nVidia GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB Dual GPU First Impressions

[belgolas]

much better then rumors. Still am going to wait till ATI releases there 4870 X2. Se if it beats it which I hope it does. And the cost of this card is pretty high compared to 3870X2 which can be bought for around 450 and is probably going to come down in price too.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by Cardboard box with DSL

When can we see a 'review' rather then just a first impressions?

I have not yet received the review card so I would say between a week to 10 days or closely following a new (official) driver release.

But, if my new Samsung 305T keeps giving me the finger and refusing to run...maybe a bit longer.

[Babrbarossa]

Quite surprisingly, [H] reports that the 3870X2 draws more power under load than the 9800GX2


This card just makes me impatient for the REAL next generation. These won't sell like the 8800GTX while cheaper SLI and Crossfire solutions are performing just as well on 22" monitors.. (notice the conspicuous absence of GTS/GT SLI comparisons over at Anandtech's GX2 preview) also one gets that feeling these NVidia double PCB solutions are just high end market fodder: that is really just the swan song of the previous generation of cards, designed to tide us over until the next generation rolls in.

[Cardboard box with DSL]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

I have not yet received the review card so I would say between a week to 10 days or closely following a new (official) driver release.

Cool! I'll be waiting as patiently as I can

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by Babrbarossa

Quite surprisingly, [H] reports that the 3870X2 draws more power under load that the 9800GX2

Did they mention what kind of logger they were using? I am wondering because any power analyzer that logs less than twice per second is pretty useless when benchmarking power consumption during gaming / synthetic benchmarks. Then again it is [H] so I am guessing they already thought of this...

[Thund3rball]

For about $200 more than a 3870x2 you won't get your money's worth IMHO. IDK it's still early to tell but any preliminary benches out don't look that great. The Crysis bench here looks pretty promising but it may be because of the 1.2 patch and the latest Nvidia drivers designed specifically for it and 9600 Nvidia cards. Time will tell :|

If it doesn't perform I'm sure the price will adjust accordingly.

[sswilson]

If Miso still has access to these cards, is there any way he can try the 3870X2 using the 8.2 drivers? Everybody has been complaining about a drop in performance using them over the 8.3s.

Good to see that kind of benefit (seems to fit in with the extra money forked out), but I'm also wondering if Crysis is better coded to take advantage of SLI vrs Crossfire. I know it's a preview, but #s like those can have a huge effect on purchases.

I'll be shipping the GX2 out to SKY today for him to do the full review, but I can see if I have some time today to run some Crysis numbers with the 8.2 drivers on the X2.

And I'll get those graphs repaired as quickly as I can here, haha...

[SKYMTL]

After reading through Tweaktown's Cat 8.3 article it seems that the drivers work great in Vista but are dogs in XP:

ATI Catalyst 8.3 Analysis - XP & Vista :: TweakTown

Miso seems to have used Vista for this quick rundown just like I will do with the actual review. IMO, he will see a performance DROP with the 8.2 drivers which I have already experienced in Crysis and WiC.

[Babrbarossa]

I'm sure a major focus of the 8.3 catalyst is on AFR (3 way?) which only works under vista- this is probably the reason for the XP hit- probably anotehr revision will fix it.