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Big on the enthusiast scene today is the official launching of NVIDIA's top-of-the-line graphics card, the GeForce 9800GX2. Designed to outperform the once revered 8800 Ultra and even besting the 9800GTX, the dual graphics card is currently shaking down the most hardcore of enthusiast hardware sites.
And you can bet early adopters the world over are probably upping clocks, cooling solutions, and egos like there's no tomorrow.
As reported before, the NVIDIA GeForce 9800GX2 is history remade: it's a GF 7950GX2 with dual G92-spec graphics processing units. But unlike the dual-GPU GF 7 series card, the 9800GX2 also carries superior power management technology. In fact, its touted Hybrid Power mode can pull down the 9800GX2's power consumption while the computer is not running applications using 3d graphics.
But that's only if you pull the ESA feature out with an NVIDIA-based motherboard. Other stock features of the GeForce 9800GX2 are:
- Processor Cores: 256 (128 per GPU)
- Core Clock: 600 MHz
- Shader Clock: 1500 MHz
- Memory Clock: 1000 MHz
- Memory: 1 GB DDR3 (512 MB per GPU)
- Power Connection: SATA 2.0 standard, 1 x 6 pin SATA power + 1 x 8-pin SATA power connectors
- Power Drawn From Board: 197W
- Thermal Cooling Solution: Patent Pending Integrated Cooling Solution
- Interfaces: 2 x DVI-DL, 1 x HDMI
- Other Optional: 1 x HDMI audio connection, 1 x SLI connection
Currently, the card sells for at least US$ 650, and pricier, more powerful overclocked editions are starting to roll out in limited numbers. You would probably be better off grabbing double 8800GTs, since it's obviously much cheaper than a single 9800GX2. But for the enthusiasts who we know exist out there, 9800GX2's the card to have - now or never.
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