Yesterday we showed you the first GeForce 9800 GX2 benchmark results and they were impressive. NVIDIA's new high-end outperformed the GeForce 8800 Ultra and Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card and that says it all. We know that the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a sandwich card with two PCB's and two G92 GPU's, but there's a twist to today's test. The GPU's run at 600MHz, while the shaders and memory run at 1500MHz and 2000MHz respectively. Each GPU has 128 shader processors and you can probably see a resemblance to the 92 based GeForce 8800 GTS. In fact, the GeForce 9800 GX2 card is pretty much a dual GeForce 8800 GTS card, as both are based around the same GPU. - FudZilla

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 Dual-GPU Gaming Preview

We had a lot of inquiries about the performance of two GeForce 8800 GTS cards in SLI versus a single GeForce 9800 GX2, so we decided to take some time and pit them against each other. Two GeForce 8800 GTS cards in SLI should provide us with similar performance as a single GeForce 9800 GX2, which also has two G92 GPU's running in SLI thanks to alternate frame rendering. NVIDIA's SLI technology is slightly better implemented on the GeForce 9800 GX2 and we're expecting to see some higher scores on the new graphics card. Another thing the GeForce 9800 GX2 has going for it are the new drivers.

For comparison we used two reference clocked GeForce 8800 GTS cards in SLI mode, along with the latest beta drivers downloaded from NVIDIA. The G92 based GeForce 8800 GTS is clocked at 650MHz core, while the shaders are running at 1625MHz and the memory at 1940MHz effective. At the moment you can get two GeForce 8800 GTS cards for about €450, while a single GeForce 9800 GX2 will set you back around €500. And that means just the cards as for teh GeForce 8800 GTS you also need an SLI capabale mainboard to run these together. Of course for Quad SLI you will have the same remark.

We can see that a single GeForce 9800 GX2 regularly outperforms two GeForce 8800 GTS cards in SLI mode, but that the difference is really not so big. In fact, in most cases it is negligible. The biggest performance advantage was around twenty percent, in Crysis. This could be attributed to optimized drivers on the part of the GX2 or simply better technology. With a price difference of around €50 we would go for the GX2. If you're investing in the future, the GeForce 8800 GTS is not a good choice, SLI is all you can hope for. With the GeForce 9800 GX2, Quad SLI is an option and that sets it apart from other NVIDIA solutions.