After much hypothesis ,Nvidia finally kicks off its much anticipated 9800GX2,which according to the green team is aimed towards hardcore gamers who wants the most out of their GPU, creating a new level of visual realism packed with unmatched performance without compromising quality.As always,TG is always here to serve you with the best review, supplemented with just the information you need to know .So,before we jump onto the card's actual performance tests,lets see what Nvidia says about their product :

NVIDIA® GeForce® 9 Series GPUs turn your PC into a powerful and interactive entertainment system, with features designed to enhance every aspect of visual computing on a PC. From playing the latest, graphics-intensive games, to editing and watching HD videos, to viewing photos and getting 3D directions, GeForce 9 Series GPUs are essential for a visually immersive, optimized PC experience.

KEY FEATURES:

Resolutions up to 2560 X 1600 allow for extreme HD gaming

- PureVideo® HD technology provides a premium HD DVD or Blu-ray movie viewing

- HybridPower™* technology offers exceptional graphics performance and power savings for everyday needs

- SLI® technology and PCIe 2.0 compatibility guarantee amazing performance scaling and ultra fast data transfers

- The perfect price and performance combination to get the most bang for your buck

*Only available on select 9 series models

SPECIFICATIONS:




Now lets move onto the main review:


The real countdown:9800GX2 is definitely faster ,but how much?

Imagine what will happen if two 8800GT,with slightly increased clock rates ,are sandwiched in a single card ?You will get something called "9800GX2".If you already own a 8800GT,this thing is hard to miss that 9800GX2 is actually two 8800GT cores running on a single board .Now what can this do for you ?A lot indeed .First of all,you get the opportunity to run SLI on a single PCI express slot,even id you dont have Nforce Motherboard .Even if you have two slots ,but one of them is filled up already ..or there is not enough room left over your slot due to a external sound accelarator ..you still get two 8800GT,with a great price ,and mind you what i said at first ,"They are clocked slighly faster ".




After taking a close look at its "Bright" and "Dark" sides we will head forward to our benchmark tests:

The Bright:

1.Incredible overclocking possiblity
2.Sounds calm and quite
3.HDMI and SLI capable
4.Faster than 8800GT SLI
5.SLI on a single slot

The dark:

1.Massive power usage .
2.You might need to sell your kidney to buy this card (580$-650$)

The benchmarks:




For benchmark tests we choose the XFX Geforce 9800GX2
(Benchmark source:www.bjorn3d.com)

TEST MACHINE:

(Benchmark source:www.bjorn3d.com)

The system that is being used for testing is a what is called a real world system. That means it's in a case, it has a security suite, instant messenger, and various other software that a normal user would use on their machine. To me, reviewing on what I call a real world machine is very important to me. Just ask yourself, when was the last time that you played a game or used your machine daily that was spread all over a bench and not running any security software at all? Don’t think very many of you do.

Test Platform
Processor	Intel QX9650 @ 4GHz
Motherboard	ASUS P5E3 Deluxe, BIOS 1001
Memory	4GB of Corsair DDR 3 12800 @ 1600MHz
Drive(s)	2 – Seagate 7200.11 1TB Barracuda 1 - Seagte 7200.10 750GB
Graphics	Video Card # 1: XFX® GeForce® 9800GX2 running ForceWare 174.53 64-bit Video Card # 2: XFX® GeForce® 8800 Ultra XXX running ForceWare 169.21 64-bit WHQL
Cooling	CoolIT Freezone
Power Supply	PC Power and Cooling 1200
Display	Dell 2707 FPW
Case	Lian-Li 2000B Plus
Operating System	Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

At this stage of the game, high-end graphic cards are meant to be run at 1920x1200 or higher resolution. Running them at a lower resolution is rarely needed and I have found only one game. That game being Crysis and that one I run daily at 1600x1200 instead of 1920x1200 and will bench it at the 1600x1200 resolution. The card we are going to test it against is a XFX 8800 Ultra XXX. I had hoped to have an ATI X2 card to compare to but could not get one in time. From what we have seen on the web from other sites the 8800 Ultra XXX is still a faster card than the 3870X2 so this should be a good battle to see if the 9800GX2 is the new king of the hill.

Comparative Specifications
Specification	XFX 9800GX2	XFX 8800 Ultra XXX
Memory	1024 MB	768 MB
Memory Clock	2.0 GHz	2.0 GHz
Stream Processors	256	128
Shader Clock	1500 MHz	1667 MHz
Clock Rate	600 MHz	675 MHz

Synthetic Benchmarks & Games

3DMark06 v. 1.10

Company of Heroes v. 1.71 DX 10

Crysis v. 1.2 DX 10

World in Conflict DX 10

F.E.A.R. v 1.08

Half Life Lost Coast

Overclocking

Overclocked Specifications
Specification	XFX 9800GX2
Memory Clock	2.106 GHz
Shader Clock	1652 MHz
Clock Rate	661 MHz

Final tests:
(Benchmark source:www.bjorn3d.com)






















































































POWER

To measure the power draw I left the machine at idle with the monitor off. Then, I turned on the monitor, started the Crysis benchmark, and shut off the monitor to measure load levels. All test readings where taken from the wattage draw reading on my battery backup.

Power Draw
	Idle	Load
XFX 9800GX2	368	501

TEMPS

The temps readings are being taken from RivaTuner 2.08. The temps where taken at idle and then thru the Crysis benchmark.

Temperature
Specification	Idle	Load
Core 1	65º C	74ºC
Core 2	67ºC	75ºC

VIDEO PLAYBACK

To look at the how well the graphics card engine ran 1080p videos I put it up against a 7800 512 GTX and watched Hi-Def videos keeping track of overall CPU usage percentage on my machine. I looked at over 10 different videos on both cards, took scores, and came up with the following CPU average.

Video Playback
	Avg. CPU Usage
XFX 9800GX2	13%
7800 GTX 512MB	37%

The final thoughts:




The 9800GX2 does what it is supposed to do.Its faster,more massive ,equipped with more sophisticated technologies ,but all of that comes with a bit "sky high" price.While it does not blow away its close rivals in all benchmarks,it does set new promises .No doubt, it will take a long time until we (Bangladeshis) can have this card delivered to our hands ,it will be a great deal for gamers that cant compromise image quality in games like Crysis and Assassin's creed and fall under the category of "money no matter" kind of person.However ,it is cheaper than two 8800GT,isnt it ?