NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 pics, specs leaked

[Elliot B.]

If you cant afford a monitor that size, how can you afford a card that expensive? :whistle:

I'd rather have smooth games on a 17'' monitor than choppy games on a 22" monitor.

Anyway, I had this 8800 GTS given to me by a company who screwed up... bad.

[msuh]

how come video cards get bigger and not smaller

[Elliot B.]

how come video cards get bigger and not smaller

They're similar to the size of the cards around the Voodoo times. Main difference is the cooler these days.

Also, initial models are always bigger. Think about the first 8800 GTS and the newer 8800 GT.

[+shift. MVC]

The 8800 GT is cheap and is the best performing cards for it's price-range. In fact, it's one of the best performing cards at the moment full stop.

Yeah I know. Do you think prices will go down after 9 series cards come out?

[Elliot B.]

Yeah I know. Do you think prices will go down after 9 series cards come out?

Yeah, but not immediately.

[Hak Foo]

What nVidia needs is not the 9800, but the 8700.

nVidia presently has nothing between the $120-or-so 8600GTS and the $220-or-so 8800GT.

Looking at their performance, the 8600GTS seems to only offer about twice the oomph of the 7600GS I run now. The 8800 offers about four times the oomph.

Meanwhile, the Radeon 3850 sits right in the middle: $170 or so, about 3 times the performance of the 7600GS.

Anything below the 8800 cards provide fairly weak selling points: 8600 cards tend towards being large and hot-running for their performance level (I can get a reasonably sized fanless 7600, but a fanless 8600 usually requres a huge weird heatsink assembly), so you have to not only say "Do I want to spend $120 for this performance" but "do I want to take on the extra heat and-or noise for this performance?" When the performance gains are comparatively small, it's a hard sell.

[Smigit]

Watch this not be the 9800 but be an 8900. that to me seems a little more plausible for a 30% increase.

I deadset agree and think it will slide in as an 8900 card. Looking at post at hard forums and based on my own belief, these cards do not offer a very large performance jump over the other cards in the family (remembering these are in SLI so individually each card isnt really any faster than an 8800 card). To me calling these cards the 9800 would make them be seen as the next generation and the poor performance increase would just be a huge stigma on NVidia. If the cards are only on par with the 8800's then they'd do well I think to cal them 8900's.

30% is a huge gain considering the difference between the 8800 GT and GTX is minimal at best...maybe 5% or thereabouts.

I think it just shows how old the 8800GTX is, that their newly released GT mid range card can come so close to it. And I also think that by Feb the 8800GTX will be close to 18 months old a 30% jump is quite poor, particully when the cards in SLI. I'm honestly left wondering what on earth they are doing, surely you can get that extra 30% already by SLI'ing two current cards ablite at a higher cost. Apart from moving to a 65nm design there ultimatly seems theres been no improvement what so ever and using SLI to achieve higher figures seems a cheap way to go about it.

[L3thal Veteran]

Those specs are rather...tasty :D

[M1h4iL]

Those specs are rather...tasty :D

They are but I was hoping for a bigger boost then 30% over 8800Ultra.

[Elliot B.]

They are but I was hoping for a bigger boost then 30% over 8800Ultra.

Nothing is final/verified yet.

[xendrome]

What is the digital optical port for?

[That Guy Veteran]

After a year or two of having released their top card, I actually believed all that speculation about it having teraflop speeds, 10GB of memory, full AA as standard etc.

I guess they don't really need to release it, and are holding back their top models so as soon as ATI release something which matches their current top model, nVidia can just bring out their next model and destroy ATI again.

[Lucas]

Nothing is final/verified yet.

Indeed, it could end up even being slower than 30%, lol.

[Peter Lyon]

I missed out the 8k, as i have a 7950gt, not sure about the GX2 being 30% faster, surely that means that each chip is only 65% as fast as an 8800 ultra? i may have read it wrong, but thats the jist i got

though then again, 4 card sli, Matrox triple head adapters... 24 1280x1024 screens.... i'm not complaining :p

[Ayepecks]

Some of you are forgetting how much faster 30% really is... wait for benchmarks.

[itsnotabigtruck]

I think it should. Check out these results, some users got 60fps using SLI/Crossfire http://www.marc2003.ukfsn.org/ocuk/crysis/results.php I get around 47fps with only one 8800GT @ 1280x1024 0AA all high.

That's on high, not very high.

[pyehac]

and I thought technology would make things smaller...

[APH-Alex]

Imagine 3 of these SLI'd!! 31% performance increase!!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!1111!!!!1!!11!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[cashman Veteran]

What is the digital optical port for?

Also, what is the other port? HDMI?

I guess the optical is to go directly to an amp.

[PixilEyes]

Some of you are forgetting how much faster 30% really is... wait for benchmarks.

Yeah they dont realize, if you are going 1000 mph and the next increse is 30% thats 300 mph more.

One day the next series cards will only be 10 15% If you think about it its incredible.

[Smigit]

Yeah they dont realize, if you are going 1000 mph and the next increse is 30% thats 300 mph more.

One day the next series cards will only be 10 15% If you think about it its incredible.

But the point is this is an SLI card which I think makes any gain look pretty bad.

The card is supposed to be at least 30% faster than a 8800 Ultra,

The article compares this card to a SINGLE Ultra. Surely two new cards in SLI should be able to do more. Hell you can get two present cards and achieve the same result to be honest by using SLI. Yes, it'll be cheaper than having to buy two graphics cards and putting them into SLI, but performance wise I don't think 30% is any more than you would expect to achieve by placing two old cards in SLI which to me is where the disappointment lies. I'd much rather see progress being made in the single card designs than them gaining performance through the use of SLI.

Like I said, the cost is appealing but from a technological point of view I don't see this as a step forward but more of a side step (especially after 12 - 18 months since the 8800's arrived). Clearly they are delaying the real next gen cards and these seem to be a more intermediate gap filler of a card that's just had a die shrink and a few other adjustments. 30% is nice, but given that it's done via SLI I really do think ultimatly it's disapointing as by now I was expecting something truly new.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

Some of you are forgetting how much faster 30% really is... wait for benchmarks.

so if an 8800 Ultra is getting 47fps in Crysis at any given settings, this new 9800 GX2 will get 61fps. not that impressive to me, considering it's 2 GPUs. I wouldnt really be impressed if it were a single GPU since it's supposed to be a next-gen video card. perhaps we're all spoiled since the 8 series is so much faster than the 7 series.