3 GDDR3 GDDR3
Amount of Memory 2 x 512 MB 2x512 MB 768 MB
Number of Pixels/Vertex Pipelines (160) (64) (32)
Number of Texturing Units 32 128 32
ROP 32 32 24
Throughput ~1 TFlops 768 GFlops 387 GFlops
Memory Bandwidth 115.2 GB/s 128 GB/s 103.7 GB/s
Number of transistors 1334 millions 1010 millions 754 millions
Process 0.055µ 0.065µ 0.080µ
Die surface 2 x 196 mm² 2 x 324 mm² 484 mm²
Generation 2008 2008 2007
Shader Model supported 4.1 4.0 4.0

When it comes to specifications, we would like to see more memory (512 MB of really usable memory compared to the other cards) and more memory bus (there are 256 bits, although we can multiply this by two). NVIDIA has the upper hand for most of the other specs. Memory bandwidth, but mostly texturing units weigh in favor of the chameleon (with a filtrate three times superior). AMD has better raw throughput, but we know its actual architecture is less efficient. The 9800 GX2 has also the upper hand when it comes to die surface, which means cheaper production costs.

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Summary
  1. Introduction
  2. Voodoo 6 5500?
  3. HybridPower
  4. Specifications
  5. The Review
  6. Flight Simulator X
  7. Unreal Tournament III
  8. Call Of Duty 4
  9. Test Drive Unlimited
  10. Crysis
  11. World In Conflict
  12. Supreme Commander
  13. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
  14. Power Consumption
  15. Noise
  16. Conclusions
  17. Summary
  18. Performance Roundup
About the author
Florian Charpentier
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7 comments
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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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?
  • 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
  • Its AMD NOT ATI, and I think the above comment has lost the point completely tbh.
  • aww yer ana a 550watt power supply
  • 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
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