Well, you NVIDIA fanboys are going to be in for a huge disappointment. If this is the final specs for the 9800 series, I will not buy it. Seriously, the first 8800 series had a 320 bit memory interface, why downgrade it back to the 256 bit? Like they did for the 512 8800 GTS, which was very surprising and very disappointing. Seriously, if NVIDIA is going to release the 9800 series with a 256 bit interface, I will lose a lot of respect for them.

And I was told that the 9800 was going to be a 512 bit interface. This is a whole bunch of BS, I'm telling you. All this wait for nothing and I'm going to be disappointed? Not happy.

Don't believe anything until you see an official annoucement from nVidia.

Nothing to worry about, logic tells that more then 128 shader units would need more bandwidth, thus a 512bit bus to the memory would be more likely. Speculations about the 9800GTX are 384 shader units with 1GB RAM (GDDR3 or most likely GDDR4).

I've read that they did some more compression optimizations that actually gives them more bandwidth with the 256-bit interface on the 9-series chips than the had with the 32-bit interfact on the 8-series chips. Time will tell, but I can't see them releasing the top end chips with only a 256-bit interface either.....but stranger things have happened. Maybe instead of a single 256-bit interface it'll be 2x256-bit. Until solid information is released this is all just speculation anyway.

ya i have been following this card and so far it looks like a dud.
i just hope that it comes out before my step-up runs out. and it better be worth it!

Well, somebody posted this image:



Great NVIDIA, you create a higher generation card that has lower specs than the previous generation. Really, NVIDIA, what a wrong move. I think I'll be keeping my 640MB GTS or get a 8800 GTX when its cheaper. Very disappointing indeed.

I wonder if the GX2 is any good since it has dual GPU's. I'll wait for the benchmarks to be released first before making my move. But seriously, I doubt that the 9800 GTX is the card for me. All this wait and it has already been a huge disappointment. And the new ATI cards don't look to appealing either. And games being released these days are kinda demanding, and this is the best NVIDIA could do? Boo.

You beleve that?

So you beleve this too?:



And then compare your image in your post with this:

well there have also been 3dmark screens posted.
my OCed 8800GTS G92 beats the 9800GTX by about 1600pts in the graphics test(disluding the cpu tests)
if this is true then WTF NVIDIA!

No no no... this is not true...

Both you guys, just snap out of it...

With those 3D Mark screenshots posted I'm already quite convinced, unless if somebody was fooling around with us and faked those results then I'll be happy. Until I see the official specs when its released I'm going to be annoyed with these poor specs - and a higher generation hardware should be more superior than its predecessors, not downgrade it.

Anyone who believes all this gossip before nVidia officially announces anything is a fool. If you want to see something official WORTH speculating about, nVidia acquired Ageia. For those of you who don't know who that is, they developed the PhysX processor.

cool, i didnt know the bought ageia. that is definitely worth speculating about!

It is I think readily available on the internet if you do a search but Nvidia said that they were goign to follow Intel's tick-tock strategy. So that means one product will launch will be a new architecture launch whereas the tock would be then just an architecture refresh, process refresh etc. I think the 9800 falls in line with the tock considering how much of a colossal boost the 8800 series were.

It's a mid range card guys - Keep ya pants on.

Just because they release a new line of cards, doesn't mean the first one has to be high end. Does it?

Are you calling the 9800Gx2 card the high range? Even if it is so, the performance increase is 30% over an ultra...not bad but when you conisder it is having 2 GPUs in it...its kinda sad.

it'a very sad

anyone get the $300 EVGA 8800GTX at newegg yesterday? definitely worth it if these new benchmarks are true.

Yeah, I hope the 9800 series will live up to my expectations, and I pray that these specs currently being posted are not true. Its kinda unbelievable that NVIDIA would release a higher generation card that has lower specs than its predecessors.

As some of you said, the 9800 GX2 should have more of a performance increase since it has 2 GPU's. But we'll wait and see when the benchmarks are published.

And for nVidia to make an official announcement.

i could care less about the GX2, cooling it will be a pain. for ppl with air, you cant cool both gpus, and for ppl with water like me, it you also can only cool one.. i hate dual gpus solutions for that reason.

Chill out guys. There's no way they will release something that is slower. People would buy the 8xxx series if they did.

Well, it seems they come out with the 9800GTX in a few weeks, and specs are clear now:
+ G92 based, 675MHz
+ 128 Shader units, 1.688GHz
+ 512MB and 256bit, working at 2.200GHz DDR
+ 3 way SLI
+ 300-350 USD range
- 156W max. power usage

So, I guess people will stay with there G92 based 8800GT/GTS cards .

for that price my step-up is free

Ok, I'm already quite convinced that these specs are true. Stupid NVIDIA.

I really hope that GT200/100 (Whatever its called) will be better. I guess NVIDIA decided to release the 9800 GTX with these lousy specs because ATI couldn't catch up to them or whatever. And if you asked me, these specs don't even deserve the "GTX" name at all.

I've read that the 9800GTX is nothing more than a re-release of the 65nm G92 core with more stream processors enabled and a speed bump. I don't know why they gave it a 9x00 name either, other than they're running out of how many times they can re-release the chips as 8x00 versions. I don't know that it's so much a mistake as they used to do it all the time in the early days, but I do think calling it a "next generation" part is a mistake.

I've also read rumor that ATI's RV770 will have 800 SPs. Although that's an extremely high number I don't think it's going to give them that much of a performance gap over NVIDIA's GT200 as it might seem. Their SP count is much higher than NVIDIA's now (more than double) and it hasn't given them any real edge in performance.

you've read? it's a fact
stupid nvidia is waiting for ati to release their next monster.

the whole 9x00 thing is just marketing, hoping to get more money out of us.
personally i think they should have made all G92's the 9x00 and then their next beast should be some new name.

i personally want to see how 9800GTX SLI is.

I wonder if this product is going to be a success like the 8800 series. Doubt it, and I for one isn't going to buy it. Just only a 10% increase over the 8800 GTX? Pass. Not even worth my money or time. Stupid NVIDIA, who cares about ATI. Just release a good card already and be done with it.

Why did they even bother releasing this crap. They could have just waited for ATI to release their new generation, and given the 9800 GTX the GT200 core, which makes more sense to me. But no. Its all about the money. Pfft.

Yes, I've read. I'm not going to quote it as fact because until the press release comes directly from NVIDIA and we have reviews on actual released hardware it's not fact.



I disagree. It's the same architecture with a few tweaks. They should've done exactly what they did with the GF4's (from 4600 -> 4800), the GF FX's (from 5800 -> 5900) and the GF 7's (from 7800 -> 7900). What I'm saying is that these should've been called 8900's, not 9800's.




See comments above. There are at least a couple of reasons they're going with the 9x00 name(s):

1. They could only come up with so many suffixes before it starts to get rediculous. I'm sure they sat around and the conversation went something like:

"We could call them 8800 GTX Ultra Max In Your Face AMD/ATI"

"No, No, remember 'KISS'? Let's just waste a whole generation of names and call these the GeForce 9 series...and forget that we could've used 8900 GS, 8900 GT, 8900 GTX, 8900 Ultra".

"YEAH, I like that! Let's roll with it..."

And there you have your "Marketing 101" lesson for the day.

2. The 8x00 line has been on the market for over a year and I'm sure they're worried about public perception. The "true" enthusiast knows what's going on...but the "wannabe" or "n00b" (for lack of better terms) enthusiast goes "yeah, time to upgrade!". And believe me, the "wannabe/n00b" enthusiasts outnumber us...


KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid

Learned something today .

By the way, the first 9800 cards will have the "normal" G92 core, the ones after June will have the new 55nm based cores, so less power or higher speeds...

Don't the new 9xxx series have improved hardware support for Hybrid SLi?

That still doesn't change the fact that I don't think they should be 9800's.

In fact, I think the original die shrink to 65nm should've been called 8900's (i.e. instead of reusing the 8800 GT moniker, we would've had 8900 GT's) and these new ones (the 9800's) should be 8950's.

Confirmed. The 9xxx naming is due to hardware changes:

1. Dual GPUs on a card.
2. Hybrid SLi - allows integrated GPU to be on, or integrated + discrete in SLi.

NCIX.com - XFX GeForce 9800GX2

From the pictures, it does seem like it's a dual PCB layout (I'm guessing because of the DVI ports in two different slots.).

The 9800GX2 is dual PCB. AnandTech.com has a review. After reading the review, it looks like the better option is to save a couple hundred bucks and purchase a pair of 9600GT's to run in SLI (provided you don't have an Intel chipset based system other than Skulltrail).


BTW, dual GPUs on a card is still no reason to go to a new naming convention. They didn't do it with the GeForce 7 series.

I don't even think Hybrid SLI is a reason...especially since they have been talking about it since the early GF 8 days.

But that's just my opinion.

If it only would work on any of the present chipsets; ATI too is screaming this out loud for some time... never saw any thing in practice. When they are relay "ready" for it I will switch my systems here for hybrid SLI/Cross-fire, would save me some big bucks in the energy* bill .

EDIT: * And lower noise/temperatures too.

They mentioned it was not possible on the early GF8 cards. Something about not being able to power down and restart the card as needed.

I think they renamed to avoid confusion. I would buy the 9xxx series. It better be priced the same as the current 8xxx series though.

Whats the power supply requirements if you want to run two 9800 GX2 on your system?

I'm well aware that you need at least 1000 watts if you want to SLI two 8800's, but what about the 9800 GX2?

I've heard good reviews about this card and I'm leaning towards this card, too bad my hopes were dashed when I saw the "official" specs of the 9800 GTX. But what I've heard so far that the requirements for the GX2 are very demanding. I'm also well aware that you can't run a quad SLI for the GX2 and has anti aliasing issues at the moment, due to poor driver support, but of course, we'll have to wait for NVIDIA to write better drivers in the future.

#1 The entire 9xxx series is based upon the G92 chipset, which Nvidia released as the 8800GT and the updated 8800GTS, so you're not going to see massive improvements over these cards, but you will see higher prices.

#2 More bits aren't always better, there is a point of diminishing returns and lets not forget if instructions don't use all the bits, then the rest go to waste. IOW if Nvidia implemented a 1024bit bus right now, it would be slower than your current 256bit bus, because so much is just going to waste.

#3 I'm mildly disappointed that the new G9x chipset doesn't do DX10.1, not because I want DX10.1 games, but because Microsoft secretly updated everybody's Vista to DX10.1 when you install SP1. So now we have an OS which everybody has a certain version of DX (no more manually installing a new version) and now Nvidia doesn't even support it. Not a problem today, but I see this possibly becoming a headache a couple years from now.

I think this is going to be a much smaller issue that you think. Even Microsoft says that there isn't that much in the ".1" update.

Now we still talk about the naming of products, Microsofts DX10.1 should have been named DX10a...

Actually...

DX 10.1 is going back to the way they used to do things (e.g. DX 8 -> DX 8.1)...and is proper for software IMO. At least the major version is still 10 and they didn't go straight to DX 11.

What NVIDIA did was went from "8" to "9" on the same core. Did they add some features? Sure, but they aren't major features or enhancements, they're additions to the existing product. If you equate that to software, it would be from 8.0 to 8.1 (or, as I stated before, this would be 8.2 since they've already released "8.1" (65nm 8800's)).

Well, here are the benchmarks for the 9800 GTX comparing to other cards:

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?...mp;pagenumber=1

Very disappointing indeed. Even a 8800 GTX can do better. Wasn't expecting a performance jump when I saw the official specs anyway, and NVIDIA should be ashamed of themselves for releasing a card that is inferior to its predecessors. What a joke.

Not to bad, 8800 Ultra and 9800GTX on par .

If they would only set it with 1GB GDDR4 you would see a better difference...

In other news, GT200 is rumored to be released in July. Here is the source:

http://sg.vr-zone.com/articles/NVIDIA_GT20...In_Q3/5684.html

Hopefully this is true, and the specs better be good. Hopefully its not going to be another 256 bit memory bus like the G92.

If any of you cared, the 9800 GTX is finally out. With GT200 coming out, what was the point of the 9800 series.

Or at the end of September, it depends how you want to read it.

1. Hybrid Power aka Hybrid SLi which was not available on the 8xxx series.
2. Improved Purevideo decoding.
3. Cheaper price, runs cooler.


Its basically a 8800Ultra level card at half the price it was originally. It has a way higher bang for buck.
Its not an enthusiast card, its a little more mainstream. If you're disappointed with it, there's always the 9800GX2.


There's more money to be made when the products are affordable. Not many people buy the 9900SuperTurboUltraLE editions.


I found a very good review here: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/xfx_9800gtx/

LE, as in "Last Edition" I hope, not Lite Edition... just found it funny .

Limited in what?, just messing around now but it already sounds like cars .

Limited Edition

Talk about confusing people. A new core and according to that article they're still going to use GeForce 9 series names? The NVIDIA engineers may know what they're doing, but the marketing department coming up with the names sure doesn't.

I think it's time they hold another competition to come up with a completely new name like they did for 'TNT' -> 'GeForce'. Since GT200 is supposed to be a completely new architecture now would be the time to do it.

The Ultra still pulls away at higher resolutions according to Anandtech. And when I mean high I am talking 1600p. Also if you turn on AA and AF you can see the Ultra still pull away. Kind of a disappointment as I wanted to get a 9800 gtx in SLI setup

A lot of people in other hardware forums are disappointed with the 9800 GTX. In my opinion, they should have called it the 8850 GTX or something similar. And this card doesn't even deserve the GTX brand if you asked me.

I really hope that GT200 will make up for this disaster.