Nvidia Unleashes GeForce 9800 GX2

Nvidia has just unveiled a new "King of the Graphics Cards", the GeForce 9800 GX2, and it's only under $650. Try telling our wives that we have to again upgrade our PCs again because our video cards are out of date. Well, you need to have the right ammunition to take to her to tell her just how much more powerful the new graphics card is.

First this new graphics card is about the size of two graphics cards sandwiched in a single card and the specs just about justify that. It has two 128 processor cores, two times the 512MB GDDR3 memory, which is 512MB per processor. It also has a 600-MHz core clock, 1500-MHz shader clock and 1000-MHz memory clock that promises to destroy the benchmark scores. Okay, the testing isn't completely done yet but it is on the schedule at least.

The GeForce 9800 GX3 also delivers 2560X1600 pixel video support for High-Definition Content Protection or HDCP, over the card's DVI and HDMI outputs. The card also carries the lion's share of the load of video decoding for H.264, VC-1, WMV, and MPEG-2 high-definition , not to mention standard definition movies and it will also handle 3:2 and 2:2 pull-down corrections if you are a videophile that craves accurate video reproduction.

Yes, you are going to have a hard time justifying the price, and the other concern is the power consumption. This card requires about 197 watts to run so you'll need a fairly hefty power supply to run it and that may be something else you'll have to spring for to get this new card. You'll also need to make sure that you have the right power connectors because this card will require both the 8-pin and a 6-pin connector, and this is not a very common combination.

The other problem may be that if might be a problem with it fitting int your current box as it is a double-wide card that spans about 11 inches with a built-in fan on one side and has the dual-link DVI ports and one HDMI port on the back, so if you don't have enough room in your current box, you may need to upgrade your box.

So if this is a card that you have just got to have, go into it with your eyes open and know that just a few months down the road, there will be another innovation and another video card that will likely make this one obsolete. But in the mean time, the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a powerhouse that undoubtedly will put the grunt back into many games for many upgrade owners.

Nvidia Unleashes GeForce 9800 GX2

Nvidia has done the one thing that both thrills and terrifies PC gamers, and that is to unleash a bigger and badder video graphics card.