Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 Review

[Hatman]

Fantastic.. as Mrsbytch has so eloquently put down.. Did you get it horse style from the rear or did they at least put you bear naked in with the (in season) gorillas?

I have an important point to make on the subject of allowing Nvidia to pass off their remaining wafer inventory and rebranding it under the umbrella of a hyped up marketing plan designed to maximize shareholder value whilst taking advantage of their existing customer base..

It is important for those who have currently and through our hard work purchased a fine GPU specimen from the Nvidia 8800 line to thoroughly examine exactly how Nvidia's marketing department decided that '08 was to be the year that garbage dumping their remaining inventory upon the unknowingly, not mindful, and negligent general population has set the stage for a 40% drop in the stock price, forfeiting market share to ATI as well as served to take for granted the fact that like most of us on this forum take our time and have the intelligence to examine thoroughly what we are buying and why. Cheers! may we share drink and be merry!

The rest that don't see the obvious and relinquish themselves to blissful negligence and thoughtlessness -
CAVEAT EMPTOR
Thank goodness for these forums empowering us towards informed decision making.
Best of luck with your purchases

Blackwater11

Loosly translated... GX2 rocks!

 

[systemlord]

Nov 2009...

Come on, why wait that long?

By then Crysis 2 will be out and it will smoke every card :lol:

I'm sure you want a new G200 with 256 Stream Processors with 32 ROP GPU out this year, but that just isn't being realistic is it? So you ask, "why wait that long", because Nvidia will milk milk the the G92 that will make Nvidia rich, rich, rich.

 

[halfassed]

Anyone notice the sharp similiarity between the 9800GTX and the 8800GTS 512? Both are G92...

8800GTS 512 is clocked a little bit slower, so of course a STOCK 9800GTX will beat it (650Mhz vs 675Mhz). Why are they overclocking and renaming the chip? Just to add 3-Way support that the 8800GTS doesn't have? NVIDIA is just being silly now.... 8850GTS-GTZ-GTX-GTR what-have-you would have been better than calling it a 9-series.

I think the next step logically would be to continue using G92-series chips and calling them 9000-series cards. Yeah, no new architecture, just a tweak and a die-shrink. It's a bit weird for NVIDIA, but Intel does the same thing, so maybe NVIDIA is doing something similar. Soooo, I guess we wait until beyond the 9000's (10K+??) for a new architecture on 65nm...whatever.... NVIDIA's being boring right now. Thank god they're making tons of money.

 

[trooper1947]

I want to see it compared to an ATI dual core card not last year's 3870 ! Plus that 17.2 score sucked big time .... looks like yet another Nvidia clunker ! WAY OVERPRICED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Plus get out the hot dogs and marshmallows .... heard you can cook em over the top of one ..... LOL -----

 

[archimedes]

I've been reading through the posts and I haven't seen anybody mention anything about having two 8800 GTX's SLI. I'm about to build my first machine and I was wondering if I should do that or get 2 8800 GTS 512's? I just learned that I can't use 3 GTS's, which cards will support tri SLI? Could I do 3 9600 GT's? I'll be using the 780i board. I also need some help with RAM. I was thinking about using 4 gigs of Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600/PC3-12800 CL9, but it's a bit pricey. Am I going to really notice the difference between that and something like (OCZ Platinum PC3-10666) or even (Ballistix PC2-8500). I'm obviously new at this and any help with these decisions or any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[hughyhunter]

I've been reading through the posts and I haven't seen anybody mention anything about having two 8800 GTX's SLI. I'm about to build my first machine and I was wondering if I should do that or get 2 8800 GTS 512's? I just learned that I can't use 3 GTS's, which cards will support tri SLI? Could I do 3 9600 GT's? I'll be using the 780i board. I also need some help with RAM. I was thinking about using 4 gigs of Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600/PC3-12800 CL9, but it's a bit pricey. Am I going to really notice the difference between that and something like (OCZ Platinum PC3-10666) or even (Ballistix PC2-8500). I'm obviously new at this and any help with these decisions or any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Currently the only cards from Nvidia that support tri-sli are the 8800GTX and 8800ULTRA. So you are limited to what you can get. I remember their being talk that the 9800GTX will support tri-sli but we will see. Let me ask you this... why do you want tri-sli? Typically speaking the only reason someone should get multi gpu system is if they want to have the absolute most high end performance on the market. Well I will tell you that two 9800GX2 will outperform three ultra's or at least be close in performance and for a lot less money. I would opt for maybe waiting for the next gen cards to come out instead but that's just me.
The board you have picked out (780i) will not support DDR3. You must be referring to the 790i. If I were you I would stick with the 780i and get 2X2GB of fast DDR2 memory like OCZ reaperX 1066 or something. I would also stick with 2 8800GTS 512 (outperform 2 8800GTX's in SLI and cost far less). IMO you wont need three cards for awhile. Unless you want to play Crysis at max settings with high resolutions. Even then three ultras have problems with tri-sli scaling.

 

[archimedes]

It sounds like two 8800GTS 512 is the way to go. I was curious if I could run 3 9600 GT's, which I figured would outperform the two 8800GTS. I'd love to go with two 9800GX2 but that puts me over budget, which was about $900 for the graphics cards. Am I going to notice a large performance increase if I went with the 790i and used DDR3 RAM. Or should I spend the extra money elsewhere? I'm also debating the Q6600 vs. E8400...

 

[frodbonzi]

I'd go with 1 9800GX2... that's about the same as 2 GTS cards... and costs about the same too... that way you can upgrade later to Quad SLI if you ever get the money...

Stay with 780i, and get lots of DDR2 RAM, which is cheap as all hell.

Have you thought about going Q9450? It's about the same price as the Q6600 (a bit more expensive, but not much), and is 45nm instead of 65...

 

[archimedes]

really? I thought for sure 2 8800GTS cards would easily outperform the 9800GX2... I guess I was wrong...

 

[halfassed]

2 GTSes will outperform a 9800GX2 because they have higher default clock speeds. The 9600GT is a lesser card than even an 8800GT, it won't support 3 way SLI and is simply a midrange card. The best value these days for 2 cards are the G92 cards, the 8800GT and 8800GTS 512. The higher attainable clockspeeds of the 65nm G92 chips make them the best deal around. ZOTAC sells G92's clocked at 740MHz and my EVGA's default at 670, OC to 740 easy and really smoke stock GTXes because they have the same 128 SPs but default clocks of 575MHz. The 384-bit wide bus on the GTX is simply not worth the extra money since G92s can hit 740MHz.

The 9-series GPUs are stopgap measures that don't measure up. The 9600 is intentionally a midrange card, not as powerful as the other G92s, and the 9800GTX only clocks at 600MHz without the O/C overhead of its G92 brethren....

 

[hughyhunter]

I would probably if I were you go with the 780i board. Or if you have to have the 790i maybe get 2x1gb DDR3 1333 speed... you can get for around $200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227292

If you have 900 to spend on a few cards I would wait for 9800GTX and get three of them. They should be for around the $300 price range.

 

[V8VENOM]

SLI/Crossfire is great when it works. It also does wonders for nVidia and ATI profits. But the reality is that NOT all games work well with SLI or Crossfire. Microsoft's FSX is a good example of how SLI/Crossfire will not help fps at all.

Then there are the bugs and stability issues around having 2 or 3 video cards installed. The odds of lockups, spontaneous reboots, CTD, BSOD increase considerably per video card added.

And finally we have Crysis, modified numerous times trying to work with nVidia (and only nVidia) SLI and Tri-SLI with limited success. I mean seriously, THREE 8800GTX Ultra and the game still has some stutters and drops to teens for fps in specific area's of the game play.

Intel's ace card is their multi-core technology and their chipsets and their fab facilities and their understanding of how to get GPU processing integrated and coupled closely with the CPU, bus, etc.

nVidia have stalled and appear to be moving in the wrong direction, or worse, nVidia know what they need to do, but can't accomplish it by themselves -- in other words they NEED to be able to work very closely with Intel, they need a partnership. But they don't have one and Intel have announced they're going head to head with nVidia and ATI.

Don't you folks see the writing on the wall? Even if the 9800GTX is 50% faster than an 8800GTX Ultra, so what? Yipee, you can move AA from 2X to 4X (maybe) and retain equal frame rates. It is going to take a fundamental change in bus technology, chipset technology, CPU/GPU technology. Adding more PCI-E slots, more cooling, and bigger power supplies isn't the solution and this is nVidia's prison.

And yes Intel does have Engineers very capable of GPU engineering as the technical skill set required is NOT radically any different than CPUs.

If nVidia want to survive they need to beg Intel or they need to produce their own CPUs. But seeing as neither AMD/ATI nor nVidia will have 32nm fabs anytime soon -- Intel will by the end of this year -- soooo.

AMD/ATI is realistically the only other company that can work in this area, but they can't see to overcome their yield/fab problems and have some serious financial issues.

 

[pauldh]

SLI won't help in a cpu bound flight sim. Crysis, it helps a ton. I see scaling as high as 80% in gpu demanding levels like the frozen paradise lost. SLI (crossfire) is about the only way to play crysis IMO as one of anything still sux.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Theres even evidence that Crysis is somewhat cpu bottlenecked, as well as flight sim. So, if I was Intel, Id get off their arses and make better cpus, so that they can catch up to these gpus

 

[yipsl]

AH, don't even suggest that. We would need Intel to get serious in discrete graphics or we would never see the kind of bargains out there like today and progress would crawl toward a halt. I love this competion, there are some pretty amazing cards throughout the $50-250 range. I'm looking forward to the HD3850/3870 price cuts to pass on to us.

AMD and Nvidia almost merged before AMD bought ATI. Rumors at "grain of salt" sites reported the deal didn't go through because Huang wanted to be in charge of the new company but Ruiz wouldn't go for it. Later rumors had Huang interested in a takeover of AMD/ATI recently but Nvidia partners nixed the idea.

If the first had gone through, we'd still have competition and Intel should still have gone for free Crossfire over licensed through the nose SLI. The second couldn't go through for regulatory reasons. Until Intel gets Larrabee out for the discrete market, we can't have the only two players in the discrete market merging. Intel's IGP share just doesn't count as competition in that scenario.

Can't wait for April 18. I have an ASUS 780G board waiting for a Phenom 9850 and 4 gigs of DDR2 1066 under Vista 32 bit (thinking of upgrading to 64 bit to get the most out of the RAM). In May, I'll definitely get a 24" LCD. Then, we'll see what this 3870x2 can do when it's not CPU limited at 17" CRT resolutions.

 

[frodbonzi]

So it's April 4, Quad SLI Drivers have been out for over a week - where is Tom's update on this article including benchmarks with Quad SLI? I'm quite curious as to how this card is performing now that its drivers are a bit more mature...

I'd also like to see it compared to dual 8800 GTS cards, dual/tri 8800GTX cards, dual/tri-8800 Ultra cards, dual/tri-9800 cards

Shame on Toms for being so slow on this!

I still think it behooves one to purchase the 9800GX2 only with a new PC, as it does not really upgrade any of the 8800 cards (better to simply pair an existing GT or GTX).

I DO think getting one of these cards is better than getting 2 GTS or 2 GTX cards, as there is room to upgrade (another GX2) whereas you are pretty stuck with 2 of the other cards (GTX in tri-SLI is hardly worth doing, and still isn't as good as Quad SLI).

Oh, one last thing... Toms, can you do these benchmarks on a 780 AND a 790 board? I'd be interested if the DDR3 RAM makes much of a difference...

 

[hughyhunter]

Can't wait for April 18. I have an ASUS 780G board waiting for a Phenom 9850 and 4 gigs of DDR2 1066 under Vista 32 bit (thinking of upgrading to 64 bit to get the most out of the RAM). In May, I'll definitely get a 24" LCD. Then, we'll see what this 3870x2 can do when it's not CPU limited at 17" CRT resolutions.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103249 should be avail now right?

So it's April 4, Quad SLI Drivers have been out for over a week - where is Tom's update on this article including benchmarks with Quad SLI? I'm quite curious as to how this card is performing now that its drivers are a bit more mature...

I'd also like to see it compared to dual 8800 GTS cards, dual/tri 8800GTX cards, dual/tri-8800 Ultra cards, dual/tri-9800 cards

Shame on Toms for being so slow on this!

I still think it behooves one to purchase the 9800GX2 only with a new PC, as it does not really upgrade any of the 8800 cards (better to simply pair an existing GT or GTX).

I DO think getting one of these cards is better than getting 2 GTS or 2 GTX cards, as there is room to upgrade (another GX2) whereas you are pretty stuck with 2 of the other cards (GTX in tri-SLI is hardly worth doing, and still isn't as good as Quad SLI).

Oh, one last thing... Toms, can you do these benchmarks on a 780 AND a 790 board? I'd be interested if the DDR3 RAM makes much of a difference...

1. I doubt that the drivers are mature. That's probably the reason why Toms hasnt written an article about it yet... and why I havent seen anywhere on the net about quad SLI or a driver for SLI GX2.
2. Nvidia hates when people (like Toms... probably why they wont do it) writes and article comparing new GPUs directly to old architecture like the 8800GTX and Ultra.
3. I would have loved to get one of these cards... however I just dont think that Nvidia is doing as good as they can with drivers. SLI scaling should be more effective. Why else should we spend all that extra dough on an extra card. SLI scaling has to be more effective in order to justify GX2. That means better drivers.

I to am interested in what the performance increase is for DDR3. The 780i/790i would be a great comparison. If I had to guess the performance increase with all other factors the same (ie memory size, gpu, cpu, hard disk) would only be 5-15%. That to me doesnt justify the extra dough that you will be forking out for both the 790i board and DDR3.

Another thing. Crysis is so buggy that I cant even play it. I'll be in the game for a minute and it will crash or the next mission wont load. Is this Crysis or Nvidia? Driver or crappy install or just crappy game? Man it's so frustrating. Already tried re-install too.

 

[frodbonzi]

The drivers may not be mature... but at least they have been released...

I want to see an update - Quad SLI should be tested - even if it's only against Crossfire X....

If Quad SLI doesn't scale, then perhaps TRI-SLI really is the only way to go... which would really be a shame

 

[hughyhunter]

Hmm... I wonder why we havent seen any quad sli benches yet?

 

[pauldh]

Hmm... I wonder why we havent seen any quad sli benches yet?

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_9800_gx2_quad_sli_performance/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ3OCwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3271

 

[hughyhunter]

Oh wow... I didnt know. I even tried Googling "quad sli" looking for some reviews. Surprisingly it's faster than 3 way ultra's. I would have liked to see some 9800GTX 3 way comparison. Oh well.
All in all it seems like a good high end buy. Plays Crysis well that's for sure. I am lucky to get 30FPS with my set up @ 1680x1050, very high settings with AA & AF off.

 

[pauldh]

I've had similar happen to me when I know the review I am searching for but can't seem to find it with google. Frustrating when I know it's in my favorites on another machine but at the moment it doesn't seem to exist.

Here is 9800GTX vs 8800U 3 way sli:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_9800_gtx_performance_preview/page8.asp

 

[hughyhunter]

^^ it's very dissapointing to see Ultra's in 3 way being faster than 9800GTX in 3 way. I wonder if this has much if not everything to do with memory and bit interface.

 

[pauldh]

Anand had issues with 3 way sli and couldn't even get 3 ultras' running on the 790i mobo. Pretty impressive Crysis scaling again for 3 way SLI. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3275&p=5

 

[hughyhunter]

^^ very impressed with how well Crysis does with SLI scaling. I bet it would be equal parts of three or three times faster than a single card if that last pci-e slot was full 16x. Maybe the next nvidia based board will have support for full 16x lanes on each utilized pci-e slot.