Official 9800GX2 thread (reviews and benches inside)

Makunouchi · 22 Mar 2008 at 15:50

I really doubt it HighlandeR, apparently the card is exceptionally hard to take apart yourself, but i guess we might see some brands using diferent coolers in time.

As for overall noise its no more noisy than my old GTS, i cant hear it at alll, even after 2+ hours of Crysis. Ive manually turned the fans up due to overclocking it and wanting to be safe, so i can hear it slightly now, but thats not the cards fault.

toucam · 22 Mar 2008 at 20:58

I knew that 9800GX2 was fast but never thought it's this bloody fast! It blows 3870X2 apart to pieces. I guess nVidia have better driver engineers

http://en.expreview.com/2008/03/19/Quad-CrossfireX-smasher-GeForce-9800GX2/28/

willhub · 22 Mar 2008 at 21:00

Nothing amazing about it beating quad crossfire, its not like crossfireX is even optimized and its well known that the more cores the lower the increase, 3 seems the best as far as 3870's go.

Gerard · 22 Mar 2008 at 21:04

toucam said:
I guess nVidia have better driver engineers

nvidias drivers have been playing second fiddle to ati's for ages now. Nvidia do have the better hardware presently so that makes a large difference.

chaparral · 22 Mar 2008 at 21:10

toucam said:
I knew that 9800GX2 was fast but never thought it's this bloody fast! It blows 3870X2 apart to pieces. I guess nVidia have better driver engineers

http://en.expreview.com/2008/03/19/Quad-CrossfireX-smasher-GeForce-9800GX2/28/

16fps in crysis at 1920x1200 4xAA :eek:

It drops from 42fps to 16fps just by turning 4xAA on :confused:

After looking through the rest of them benchmarks,it looks like this big fps drop whet turning 4xAA only happens in crysis...

toucam · 22 Mar 2008 at 21:28

Gerard said:
nvidias drivers have been playing second fiddle to ati's for ages now. Nvidia do have the better hardware presently so that makes a large difference.

I thought ATI is having issues with scaling?

willhub · 22 Mar 2008 at 21:29

chaparral said:
16fps in crysis at 1920x1200 4xAA

It drops from 42fps to 16fps just by turning 4xAA on

After looking through the rest of them benchmarks,it looks like this big fps drop whet turning 4xAA only happens in crysis...

Have you tried the same thing on your GTX?

Gerard · 22 Mar 2008 at 21:47

toucam said:
I thought ATI is having issues with scaling?

Not really, crossfire and sli seem to lose out when a 4th chip is introduced whereas 3 way seems to have more of an effect in more games. Single chip to single chip though nvidias are faster (currently). I doubt either ati or nvidia will get proper quad performance anytime soon.

wuyanxu · 22 Mar 2008 at 22:40

willhub said:
Have you tried the same thing on your GTX?

of course

benchmark @ 16xQAA 1680x1050, all Very High, Dx10, no tweaks: 8FPS average.
Crysis 16xQAA, 1440x900, and all Very High, Dx10

playable with a bit tweaking, and drop down to 4xAA.
i estimate GTX drops about 20% with AA enabled at 4x, and 50% of original FPS with 16xQAA.

MR.B · 22 Mar 2008 at 22:46

chaparral said:
16fps in crysis at 1920x1200 4xAA

It drops from 42fps to 16fps just by turning 4xAA on

After looking through the rest of them benchmarks,it looks like this big fps drop whet turning 4xAA only happens in crysis...

I get the same thing. And i'm sure it's because 512MB isn't enough. Dont cut it anymore.

I posted about this a page or two back. I get MASSIVE performance hits at high res with AA, especially in games with higher res textures like Crysis.

fornowagain · 22 Mar 2008 at 23:42

MR.B said:
I get the same thing. And i'm sure it's because 512MB isn't enough. Dont cut it anymore.

I posted about this a page or two back. I get MASSIVE performance hits at high res with AA, especially in games with higher res textures like Crysis.

I'm not so sure its not a bug, the X2 is the same kind of beastie, same vram limits. Doesn't suffer anything like the same fps drop. Which games do you see the same kind of drop?

--------------

Found this if you ever want to flash the bios.

AndreYang said:
new NiBiT and nvflash worked perfect at 9800GX2.

This card is different from 3870X2 because there are 3 bios at this card. BR04 Bridge bios, Core 1 bios and Core 2 bios.

Save under DOS

Core1
nvflash -b -i1 xxx-1.rom

Core 2
nvflash -b -i2 xxx-2.rom

Next, using NiBiT 3.9 edit and flash under dos, too.

Flash bios under dos

Core1
nvflash -4 -5 -6 -i1 xxx-1.rom

Core2
nvflash -4 -5 -6 -i2 xxx-2.rom

mattyfez · 23 Mar 2008 at 06:40

willhub said:
If you can shell out on a 9800GX2 I dont think 2 8800GTX's and a new mobo is much of an issue.

Lets see, 2x211+~100 =£511 Vs £375 for the GX2

Plus the hastle of two cards, a flakey Nvidia mobo and re-fitting my whole PC :eek:

A bit of a no-brainer for me really, with the GX2 I just plug and play.

I scored 16460 3DMarks last night with Vista x64 SP1, Gx2 at stock speeds with latest official driver.

chaparral · 23 Mar 2008 at 07:15

MR.B said:
I get the same thing. And i'm sure it's because 512MB isn't enough. Dont cut it anymore.

I posted about this a page or two back. I get MASSIVE performance hits at high res with AA, especially in games with higher res textures like Crysis.

If i can manage to get my hands on another evga 8800gtx for SLI,,Then i do this test with SLI 8800gtx to see if i get the same fps drop at 1920x1200 with 4xAA in crysis with sli 8800gtx.......

PCZ · 23 Mar 2008 at 11:51

chaparral

Ran the benchmark tool at 1900x1200.
All settings on high.

2x 8800GTX 632 1566 1028

0xAA 51.52 fps
4xAA 39.76 fps

BTW
Benchmark tool doesn't list 1920x1200 as an option for me.

chaparral · 23 Mar 2008 at 11:57

PCZ said:
chaparral

Ran the benchmark tool at 1900x1200.
All settings on high.

2x 8800GTX 632 1566 1028

0xAA 51.52 fps
4xAA 39.76 fps

BTW
Benchmark tool doesn't list 1920x1200 as an option for me.

Thanks for this PCZ....

My single 8800gtx 674/1580/1040 is giving me

30fps at 1900x1200 with no AA (vista 64bit)
23.9fps at 1900x1200 with 4xAA (vista 64bit)

HighlandeR · 23 Mar 2008 at 14:49

Makunouchi said:
I really doubt it HighlandeR, apparently the card is exceptionally hard to take apart yourself, but i guess we might see some brands using diferent coolers in time.

As for overall noise its no more noisy than my old GTS, i cant hear it at alll, even after 2+ hours of Crysis. Ive manually turned the fans up due to overclocking it and wanting to be safe, so i can hear it slightly now, but thats not the cards fault.

Cheers yeah proberly no real need tbh to replace that mamoth box, if its silent in 2D im sold @ £350 quid

PCZ · 23 Mar 2008 at 15:01

Seems that the GTX copes better at high res.
More memory bandwidth or more memory maybe both.

Shame NV have cheapened up the memory interfaces on the latest cards.

Chronictank · 23 Mar 2008 at 15:15

toucam said:
I knew that 9800GX2 was fast but never thought it's this bloody fast! It blows 3870X2 apart to pieces. I guess nVidia have better driver engineers

http://en.expreview.com/2008/03/19/Quad-CrossfireX-smasher-GeForce-9800GX2/28/

:s looks about right for me, double the price just under double the performance

Arcane · 23 Mar 2008 at 15:54

The cheapest version of the X2 on OCUK is £270 whereas the GX2 is £352.49, that's double the performance for a 30% price increase

.

Gerard · 23 Mar 2008 at 16:55

Arcane said:
The cheapest version of the X2 on OCUK is £270 whereas the GX2 is £352.49, that's double the performance for a 30% price increase .

Difference being that the x2 is actually in stock whereas the gx2 is preorder only with an eta of the 4th of april.

Double the performance? Nope.

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***Official*** 9800GX2 thread (reviews and benches inside)

Official 9800GX2 thread (reviews and benches inside)