The latest in stalker letters is here, and it comes attached with another NVIDIA graphics card like our last. If you recall last time this happened, we received the GeForce 8800 GTS, the G92 based card anonymously with a letter attached to it. This time we've got another new card and accompanying letter. Again, it's an NVIDIA offering, but the message was a little different this time, a little scarier. Someone wants us to have the new NVIDIA cards, but at the same time that person or company doesn't want us to know who they are! Really, we're not complaining and as long as nothing like a horse's head shows up in our bed then we're not too concerned and can just be happy about it. - TweakTown

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB Version Card Preview

Without the shroud to cover the card we can see that the card looks like the back of any normal graphics card. Both sides look almost identical with only a few things making them slightly different from each other. The main difference between the two sides is that one carries with it an SLI connector and PCI Express connector while the other has neither. Towards the back of the card you can see the hole on each side where the fans pull air from. If we hover above the card and look down we can see the design of the heatsink and the fins where the air comes out. The design actually looks great, except maybe heat issues.

Across the top we can also see the SLI connector located on one of the cards along with two power connectors. One card has a single 6-pin PCI Express connector while the second card carries with it an 8-pin PCI Express connector. As you would expect, the details on GPU-Z are a bit scarce. In fact it was unable to get details on most specifics of the card. What it does tell us though is that we have a 600MHz core clock, 1500MHz shader clock and 2000MHz effective clock on the memory. Other details include 1GB of GDDR3 memory split across the two PCB's, 65nm cores, 256-bit memory interface per core, and so on.

We have to say that until we got to our Windows XP tests, the GeForce 9800 GX2 has been a complete let down. Under Unreal Tournament 3 it actually looks like we have a CPU bottleneck with performance pretty much the same across all resolutions. It outperforms the Radeon HD 3870 X2 in 3DMark06 under Windows XP, along with it also outperforming the AMD counterpart in Half Life 2, a game that has always favored the AMD offerings. Come launch day, we're not too sure if this is going to be a card worth picking up. While we see gains under Windows XP, not everything sees the same success like Unreal Tournament 3.

There has to be a new driver coming out soon. Websites have posted a newer driver than the one we received on the driver CD, but it doesn't actually work. It refuses to install even though the driver is stated to be for the GeForce 9800 GX2. The card has potential, and we can see it's got the power in some applications. If you had been reading the articles online and thought bugger this, better get a Radeon HD 3870 X2, we would hold off, at least for a week or two. As soon as word of a new driver comes out, we will be placing the card through our benchmarks again to hopefully get the gains that we expected.

At the moment this board doesn't deserve to carry a new generation naming scheme, but with a little bit of hope seen from under Windows XP we could be alright. Now we just have to wait and see if we get a new driver in the next day or two, when the GeForce 9800 GX2 card will actually be released..