If you found yourself underwhelmed by the performance that the GeForce 9800 GX2 provided, NVIDIA's new GeForce 9800 GTX could be the graphics card for you with its lower price point and single GPU. We're not expecting the GTX to be faster than the GX2 by any means but hopefully we see it perform well against it as well as showing some competiveness against AMD's Radeon HD 3870 X2 and the overclocked GeForce 8800 GT giving us similar numbers to the standard G92 based GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB version. Initial pricing on the GeForce 9800 GTX looks promising, down under we should see it pop up for under $450 which puts it into a bracket that doesn't really exist at the moment. - TweakTown

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB Video Card Review

For roughly $70 more in the money department you can get yourself a Radeon HD 3870 X2 and this really is going to be the GTX' toughest competition. While the X2 may be a dual-GPU card it doesn't carry the excessive price tag that we see on NVIDIA's dual-GPU card, the GeForce 9800 GX2. We all know these dual cards don't always provide great performance in all games due to untweaked driver support, so our tests today should be rather interesting indeed. Like most high-end NVIDIA graphics cards these days, the front is taken up completely by a cooler that spans from one end to another, taking up the full PCB space.

The cooler really resembles that of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB with a few aesthetic changes. Instead of being square at the end we see it kind of curves around the back and has an all round smoother finish. We also see the same fan design as the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, which is also seen on the GeForce 9800 GX2. What was kind of surprising is that if you make your way around the card you find yourself with two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. We really thought that this graphics card would only require a single connector but we were mistaken, as it comes with two power connections instead.

The biggest problem is that with support for 3-Way SLI a total of no less than six PCI Express power connectors are required. Considering that most power supplies only have four at most you're probably going to run into some troubles unless you have molex power adapters on hand. Continuing across the top of the GTX we find two SLI connectors, which is something we haven't seen in a while with the GeForce 8800 GT and GTS all only having a single SLI connector but this is not without reason. The second SLI connector provides the ability to run three cards together if you have a supporting SLI motherboard.

The core is set at a healthy 675MHz, which gives us a 1688MHz shader clock. What's nice though is the whopping 2200MHz effective speed that we get on the memory clock. As far as other specifications goes on the card we have 512MB of GDDR3 memory, a 256-bit memory bus and 128 stream processors. Features wise its quite similar to the G92 based GeForce 8800 GTS bar the clocks which get a bit of an increase over the standard reference clocked GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB which had 650MHz core clock, 1625MHz shader clock and a 1940MHz effective memory clock, so a decent boost on the clock speeds.

We have to say that going with the GeForce 9800 GTX, we weren't expecting a lot. We are quite a fan of the GeForce 9800 GX2 but when we sit down and wonder if we would spend our hard earned money on it, you tend to think of the product in a different perspective. A week ago you couldn't go past the GeForce 9800 GX2 for the plain fact that it was the fastest graphics card on the market. And Quad SLI also showed potential in games that are able to make full use of the technology like Crysis at the higher resolutions. Even though from our limited time of testing, NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GTX is a fantastic product.

What makes the GeForce 9800 GTX so attractive though is the price point. We must say that, when push comes to shove, the choice to not spend slightly more on the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is going to be a hard one to make, if you are neither an AMD nor NVIDIA fan. With the advancements AMD make in its Catalyst drivers every month, you have to wonder in two months time how the Radeon HD 3870 X2 and new GeForce 9800 GTX are going to fair against each other. If you've set a strict budget of $450 or under the GeForce 9800 GTX is going to be the graphics card of choice, unless you can spend a little more.

Stepping it up a notch or two, what we really need to know now is how not only 3-Way SLI goes but normal SLI as getting a pair of GeFroce 9800 GTX cards should be only a little more expensive than a single GeForce 9800 GX2. The GTX is a great single GPU graphics card which is pretty much going to halt any future purchases on the G92 based GeForce 8800 GTS but it is not revolutionary, which is what a new naming scheme should be as far as we are concerned. If you were hoping for some really huge improvements over the GeForce 8800 GTS, you'll have to wait for NVIDIA's new technology.