NVIDIA reveals GeForce 9800 GX2
updated 10:20 am EDT, Tue March 18, 2008
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2
NVIDIA today unveiled what it now calls its fastest single-slot video card. The GeForce 9800 GX2 is the company's second card to combine dual chipsets and merges two 9800-series chipsets into a single design that is said to be faster than two GeForce 9600 GT cards. While clocked lower at 600MHz versus the 650MHz of the less expensive card, the much larger 512-bit memory interface and 2GHz effective video memory help edge out most two-card solutions.
As part of the 9 series, the GX2 also inherits the other benefits of the lineup, including full HD video decoding in hardware, PCI Express 2.0 support, and support for quad SLI by using a second GX2 for a total of four video chipsets in a single system. The added performance requires extra power and should see at least a 580-watt power supply for a single card and a full 850 watts for a system with two of the cards installed.
Video cards are to be available today from ASUS, BFG, and several other high-profile manufacturers with an estimated price of $600. Most will include two dual-link DVI outputs as well as an HDMI output with a separate SPDIF output for routing surround sound as well as graphics to a home theater system.
