NVIDIA's yet-to-be released GeForce 9800 GX2 in the "flesh." We reveal some of the specs and what should be expected.

The best way to think of the GeForce 9800 GX2 card is as an 8800 GPU that has been die shrunk to 65nm and placed in an SLI configuration in a "single" card. The 9800 GX2 is very reminiscent of 7950 GX2 of days past. (And we loved the 7950 GX2 at launch, but terrible support and diminishing returns soon painted it as one of NVIDIA's biggest failures since the 5800 series.)

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will launch in late February or early March as it now stands and will replace the 8800 Ultra (single GPU) card in NVIDIA's high-end product line up. The 9800 GX2 is said to be at least 30% faster than a 8800 Ultra. While it is not clear from the pictures below, we are told it will support "Quad SLI."


GeForce 9800 GX2 Front




GeForce 9800 GX2 Back




GeForce 9800 GX2 ::::

1. 1GB Frame Buffer

2. Two PCBs

3. Two 65nm GPUs Total

4. 256 Stream Processors Total

All of the information here comes from sources overseas that we consider trustworthy. Obviously there are some specifications that could be a bit more clear, especially on the memory bus. We would expect to see two 768MB frame buffers per GPU here, but that is not what is spelled out. We are guessing 512MB per GPU currently. Should we learn of any changes and/or corrections we will certainly update this page and inform our readers on our daily news page.




Source

GeForce 9800GX2 photos gallery


















According to the author, the 3DMark06 score is on the low side and it could be due to drivers or hardware problem. The card is a prototype and there are still soldering wires on it.

http://bbs.chiphell.com/viewthread.php?tid...&extra=page%3D1

This post has been edited by raymond8341: Jan 24 2008, 02:19 PM

NVIDIA delays almost all their new products to March

Almost all NVIDIA's upcoming products will be delay to March, according to our sources.

Delayed new products including 780a, 750a, 790i, 790i Ultra, and 9800 GX2. All these products should be announced in Feb, 2008. Sources did not mention the reason why NV hold the upcoming releases. And we guess that's because of factories are running into Chinese new year holiday.

The delay will push back the war between GeForce 9800GX2 and Radeon HD 3870 X2. And that means HD 3870 X2 will be the absolutely highest product in the market, continue eating NVIDIA's share for one extra month.

And 790i and 790i Ultra's delay will make them directly face Intel's X48. Also, in NVIDIA's February product line, only GeForce 8200 will still stick on NV's roadmap, to be released in Feb. But GeForce 8200's rival, AMD's 780G have been released in China few days ago.

We've also reported 9600GT suffering a week's delay from Feb 14 to Feb 21, and its enemy, Radeon HD 3600 series already began selling from Jan 23.



Source

GeForce 9800 GX2 might get 2GB of memory



Could be manufacturer dependant

Although we've already seen a lot of different pictures of the GeForce 9800GX2, Fudzilla is the first site to have a screen shot from a manual of one of the partner cards as you can see below. This in itself might not be the most exciting thing in the world, as it just confirms the previous pictures, but what made us take notice, was that each of the PCB's seem to feature 1GB of memory on this specific card.

Now we can't be 100 percent sure that this is the case, as it could simply correlate to the total ammount of memory on the card, but comparing other manuals from the same manufacturer seems to imply that this card might very well come with 2GB of graphics memory.

As you'll notice from our post yesterday, this board doesn't have the optical S/PDIF in seen on some of the card pictures that have been posted elsewhere. It's also strange that each card seem to feature a fan connector, as it looks as if the card only has a single cooling fan.

Apart from that there isn't much else that we didn't know, but at least it shows that these cards can't be too far away. Now we just need some real performance figures and everyone will be happy.




Source

PhysX to become a CUDA extension, PS4 developers rejoice

Santa Clara (CA) - If you have been wondering how Ageia's PhysX SDK fits into Nvidia's product range, the answer is actually very simple: The PhysX SDK will be translated into CUDA and, as a result, PhysX will be compliant with the current GeForce 8000 series and all future products from Nvidia, such as the upcoming GeForce 9600 GT and 9800GX2.

Truth to be told, it is hard to believe that G80-based architectures such as G80, G92, G94 would have enough horsepower to calculate PhysX and still deliver gaming experience. In a way, the future looks like this: Buy $200-$250-$300 graphics cards for SLI or Three-Way SLI, one of which one will be used for PhysX calculation. Nvidia pitched this setup already with two 7800GTX/7900GTX cards, but it didn't exactly fly. The same thing applies for ATI's Menage-a-Trois, a combination of three X1900XTX graphics cards caught in an endless love affair.

The troubling fact is the cost of a single GeForce card versus a single PhysX card. When comparing current GeForce 8800GT vs. BFG's PhysX card on NewEgg, we end up with a drastic difference in price ($239.99 vs. 109.99). We hope that future graphics cards in the $100-150 range will be able to run in-game physics. Use the expensive card to do what the any gamer wants: Run games with the best possible effects.

When it comes to gaming consoles, we cannot forget the fact that Ageia plays a significant role in both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles. There is a ton of titles that run PhysX and with the conversion to CUDA, it will be interesting to see how Nvidia will address this acquisition when it comes to designing a Playstation 4 console. It is too early to talk about specs, but we bet that Nvidia is creating a complete solution for Sony, which will help to bring down the price of manufacturing. In fact, a PS4 might end up in the range of the first Xbox. We are digging our way through the tunnels below Santa Clara in order to get the details of PhysX and the PS4 development. Stay tuned.

During Nvidia's fourth-quarter financial results conference call, Nvidia shed a little more light on its acquisition of Ageia and what it plans to do with the firm's PhysX technology. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made no announcements regarding the deal until asked in the question-and-answer session, but he was happy to divulge a decent number of details.

Huang mentioned that Nvidia's strategy is to take the PhysX engine and port it to CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), which is a C-like application programming interface Nvidia developed to let programmers write general-purpose applications that can run on GPUs. All of Nvidia's existing GeForce 8 graphics processors already support CUDA, and Huang confirmed that the cards will be able to run PhysX.

"We're working toward the physics-engine-to-CUDA port as we speak. And we intend to throw a lot of resources at it. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if it helps our GPU sales even in advance of [the port's completion]. The reason is, [it's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine." Hunag believes the integration will encourage people to spend more on graphics processing hardware, as well.

"Our expectation is that this it will encourage people to buy even better GPUs. It might, and probably will, encourage people to buy a second GPU for their SLI slot. And for the highest-end gamer, it will encourage them to buy three GPUs. Potentially two for graphics and one for physics, or one for graphics and two for physics," he said.

Last but not least, Huang said developers are "really excited" about the PhysX-to-CUDA port. "Finally they are able to get a physics engine accelerated into a very large population of gamers," he explained. Huang declined to comment on the time frame for the release of the first PhysX port. However, considering this will be a software implementation and Nvidia now has Ageia engineers on its payroll, the port should not take too long to complete.


Source

In house Geforce 9800GX2 pictures



The black box


We scored some nice photos of the Geforce 9800 GX2 and there is more where this come from. We did confirm everything that we were talking since September including the fact that the card has two chips and that it's a sandwich design.

It looks like an incredibly well designed card, shaped like a black box with two PCBs packed inside. The chips work at 600MHz and there is a big fan on the back of the card that blows through air the whole card trying to keep it cool.

The card naturally has some power connectors at the top and we noticed that Nvidia slightly changed its traditional Geforce logo, but we admit it looks great. This what Nvidia's new flagship looks like.






Source

http://en.expreview.com/2008/02/23/geforce...review/?page=14


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