GeForce 9800 GX2

To consolidate its leadership in the market and retain the title of “owner of the fastest video accelerator,” NVIDIA decides to release the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2, which combines two boards with G92 chips. Keeping in mind the shortcomings of cards based on the GeForce 7950 GX2, the Californian manufacturer tried to avoid them when developing its new brainchild. With the release of the G80, NVIDIA remained the leader in the graphics market for a long time, until ATI - already part of AMD - introduced its first two-headed solution in so many years - the Radeon HD3870X2, which took over the palm from the Californians.

True, the holiday was short-lived, and NVIDIA responded with dignity a few months later by releasing one of the fastest video cards - the GeForce 9800GX2 based on a pair of G92 graphics processors. By the way, as practice has shown, this chip turned out to be quite universal, suitable for both mid-level cards and high-end monsters.

 

 

In essence, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a bundle of two GeForce 8800GTS 512MB with slightly lower operating frequencies - 600/1500/2000 MHz versus 650/1625/1940 (chip, shader unit and memory, respectively). But despite this, the design of the video card has been completely redesigned, which has increased the efficiency of cooling the components of the new dual-chip solution. NVIDIA did not use one PCB for two video chips, as, for example, its competitor, but placed each GPU and 512 MB of video memory on separate boards, which are like mirror images of each other, with a common cooling system located between them.

 

To connect the half-cards, two cables are used, and to match the signals between the GPUs and the system, a switch chip is installed on the main board with a PCI-E connector, leaving one MIO interface for combining two GeForce 9800GX2 in Quad-SLI mode. Taking into account the increased power consumption, about 200 W, each card in the tandem is equipped with a power connector: 6-pin on one and 8-pin on the other. The developer recommends using a power supply with a power of at least 580 W with one such accelerator.

Characteristics of NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2

Name	GeForce 9800 GX2
Core	G92 (D8E) x2
Process technology (µm)	0.065
Transistors (millions)	754 x2
Core frequency	600
Memory operating frequency (DDR)	1000 (2000)
Bus and memory type	GDDR3 256-bit x2
Bandwidth (Gb/s)	64 x2
Unified shader units	128 x2
Unified shader unit frequency	1500
TMU on conveyor	64 x2
ROP	16 x2
Shader Model	4.0
Fill Rate (Mpix/s)	19200
Fill Rate (Mtex/s)	76800
DirectX	10.0
Memory Capacity	1024
Interface	PCI-E 2.0

Until the release of the GTX 200 series, it was the most powerful video accelerator.