EVGA is one of the few partners that got the Geforce 9800 GX2 cards for launch. Sanjin already wrote a lot about what is under the hood but let me go into a few more details.
Geforce 9800 GX2 or D8E (sometimes even referred as D9E) has two G92 chips inside and both chips are working at 600MHz. Each chip addresses 512MB of GDDR3 memory, making the total amount of memory 1024MB.
The card has two PCBs and it's caged in a black, very nice looking metal cage. The cooler with a fan is placed between two PCBs and the chips are covered by a huge copper chunk. Surprisingly, the chips do not really get that hot, while the case of the card tends to be quite hot after some hours of gaming.
G92 is the first Nvidia chip to have a decent Video engine that can cope with both H.264 and VC-1.
The bottom line is that the card can take it. EVGA’s card also works at 600MHz core and 2000MHZ GDDR3 memory, but naturally, it can be overclocked.
We wanted to push it and see how much we could squeeze out of this little baby. Sanjin scored some 720MHz GPU clock and 2300MHz memory. We overclocked Shaders from the reference 1500MHz to 1780MHz. Now, these are some great scores. Due to time limitations we decided to test all scores on most intensive resolution that we can get, 1920x1440 and 4X FSAA and 8X Anisotropic.
The samples got to us just yesterday and since then we are trying hard to test and post as much as we can.
3Dmark06 score doesn't gain much from the overclock but as you'll see the games will.
In Fear EVGA overclocked to 720MHZ / 2300MHz memory scores, an impressive 13 percent more. This is almost 60 percent better than the 8800 Ultra core and 33 percent faster than Radeon 3870 X2.
In Company of Heroes with max details the overclocked EVGA 9800 GX2 card scores 13 percent better score than the reference clocked 600MHz 9800 GX2. At the same game its 54 percent better than 3870 X2 and 52 percent better than Ultra.
In World in Conflict there is no big difference, only 2 FPS or some 5 percent but in the same game the overclocked EVGA 9800 GX2 is about 33 percent faster than 3870 X2 and 25 percent than 8800 Ultra.
At 1600x1200 no FSAA and Aniso, compared to a reference clocked card, Crysis benefits much from the overclock, but it still makes it 26 percent faster than 3870 X2 and 25 percent faster than 8800 Ultra.
With FSAA and Aniso EVGA 9800 GX2 is more than 100 percent faster than Radeon 3870 X2 and 25 percent faster than Ultra. It ends up some 8 percent faster than non-overclocked reference card.
In Half life 2 the EVGA at 720MHz is 48 percent faster than Radeon 3870 X2 and 35 percent faster than Geforce 8800 Ultra card. The overclocked card is just 5 percent faster than the reference card, but almost in every case the overclocked 9800 GX2 ends up twice as fast as 9600GT mainstream card.
Conclusion
This is quite a score. When you overclock you gain a lot of performance. A 20 percent overclock can get you a five to thirteen percent better score. Such an overclocked card (overclock from EVGA's reference 600/ 2000MHz speed) can score massively better than both 3870 X2 and 8800 Ultra.
Geforce 9800 GX2 will no doubt be the fastest card around and despite its €550 price tag it will be the fastest gaming device around. We can promise you some more scores shortly but let me first clear up a few things.
EVGA and other reference Geforce 9800 GX2 are significantly faster than both 8800 Ultra and Radon 3870 X2. Despite its 65nm chips it can be overclocked by an impressive 20 percent and in games such as Crysis it will score 25 percent faster than both 8800 Ultra and Radeon 3870 X2. In Company or Heroes it will score more than 50 percent better than both 3870 X2 and 8800 Ultra and this might justify the upgrade. If you have 8800 GTX or similar card this is the one you want to replace it with.
We beleive that Geforce 9800 GX2 from EVGA and other vendors even at default 600MHz makes a great choice and the only thing fastest than this "single" card are two GX2 cards together.
