NVIDIA's 9800 GX2-based Quad SLI solution gets mixed reviews

NVIDIA's high-end GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card has been pretty well received on its own, but it looks to be decidedly more of a mixed bag when it comes to a Quad SLI configuration, at least according to a pair of early reviews. Least impressed with the setup was PC Perspective, which described the system's performance as "uninspiring" and "frustrating more often than it was fun to play on." The site did see some potential in the system, however, saying that it's very possible that NVIDIA will be able to address many of the problems in upcoming driver releases. Slightly more positive about the config were the folks at HotHardware, who were pleased with the performance, and seem to have been more satisfied with the setup's ability to scale with various applications than PC Perspective was. On the downside, they did admit that the system didn't scale well for everything, and there is of course the little matter of price (about $1,200), which will likely be pretty hard for even the most die-hard performance junkie to justify.

Read - PC Perspective
Read - HotHardware

[Peter @ Mar 25th 2008 1:19PM]

No more need for radiators; the PC really is more useful than a console.

That seriously is a sick setup though, and once the drivers mature, it will be sick playing Crysis with this rig on a 1080p LCD.

[E71 @ Mar 25th 2008 2:28PM]

Drivers mature? I wish that was the case with my drivers.

So, far all I know is that I spent $1200 on my dual Radeon X1900's and they went useless the day Vista hit the market...

Now ATI claims their drivers are all fine and dandy with Vista but there are games I play that incorporate 8-year-old graphics engines that produce a shaky framerates.

I guess decent Vista-friendly drivers have become a bit of a myth to me.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Mar 25th 2008 2:29PM]

By the time the drivers mature, nVIDIA will have a single card, single slot solution that out performs this SLI setup. It "may" even cost less too.

[V3LOCIP3D3 @ Mar 25th 2008 3:54PM]

@ E71

Radeon has always had bad drivers, not to mention extremely inconsistent performance. I've personally owned a 9800 Pro AGP, which was great, until I switched to a X800XT and had a jittering problem, where during gameplay everything would go psycho and start shaking. My borther owned an X1900XTX and never liked it since his buddies nvidia card produced better quality gameplay.

Just switch to nvidia. I now own a BFG 7950GT 256MB and I havent had any problems with it since I bought it.

[Moopcow @ Mar 25th 2008 5:05PM]

Testing

[happy_penguin @ Mar 25th 2008 10:30PM]

"I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY
@ Mar 25th 2008 2:29PM
By the time the drivers mature, nVIDIA will have a single card, single slot solution that out performs this SLI setup. It "may" even cost less too."

Gawd I hope so, CAPS LOCK. These video cards are getting insane. They're just too goddamned big and power hungry. It's like they're advancing the graphics abilities at ten times the rate of the technological advances. What we need is less power consumption and heat production to go along the with higher performance.

[zfurie @ Mar 25th 2008 1:19PM]

Bloody hell, just make it into a Borg cube already!

[phanbouy @ Mar 25th 2008 1:20PM]

i thought progress in technology was getting things smaller? quaint dreams...

[Brian @ Mar 25th 2008 1:21PM]

Um, I am guessing it will play Doom...

[DSeaver @ Mar 25th 2008 1:36PM]

The 2 9800 GX2s make the motherboard look like a mini atx!

[teej @ Mar 25th 2008 2:25PM]

you mean that's not a mini-atx? wow..i guess it's been awhile since i've went videocard shopping for my geforce 4 ti.

[Fernando G. @ Mar 25th 2008 4:57PM]

i've never seen a mini atx

[michas_pi @ Mar 25th 2008 11:57PM]

@Fernando G.:

They're THAT small :)

[PhilxBefore @ Mar 25th 2008 1:39PM]

Take a look in your server room real quick and then come back and look at this setup.

Cisco 2600 Switch, anyone?

[Teetdogs @ Mar 25th 2008 4:00PM]

uhhhhh there is no cisco 2600 switch there are 2900 series switches but the 2600 series are older routers (I have a 2610xm sitting on my desk right now as well as a 2950 switch), at any rate this looks nothing like a 2600 series router or a 2900 series switch.

[Adam @ Mar 25th 2008 1:39PM]

umm.. where do I put my other expansion cards?

[Christian Martin @ Mar 25th 2008 1:46PM]

Other expansion cards are *so* 8000 series.

[zero @ Mar 25th 2008 2:56PM]

In your other computer.

[V3LOCIP3D3 @ Mar 25th 2008 4:08PM]

Thankfully, it still leaves one PCI slot for a sound card, which is all anyone should need

[Chris @ Mar 25th 2008 10:30PM]

You may be able to fit a sound card and a phys-x card in between, but damn skippy will you need some cooling help.

[Tom Allen @ Mar 25th 2008 1:42PM]

Guess what, it uses more power than THE WHOLE OF AFRICA!

[Rollins @ Mar 25th 2008 1:54PM]

Costs more than the average African nation's GNP, too!

[Sporkinum @ Mar 25th 2008 1:57PM]

This would make sense for Radiology PACS use. Drive 4 monitors at either 3 or 5 megapixels per monitor.

[phanbouy @ Mar 25th 2008 2:02PM]

Shoot that much power and EM, you get the X-rays as part o' the package!

[FGL82 @ Mar 25th 2008 2:03PM]

"it will be sick playing Crysis with this rig on a 1080p LCD"

Arrgghhh!!! Enough with the Crysis comments!!! I've been reading them since the previous post about this monster of a card!!! Is it the only game out there for you "hardcore gamers" to brag about?

Sheeeeeshhhh!!! Your comments are really boring!!!

[Kaiser @ Mar 25th 2008 2:06PM]

Have you played it though? It really is something.

[yoz @ Mar 25th 2008 2:07PM]

Crysis, World in Conflict, Company of Heroes! mmm...Are you happy now wise guy??? :D

[retro77 @ Mar 25th 2008 2:12PM]

I just wish the crappy game wouldnt be used as a bench mark.

[Zeus.:God @ Mar 25th 2008 2:28PM]

Sorry, but Crysis isn't exactly "crappy". True, it doesn't scale well across a variety of systems, but the game itself is pretty fun.

Why they use it as a benchmark isn't because of the game being fun or crappy or whatever, its because its known to be a bitch of a game to try and get run at acceptable framerates on high settings.

[FGL82 @ Mar 25th 2008 2:45PM]

"Crysis, World in Conflict, Company of Heroes! mmm...Are you happy now wise guy??? :D"

Yes Yoz, thank you =P

[Abuzar @ Mar 25th 2008 3:25PM]

It's DECENT. Not that great of a game, but it sure does look good!

[V3LOCIP3D3 @ Mar 25th 2008 4:00PM]

Crysis is an amazing game, even putting the graphics aside. IMO it's probably the best FPS for PC or console . . especially if you know how to create levels, and in multiplayer. And then including the AI, stunning graphics and physics and it's twice as amazing.

[retro77 @ Mar 25th 2008 2:11PM]

I guess there is a point when too much of a good thing is actually bad.

[DefPo3t @ Mar 25th 2008 2:17PM]

where's the hardocp.com review engadget
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ3OCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

finally crysis at 1080p res although with out AA

[James Cameron @ Mar 25th 2008 2:20PM]

LMAO @Zeus.:God & ByronGman!!!

Are you 2 still in hiding? So you 2 still think a driver(s) is going to save this card?? Or you 2 already bought it and feel like an idiot?

[Zeus.:God @ Mar 25th 2008 2:35PM]

Is your head up your ass for the warmth? Drivers will still help/fix this, just as I have said all along.

I haven't bought these, and never did I consider doing so. Why is this so hard to get through your head? Me and Byron have both stated numerous times that we don't plan on purchasing these cards (let alone 2), so how about you learn to read.

[James Cameron @ Mar 25th 2008 3:07PM]

@Zeus.:God

New driver isn't going to save this card. This card is an overpriced crap and we all know it. 2 8800 slapped together isn't anything new about it. They are trying to fool idiots like you into believing it to be a wicked card and idiots like you who bought into it.

Maybe they should try harder and perfected this technology before releasing this crap. Drivers isn't the problem here. It's the advancement of the technology of these video card is going backward. They should try perfecting just 1 gpu instead of slapping 2 together. Maybe they should give Intel a call.

[Zeus.:God @ Mar 25th 2008 3:17PM]

Again, you foolish son-of-a-bitch, I know what the Hell this card is. You act as if I'm ignorant and have no clue what I'm talking about, even though I build PCs and work on them on a (near) daily basis.

New drivers WILL help, considering the hardware is more than capable. What do you think makes the hardware operate and work the way they are supposed to? Drivers. Why would new, improved drivers not help or fix the problem?

You don't even know what you're talking about.

[James Cameron @ Mar 25th 2008 3:32PM]

An new driver isn't going to propel this card into a super card. A driver can only do so much but it's pretty much reach it bottle neck. The problem is it isn't the driver but a crapola scamming technology. So get that into your head you stupid idiot.

[V3LOCIP3D3 @ Mar 25th 2008 4:17PM]

"you stupid idiot" . . . damn you know an argument is immature when you hear that line.

anyways . . FOUR 8800GTs IS a bottleneck. god damn . . . we already saw that 3-8800ultras only made little improvements . . so then nvidia decided to put 4, lesser cards together, and we're all expecting a revolution

i really think engadget is the last place to have an intelligent conversation about graphics cards anyways . . I think I'll go over to XS forums.

[Zeus.:God @ Mar 25th 2008 4:22PM]

James? How old are you? You're acting like a total child.

The driver is what is limiting this card. With proper drivers, this card SHOULD perform as well as 2 8800GTSs in SLI, considering that is what it is. Once they fine tune the drivers, you WILL see much better performance.

I'm not claiming this is supposed to be some "super card", and never have, nor has, I believe, Nvidia. It is supposed to be an SLI setup in a single card, and it is- and it isn't supposed to perform better than any current SLI setup, it IS however, supposed to be more powerful than any single GPU setup, and it will be with perfected drivers.

What you don't seem to understand is the HARDWARE is MORE than capable of performing but they can't perform to their maximum because of incapable drivers. Think of it like a car and it's controller (computer)- edit it by some means (such as a chipset tuner from Banks, Edelbrock, Hypertech, etc) and you can get HUGE boosts in performance.

You need to educate yourself on how computers and computer components work before you try to argue one way or another, because you will make a fool of yourself, just like you're doing now.

[V3LOCIP3D3 @ Mar 25th 2008 5:38PM]

true, higher resolutions is where you'd see the performance boost from this setup . . i just think that this is the most high end setup for an old generation of highend games, and I'd rather buy a new generation of nvidia cards instead of 2 8800s sandwhiched together.

And what I mean buy old generation is basically pre-crysis. I hate to generalize, but we saw the same thing after doom3 came out. And since crysis is a sign for the games to come, this setup doesnt exactly make me to confident.

[James Cameron @ Mar 25th 2008 6:09PM]

@Zeus.:God

You are still freaking stupid. 9800 GX2-based Quad SLI=4 8800GT. You are not convincing anyone with the stupid "driver" is the issue here. If 4GPU can't even doubled a 8800 card and only 20% improvement, you really have a technology problem NOT a driver issue. Get it through your puny brain. Stop trying to be so smart when you're NOT.

[James Cameron @ Mar 25th 2008 6:18PM]

@Zeus.:God

Let me get it into you puny skull once last time. If you spend $1200 on these cards and it doesn't perform like Nvidia brag like they should. You wouldn't be sitting here and saying nice thing about it. Maybe you should go out and spend $1200 on it and wait, hope and pray that a new driver will magically give you 40% improvement over one 8800GTX.

[V3LOCIP3D3 @ Mar 25th 2008 6:40PM]

"9800 GX2-based Quad SLI=4 8800GT. You are not convincing anyone with the stupid "driver" is the issue here. If 4GPU can't even doubled a 8800 card and only 20% improvement, you really have a technology problem NOT a driver issue."

Actually that's not the issue at all. It IS 4 8800s, so obviously the only thing holding it back are games not being able to utilize all 4 GPUs. The only fix: NEW DRIVERS, Bingo!

[Zeus.:God @ Mar 25th 2008 6:53PM]

WOW!

Are you F'ing stupid? Why do you think these 4 8800GT*S*s (you complain about me not knowing what the product is; LOL!) are performing so poorly? We know that an 8800GTS (G92) performs roughly the same as the 8800GTX (G80), and in SLI perform comparably to 2 8800GTXs in SLI, but this card is not performing much better than 1 8800GTX... Well, we KNOW that the hardware is good- it's 2 8800GTSs... We KNOW it has the bandwidth on the board... We KNOW the 2 PCBs are connected in a comparable manner to regular SLI...

Through deductive REASONING*, we can find that the DRIVERS are the ONLY TRUE VARIABLE LEFT TO EXPLAIN THE ISSUE. It HAS the bandwidth, it HAS the technology, the ONLY thing left to look at are the DRIVERS.

Again, I WORK on and BUILD computers on a VERY regular basis. I am REQUIRED to have an understanding of these types of things due to my OCCUPATION. I have RESEARCHED and UNDERSTAND this type of thing, and through EXPERIENCE I have cemented my UNDERSTANDING of computers.

For the TIME BEING, these cards don't perform like they SHOULD, but by perfecting the drivers, THE DAMNED OPERATORS OF THE COMPONENT, PERFORMANCE INCREASES CAN AND WILL BE SEEN.

Maybe YOU should get it through YOUR THICK SKULL that you DON'T know what the Hell you're talking about. I can understand people being wrong, but being wrong, flatly denying the FACTS and proceeding to insult people over things you don't have an F'ing CLUE about I can NOT respect, so shut up and DROP THE SUBJECT, because ALL you're doing as of right now is trolling and making an utter FOOL of yourself.

*Something you aren't good at.

[James Cameron @ Mar 25th 2008 6:58PM]

@V3LOCIP3D3

You are too freaking funny. So you are telling me after all these years they haven't figure out a proper drivers for a SLI, CrossFire and even the old 7900 X2? Stop blaming the driver. Softwares can only do so much. They have released tons of drivers for CrossFire and SLI over the years and so far, hardly any improvement. They even having problem trying to get it to run properly on certain OS.

[James Cameron @ Mar 25th 2008 7:17PM]

@Zeus.:God

Stop with your stupid rambling. You just making yourself like an idiot.

Drivers and softwares might be a problem but the biggest problem right here is the technology they are using. SLI, CrossFire or the X2 type of technology is a lazy. You don't see intel chipset getting bigger. They are able to fit 2 cores, 4 cores ect. over the years with the same size chipset. I know it's 2 different kind of hardware but to me, they are creating this new technology to scam people to buy into buying 2 to 4 video cards.

[James Cameron @ Mar 25th 2008 7:30PM]

Another thing is that you will be freaking stupid if you think Nvidia or ATI is creating card that totally realize on drivers. They create cards that will hit it bottle neck and no matter what driver you created, it will finally come down to hardwares.

If drivers are the real issues, people will just buy a 8800 video card and wait for the driver that will give it another 50 fps. But that's not going to happen. These cards a made to hit a certain limit, anything more then it would will destroyed the card or making it unstabled. Right now even a proper or final driver, it will be tiny bit improvemnt and making it stabled. You cannot push the driver more then the card can handle.

[V3LOCIP3D3 @ Mar 25th 2008 7:38PM]

@ James

Ummmmm from what i can remember the 7900GTX had a 3dMark score the was TWO-THIRDS that of the 7GX2 after nvidia released Forceware Rel. 90. And if you remember forceware Rel.90 was a complete redesign from the older versions to coincide with the launch of the 7950GX2. . so if this is anything to expect, the 9800GX2 will have a huge performance boost.