NVIDIA unveils GeForce 9800 GTX
updated 04:30 pm EDT, Tue April 1, 2008
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX
NVIDIA today marked the formal release of the GeForce 9800 GTX. As a counterpart to the dual-chip 9800 GX2, the GTX is NVIDIA's fastest-ever single processor video card and is core-clocked at 675MHz, well above the 612MHz of the 8800 Ultra, despite sharing the same 128 shader units to process pixels and geometry. Its only sacrifice is a switch from the 768MB of the Ultra to 512MB on the 9800-series card, though a faster 2.2GHz effective memory clock and optimizations to the chip itself are claimed to offset the difference.
This latest card also adds support for three-way SLI on supporting mainboards, allowing as many as three cards to accelerate the 3D in a single window for compatible games. It also improves acceleration for HD video to almost completely remove the workload from the processor and supplies added bandwidth when plugged into a PCI Express 2.0 slot.
Reference versions of the card are already shipping from BFG, eVGA, XFX, and several other card makers. NVIDIA has not said whether it will support the video card outside of Windows.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 1999
Mac version
Sad that Macpro platform users ( graphics artists and video producers, etc.) cannot access this card , nor are there any signs as to when/if they will be able to do so. Apple needs to get with it a bit more too and start giving options to use these cards as soon as they are available instead of waiting until the next speed bump release of the CPU.