After introducing the 9000 series with a mid-range graphics card, nVidia gives us a taste of its power with their first high-end 9000 series graphics card. Like AMD's 3870X2, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a dual GPU solution with 1GB frame buffer divided equally amongst the two GPUs. Unlike AMD, nVidia already has some experience with their dual GPU based graphics card- the old 7950GX2 which was certainly a breakthrough product and much liked at our labs. Lets find out what the new GeForce 9800 GX2 brings to the table.
The GeForce 9800 GX2 features 256 processor cores each independently operating at 1,500 MHz which amounts to impressive 768 gigaflops of raw shading horsepower. In texturing performance, it can filter 76.8 billion pixels per second which is almost double of the AMD Radeon 3870 X2. Here are the specifications: | | GeForce 9800 GX2
| | Fabrication Process | 65nm | | Total Number of Transistors | 1010 Million
| | Core Clock | 600MHz | | Shader Clock | 1500MHz | | Processor Cores | 256 | | Memory Clock | 2000MHz | | Memory Interface | 256-bit | | Total Memory Bandwidth | 128 GB/s | | Total Video Memory | 1024 MB
| | ROPs | 32 | | Texture Filtering Units | 128 | | Texture Filtering Rate | 76.8 GigaTexels/sec | | HDCP Support | Yes | | HDMI Support | Yes | | Connectors | 2 x Dual-Link DVI-I 1 x HDMI | | RAMDACs | 400 MHz
| | Bus Technology | PCI-E 2.0
| | Form Factor | Dual Slot
| | Power Connectors | 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin
| | Max Board Power | 197 Watts
| | GPU Thermal Threshold | 105° C |
Unfortunately, the card nVidia sent us has been held in the customs, however, ASUS was kind enough to provide us their solution. Like most ASUS boards, the EN9800 GX2 comes in an overly large box and inside you find drivers and documentation DVDs along with a CD pouch, a DVI-DSUB converter and an optical cable. Full version of Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts is also include. The card itself if pretty much the reference card with dual power inputs and a cover for the SLI connector making it look like a totally enclosed product. The lights on the head of the card certainly look cool as you can see from the picture above.
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