Opinions, comments, etc. needed with a 9800 GX2

Mystic · Post by **Mystic** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 9:17 pm

I am considering purchasing a Nvidia 9800 GX2 (EVGA) for my gaming build in a couple of weeks. How loud do they run, is there any silent cooling options, and how well do they overclock while trying to keep silent?

Elvellon · Post by **Elvellon** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:22 am

As for noise, they are "fairly quiet" by non-SPCR standards, similar to other recent high-end video cards. But they run extremely hot (90*), recirculate most of the warm air into the case, and you can forget about overclocking (they're even downclocked 75 MHz from 9800GTX) without expensive liquid cooling.

If you absolutely want dual video cards, you can go Crossfire with the new ATi 4870 cards which should be faster than dual G92's in a 9800GX2 and exhaust all hot air outside. However, I advise strongly against SLI/Crossfire. If I were you, I'd buy a single 9800GTX/GTX+ (at the new $200 price) and upgrade later, or one of those 4870 / GTX260 / GTX280, depending on how much you are willing to spend.

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 2:14 am

Do you really need a 9800GX2? Much cheaper, quieter and energy efficient cards are around that can play any game at high resolutions. Is playing crysis at very high rather than high worth that much?

Mystic · Post by **Mystic** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 7:20 am

FartingBob wrote:Do you really need a 9800GX2? Much cheaper, quieter and energy efficient cards are around that can play any game at high resolutions. Is playing crysis at very high rather than high worth that much?

Yes, its performance can't be beat right now.

I would rather not have 2 cards because they you need a huge power supply and that double the heat not matter what the reviews say.

I guess I was just under a impression because several of the reviews I have read said that there was a lot of room for overclocking. Especially in a large case such as mine (Antec P182) with 4 fans.

Elvellon · Post by **Elvellon** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:24 am

Mystic wrote:Yes, its performance can't be beat right now.

Even not discarding "fake" SLI FPS, it can. NVidia GeForce GTX 280 and maybe even its younger brother 260.

Mystic wrote:I would rather not have 2 cards because they you need a huge power supply and that double the heat not matter what the reviews say.

9800GX2 IS two cards, just sandwitched together. Its only advantage against "true" SLI is that it doesn't need an awful and expensive nVidia motherboard (hence my ATi Crossfire advice, it works on any platform).

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:33 am

GX2 is impossible to get SPCR quiet without water cooling and its water block in Finland costs around 150â‚¬'s... a price of HD 4850

Mystic · Post by **Mystic** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:39 am

Elvellon wrote:
Mystic wrote:Yes, its performance can't be beat right now.
Even not discarding "fake" SLI FPS, it can. NVidia GeForce GTX 280 and maybe even its younger brother 260.

Mystic wrote:I would rather not have 2 cards because they you need a huge power supply and that double the heat not matter what the reviews say.
9800GX2 IS two cards, just sandwitched together. Its only advantage against "true" SLI is that it doesn't need an awful and expensive nVidia motherboard (hence my ATi Crossfire advice, it works on any platform).

I'm a little confused by your post. So even all those reviews that say the 9800 GX2 beats out the 280 and the 260, you are saying they are wrong? Or are you saying I should SLI a 280 or a 260? If you are saying that, I'm going to call you insane. I am already busting my budget purchasing a 9800 GX2, so SLI'ing anything above that is out of my budget.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 11:42 am

HD 4870 X 2 will be released soon. Super RV 770-series will be introduced also soon. So I'd say wait bit if you can... VGA battling is becomming really intresting so let's see what will happened. You migth bet faster card cheaper very soon...

Mystic · Post by **Mystic** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 1:13 pm

thejamppa wrote:HD 4870 X 2 will be released soon. Super RV 770-series will be introduced also soon. So I'd say wait bit if you can... VGA battling is becomming really intresting so let's see what will happened. You migth bet faster card cheaper very soon...

The thing is, I have to have my parts ordered (most likely from newegg) by the end of July or maybe the first week of August.

krille · Post by **krille** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 2:18 pm

Mystic wrote:
Elvellon wrote:
Mystic wrote:Yes, its performance can't be beat right now.
Even not discarding "fake" SLI FPS, it can. NVidia GeForce GTX 280 and maybe even its younger brother 260.

Mystic wrote:I would rather not have 2 cards because they you need a huge power supply and that double the heat not matter what the reviews say.
9800GX2 IS two cards, just sandwitched together. Its only advantage against "true" SLI is that it doesn't need an awful and expensive nVidia motherboard (hence my ATi Crossfire advice, it works on any platform).
I'm a little confused by your post. So even all those reviews that say the 9800 GX2 beats out the 280 and the 260, you are saying they are wrong? Or are you saying I should SLI a 280 or a 260? If you are saying that, I'm going to call you insane. I am already busting my budget purchasing a 9800 GX2, so SLI'ing anything above that is out of my budget.

I think he means that SLI can introduce odd FPS effects, such as very irregular frame latencies.

GPU1 renders a frame at 0ms, GPU2 at 4ms. GPU1 at 40ms, GPU2 at 44ms, etc.

This can in turn render SLI a much less smooth experience, compared to a single card, even though it's running at almost double the FPS (because half of your frames are essentially copies of the frame before anyway and are thus useless)!

I would love to hear Elvellon elaborate on this though, as I haven't owned SLI myself since I got 2x7800GTX 256 in SLI quite a few generations (and years!) back. And I wasn't too fond of it (for several reasons I can't recall now apart from it being kind of noisy even with Arctic-Cooling Silencers).

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 3:58 pm

krille wrote:GPU1 renders a frame at 0ms, GPU2 at 4ms. GPU1 at 40ms, GPU2 at 44ms, etc.

This can in turn render SLI a much less smooth experience, compared to a single card, even though it's running at almost double the FPS (because half of your frames are essentially copies of the frame before anyway and are thus useless)!

In SLI, the rendering will be roughly divided over both cards (one card will render the top half of the screen, the other card will render the bottom half - I don't know if this is correct but it's what I've always read when it comes to SLI).
It's not possible that 1 frame intermission takes 4 ms, the next takes 40 ms, and the next will take 4 ms again.

There are some driver/game related issues with SLI though. SLI will not always "double" the performance (sometimes the performance is even less when compared to a single card) but I haven't seen anyone complaining about lack of smoothness?

Elvellon · Post by **Elvellon** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 12:06 am

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1) AFAIK in "benchmark" FPS the 9800GX2 is slightly behind the new GTX 280. GTX 260 should be equal or somewhat behind.
2) No one should ever SLI GTX200's

. I was proposing a Crossfire of Radeon 4850 or 4870, it should be equal or faster than 9800GX2 and has two coolers instead of one for the same 200+W of heat.
That is, if you absolutely want the power of two GPUs. Otherwise, single 4870 or something, depending on the budget and time to the next upgrade.

3) About "fake SLI FPS". Applies to Crossfire as well. Right now the only rendering method is Alternate Frame Rendering since it gives the highest FPS numbers and is the easiest to implement. But it has several problems:
- Input lag. Two consecutive frames are being rendered at once, so they must be rendered a bit "behind" your keyboard/mouse input since your computer is not a psychic

.
- Irregular FPS. While average numbers are good, the instant FPS may jump from 1 to 150 or whatever every few moments.
- Regardless of methods, current SLI/Crossife technologies rely on drivers to work. Some games will take advantage of SLI, other won't, other will have lower FPS or glitches. There are rumors of better technologies in the future, both from AMD and from nVidia.

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:00 pm

For a single slot solution it is most often the fastest out there, but it is two cards and they are hard to cool.

Personally, if i wanted to spend that much and wanted 'silence' i'd be looking at an x48 motherboard and two 4870's.

Remember, a 9800GX2 is just two 8800GT's hooked together, power usage included.