[Chiphell]nVidia 9800GX2 PCB Photo

[Calmatory]

think about how much of the heat from the pwm power regulation and memory gets dissipated into the pcb, alot. dual pcbs will have more surface area and will be able to clock high due to the better heat dissipation. dual pcbs also let the card be shorter so it will fit in more cases and fit with more room to spare (could increase case air flow) in other cases.

If it doesn't fit the case, blame the case for not being made for ATX standards, but please, don't blame the card for being made for those standards. And remember, nothing is longer than Ultra.

[ChaosMinionX]

I hope you are joking on that last part...
As for that chart, everything seems normal except for the last 4 cards.

HD2900XT using less than the GTX?
1024mb using less than the 512mb?
HD3870 using 30w more than the HD2900XT?

That is very hard to believe. Link to the review?
Does he state how he finds the power consumption? My guess is a Kill-a-watt.
Read why most wattage meters mean nothing, with the exception of the Chroma.

Remember in most cases lately..... 512mb is GDDR3, and 1024mb is GDDR4 so power consumption would be less

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

@ single card sli solution

voodoo2 never was
7950GX2 never was
9800GX2 never will, unless single pcb

all other single pcb dual gpu = single card sli solution

2 pcb * 2 gpu = 2 card solution regardless of the single pcie connector

how can it be called single card solution ?

Just because a card has 2 PCB's that doesn't stop it from being a single card. 2 years ago when i bought my 7950GX2 there was only 1 card in the package.

1PCB is single card for me, 2PCB's is just a lame effort to provide some extra power, its just a silly attempt to copy ATI

the ATI solution is a bit innovative at least

Well all the 3870x2's i have seen have a small second pcb.

[Frank M]

Well I think this should be called 8900GX2, and the "9800GTX (G9x)" should be called 8950GTX. and then the G100 should be the 9800GTX.

Yeah, that would be the logical way, but since this is nvidia, who brought us
five different versions of 8800GTS (G80-320/640, G92-256/512/1024)

think about how much of the heat from the pwm power regulation and memory gets dissipated into the pcb, alot. dual pcbs will have more surface area and will be able to clock high due to the better heat dissipation.

Dude... I don't know what you're smoking, but may I get some? :3
PCBs are not good heatspreaders/absorbers/dissipators.
Also, mem chips are BGA, so their contact with the pcb is limited to their
legs, which is also not an efficient way of heat transfer.
However, jamming a lot of heating components together into a small
space ... One thing is for sure, it will not lead to higher clocks, rather
to noise, overheating and hw failures.

[[XC] MarioMaster]

pics are dead

[Shintai]

Yes,it's been done but 3870X2 has native crossfire support on the card itself.

The card itself has a chip (PLX) which provides the communication
between the two Gpus.
So you don't need a Crossfire supporting mobo to use it.
(HD 2600XT used the same way )

But Asus Dual 7800Gt or earlier the Gigabyte Dual 6600GT were communicating over the nortbridge,you needed to use SLI supporting chipsets.And as far as I know those solutions weren't supported officialy by Nvidia.This means no real driver support.
Since 3dfx Nvidia only released ''sandwich'' solutions like 7950GX2 and 9800GX2...

First of all you dont need a SLI mobo for GX2 support either. Second 3870x2 uses normal crossfire. There is nothing special. They do it precisely the same way as 2 3870 cards would. The PLX chip is nothing but a 3 port PCIe switch. I assume the reason is AMD GPUs cant share the bus like nVidia. The dual 2600 cards and dual 1950 cards had the same PLX chip.

[Calmatory]

Well all the 3870x2's i have seen have a small second pcb.

...which is due to 4x DVI. It has nothing to do with the card itself, it just provides 2 more DVI slots. I'd say the card works even if the 2nd PCB was removed. Show me 9800GX2 working with one PCB.

[Frank M]

pics are dead

Page 3

[Vapor]

I don't see why single card isn't measured on how many PCIe slots it needs to be plugged into?

Who cares how many cores or heatsinks or PCBs it has. If it can plug into any ol' PCIe 16x slot and work at full performance, it should be single card.

[Swatrecon_]

I don't see why single card isn't measured on how many PCIe slots it needs to be plugged into?

yea, but that's dual slot, mostly for cooling, not for how many die are on the PCB.

Who cares how many cores or heatsinks or PCBs it has. If it can plug into any ol' PCIe 16x slot and work at full performance, it should be single card.

you might want to refer to it as PCI-e 2.0, as most new motherboards are using that standard. PCI-e 16x is dying, IMO.

[Craftyman.]

I don't see why single card isn't measured on how many PCIe slots it needs to be plugged into?

Who cares how many cores or heatsinks or PCBs it has. If it can plug into any ol' PCIe 16x slot and work at full performance, it should be single card.

EXACTLY! Thank you for expressing this in words that I couldn't form myself.

[Shintai]

you might want to refer to it as PCI-e 2.0, as most new motherboards are using that standard. PCI-e 16x is dying, IMO.

But its still PCIe x16...

PCIe 1.x x16 or PCIe 2.x x16. They are both 16 lanes.

[Calmatory]

But its still PCIe x16...

PCIe 1.x x16 or PCIe 2.x x16. They are both 16 lanes.

Bandwidth is doubled.

[Shintai]

Bandwidth is doubled.

I think we all know that. But thats not the context. PCIe x16 aint dying. Because we wont get x32 or whatever anytime soon. Or go down to x8.

[k|ngp|n]

Wonder if this MONSTER will spank two ULTRAS in SLI...

[DMH]

Wonder if this MONSTER will spank two ULTRAS in SLI...

maybe if you could get two ES you could tell us but I doubt your pots will work on this one

[Power5]

Well all the 3870x2's i have seen have a small second pcb.

Weak. If it had wires to attach the extra 2 DVI ports you would say it look cheap and prone to damage.

The 9800GX2 has 2 full length PCB.

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

Weak. If it had wires to attach the extra 2 DVI ports you would say it look cheap and prone to damage.

The 9800GX2 has 2 full length PCB.

Well the 3870x2 and the 9800GX2 are all singlecard solutions, ATI uses crossfire on their single card just like Nvidia uses SLI on their card. 2 PCBs does not equal 2 cards.

[cantankerous]

Does anyone know if you will be able to use dual display with this card or will it be just like SLI where you can only run a single display?

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

Does anyone know if you will be able to use dual display with this card or will it be just like SLI where you can only run a single display?

I think it will be just like SLI. I hope i am wrong.

[mascaras]

[FUD]

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.






http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...5563&Itemid=34

regards