GeForce 9800 GX2, 9800 GTX & 3870 X2 Compared

[003]

your telling me on air you cant beat a gtx with a 2900pro ? both overclocked on air ? in 05 and 06?

i dont think you know wtf your talking about....

maxed gt 512 on air I got 23500 and i beat that with a 2900pro too, only card on air that might beat it is a gts 512 at 800 or higher core....

the 8800 ultra i had beat the pro buy a couple hundred points at its max 705 core in 06, and the 2900pro washed the floor with the 8800 ultra in 05.

Are you talking about single card or dual? I'm talking about 06 and single card. If the 2900pro is beating an overclocked 8800 ultra in 06, then you've either got some kind of software problem or you are being cpu bottle necked. With my c2d at 3.8ghz and my 2900pro at 914/2000, I get 13.1k in 06.

[Rattle]

SINGLE

read again

[003]

Yeah, then you've got some kind of bottleneck or other problem because thats not right. The geforce 8 series (excluding the original GTS cards) tears up the 2900pro in 06, unless you are in the cold, where the 2900 will continue to scale and the 8800 wont.

Mind sharing your hardware and software used to get these results, and the overclocks you used?

[zanzabar]

how can u compair a pro and an ultra when u will up the voltage alot to get ur clocks but of course we cant use voltmods to compare since ati dosnt let u up it by much, its even on a p965 and that limits the ati card wa more than anythng NV will do

stop whining NV dose this every other year u should expect it they only update ever 2 years common, when u dont have a shader cap and NV optimized game ur going to cry about it

[003]

Umm... I don't know about the HD3000 cards but on the 2900s, there are easy bios mods to bring the voltage up to 1.35v and from there you can use atitool and raise it all the way to 2v. I have done 1.550v on a suicide run before.

[zanzabar]

i ment 38xx but i thought that i had bad vdroop on teh 2900 when u upped it in the bios

[Frank M]

I'm liking this result.
nV has sat too much on its laurels and got too lazy, now they deserve to have
their @$$es kicked. I hope this will stir up the waters a bit

[adamsleath]

9800gx2 will trounce when aa+af are factored in, i reckon.

do people like jaggies these days?
i know i dont.

why does 9600gt sli show such good scaling while this gx2 thing looks like total crapola scalingwise......?

huh huh why?

y?

why?

y?

[SIOUX]

how come nvidia can make one g92 gpu score 13k but 2 g92 gpus score 14k?
this should kill all the discussion about the 9800gx2 beeing a well designed card and a good concept.

its crap!

My bed is that if you put some more power in CPu, the score will be a lot more different

[adamsleath]

yeah maybe cpu bound

3d06 is about cpu powa.
yorkfield @ 4.6GHz 8800gts512 sli :790i chipset

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...highlight=790i


i'll conjecture that actual games performance of gx2 will depend on whether the game is graphics bound or cpu limited....which is the same as usual.

and also gx2 will most likely give the best results across the board with aa+af enabled....at 'certain resolutions'

and also generally speaking that these powerful graphics cards are being held back by weak cpu's....which is why im not rushing in to yet more grffx power when wot i really need is more cpu power.

[NotFred]

9800gx2 will trounce when aa+af are factored in, i reckon.

do people like jaggies these days?
i know i dont.

why does 9600gt sli show such good scaling while this gx2 thing looks like total crapola scalingwise......?

huh huh why?

y?

why?

y?

No idea what they did to the SLi scaling on the 9600gt, but the scaling on this card is similar to those shown on all other Nvidia cards.

Also, personally, at decent resolution I have never noticed a difference with AA enabled, the dot pitch takes care of it for you.

[adamsleath]

which means dont bother with 3870x2 unless you are at 1920x1200 res. or more.

well i still notice jaggies at 1920x1200 on my crt....so ...i just looked.

a 30" lcd at native res you dont need aa. i presume.

[bill_d]

maybe the little auto oc pcie bus trick dosn't work on a gx2 to much heat

[labs23]

Anyway as i've noticed ATI cards can score very well against an Nvidia counterpart at the same performance level. Like the what the other OP posted, ATI cards can go up higher than an Nvidia in xtreme conditions while OCd, like in dice,... Now i wonder why ATI put such abilities on their cards that way rather than making them "scale" in performance in a way like ordinary... Mainstream, anybody?

[Helmore]

Anyway as i've noticed ATI cards can score very well against an Nvidia counterpart at the same performance level. Like the what the other OP posted, ATI cards can go up higher than an Nvidia in xtreme conditions while OCd, like in dice,... Now i wonder why ATI put such abilities on their cards that way rather than making them "scale" in performance in a way like ordinary... Mainstream, anybody?

Might have something to do with preparing the design for future higher clocked derivatives.....just a guess.

[_d_]

for me, i just only play NFS so my ATi just fine no problem

[Leeghoofd]

Awaiting real reviews and game tests... for the benchers maybe nice to know but for most users this comparison tells zilch zero... and everyone that buys such a card doesn't run a quad at 2.6ghz.... but it will be nice if hothardware does a CPU scaling review again...

[veilsidebr]

lol, what a xity 9800 gx2, i'd really not sell my ultra and own this new model, just to get more 600 points in 3dmark 06! i was expecting something of 16 or 17k, but i am really disappointed!

lol, i think "we have reached the limit" on the GPU aspect of computer technology. Time to change everything. LOL

=D

[JasonDTM]

crysis really represents the future of games imo. how ur pc handles that will tell you how ur pc will handle future games, so im really interested in crysis benches with these cards.
3dmark06 means nothing. the 3870x2 scores higher than a 9800gx2 in 3dmark06, but it is on par with the 9600gt sli in games (which makes sense because a single 3870 is basically equal to a single 9600gt). now, if the 9800gx2 is basically 8800gts sli, and the 8800gts is much faster than the 9600gt, than logically it should follow that the 9800gx2 is much faster than the 3870x2 in games.

Oh yeah, dismiss the fact that Crysis runs like ass on ALL ATi Hardware.

[safan80]

the 3870 x2 is junk! this is why I will not use an ATI product until they can get their opengl working right.

[DilTech]

*yawn*, ATi's been ahead at 06 this round, why is this a surprise now?

Seriously, it's the games that matter.

That said, the 9 series(and the 3870's) are a disappointment in my eyes either way. A year and a half after the 8800GTX and they STILL can't show a card that's fast enough to make a worth-while look, much less upgrade...

Ah well, just keeps this being the best gpu investment in quite some time.

[zanzabar]

the 3870 x2 is junk! this is why I will not use an ATI product until they can get their opengl working right.

using AA as a bench and not quality is meaningless in my book unless ur on some old game that has to upmix textures or something straight from MS (like flight sim x) u dont need aa with an ati card from the double precision processing power of their stream processor, and quake wars on the doom 3 engine and its heavily outdoors who thought that that was a good idea lets take the weakest part of the engine and make it the focal point of the game

*yawn*, ATi's been ahead at 06 this round, why is this a surprise now?

Seriously, it's the games that matter.

That said, the 9 series(and the 3870's) are a disappointment in my eyes either way. A year and a half after the 8800GTX and they STILL can't show a card that's fast enough to make a worth-while look, much less upgrade...

Ah well, just keeps this being the best gpu investment in quite some time.

i dont see why its a dissapointment there are always 2-3 year gaps with the exeption of the x1k, 9500-x800 3year, 6800-8800 3 year, forgot the voodoo stuff but its the same

[safan80]

quake wars on the doom 3 engine and its heavily outdoors who thought that that was a good idea lets take the weakest part of the engine and make it the focal point of the game

it's very important to anyone that plays the game! I have almost 300 hours in the game and yes you spend a lot of time outdoors.

[Tim]

how come nvidia can make one g92 gpu score 13k but 2 g92 gpus score 14k?
this should kill all the discussion about the 9800gx2 beeing a well designed card and a good concept.

its crap!

saaya, with your experience, you should know much better then to post something like that. So because it doesn't score well in 06 makes it a bad designed card, and a bad concept?

It's crap?

right.

[fcry64]

saaya, with your experience, you should know much better then to post something like that. So because it doesn't score well in 06 makes it a bad designed card, and a bad concept?

It's crap?

right.

don't u see? 3dmark is a fair indication....it should pretty much double up the score for the 9800 gx2 and a fast cpu. 14k for gx2 isn't digestable