XFX GeForce 9800 GTX SLI @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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XFX GeForce 9800 GTX SLI - What kind of gameplay experience does GeForce 9800 GTX SLI provide? We evaluate two retail XFX GeForce 9800 GTX video cards on an SLI platform and compare those to GeForce 9800 GX2, GeForce 8800 GTX SLI, and AMD's Radeon HD 3870 X2 CrossFireX.

If you simply want the best performance in the most shader intensive games, like Crysis, this is a solid solution that will provide a very enjoyable gameplay experience. If you already have GeForce 8800 GTX SLI though, keep it, this is hardly an upgrade. GeForce 8800 GTX, longest lasting video card ever? It is starting to look like it. Unfortunately it just simply has not been properly replaced just yet. That all said, when looking at the big picture that includes the “3 Ps” (pricing, performance, & power) the 9800 GTX is certainly a worthy competitor that will would make almost any gamer happy, and two of them should make you twice as happy, right?
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Good review as always. But having at least 2xAA set for the GX2 in CoD4, cause such a big performance hit @ 2560x1600 ?

I'm assuming it did, since you didn't use it, but based on the graph's numbers only, it seems that the GX2 could easily match the settings for both SLI setups (9800 GTX and 8800 GTX) and still maintain a more than playable framerate.
 
Typo Fixed - Kyle

Also, I would like to see how your overclocks fare in a certain game. After overclocking, could you run through the same section of a certain game, in order to compare the results with the stock version of the same card ?

Sorry, no, not going to happen. Kyle
 
On the Jericho page I noticed that the table for the GX2 says Playable Settings @ 2560x1200 and not 2560x1600. Just me being anal. Otherwise great review. I wasnt expectng that much of a difference over the 8800s in SLI due to the minimal performance gain in a single card setup.
 
wish they would overclock the two 9800 gtx cards to at least 770 core speed and redo the test to see how well they overclock.
 
I especially liked the Part where you suggested that if the 9800GTX had kept the 384bit Bus and the 768 Megs of Frame Buffer, coupled with the improved Shader Power, and with the Die Shrink, and Power Benefits, it truly would have had me salivating, but alas, we are slaves to our imagination.
 
Interesting evaluation. Thanks for doing it.

Do the ATI cards use a 512 bit memory interface? or am I reading it wrong?

Seems like their non-bottleneck does not net them any gain. Or is the problem elswhere in their architecture?

What kind of improvement do you get once you overclocked the cards (9800gtx)?

Is more AA possible after OC, or is that bottleneck the problem?
 
Thanks for the great review [H]. :)

Good performance coupled with a 90W power savings over 8800GTX SLI. Tempting enough to replace my 8800GTXs with.
 
Quoted wrong post, was in response to the overclocking questions
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I have done this myself, stepped up from 8800GTX SLi to 9800GTX SLi and with a mild OC versus the max OC i could run my 8800's at there is a mildly noticeable performance improvement but where thing really start to become substantial is when you lower the resolution of Crysis to 1680x1050 from 19x12. You see when you do this you can now start enabling very high setinngs very much playable with 9800GTX SLi whereas with 8800GTX the card seems to already be maxed out so FPS are virtually the same at 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 etc...Lowering the resolution doesn't help enabling more eye candy.

It really makes me drool over the thought of a 9800GTX with 768Mb framebuffer and 368 bit bus but alas that is not the case however for the time being I am able to run Crysis at 1680x1050 with a q6600 overclocked to 3.6ghz and 9800GTX SLi with all settings very high except for 3 that are at high don't remember which 3 I think object quality, game effects and one other. Though with 8800GTX Sli I tried lowering resolution to 1680x1050 and it just didn't make a substantial enough difference to be able to enable more eye candy.

I suppose if you insist on running games at 2560 then the 8800GTX might be best as it doesn't lose much performance regardless of resolution but if you don't mind lowering resolution to enable more eye candy then the 9800GTX SLi will rock the socks off an 8800GTX SLi setup!

That is best info I can provide from my experience with both cards.
 
Interesting review, the 9800gtx sli really looks to shine in Crysis vs the 8800gtx sli.

I compared the [H] review to these Techreport
and Anandtech

Good job guys and thanks for the review, would like to see some overclocking thrown in... and I think its safe to say the 3870x2 looks to be about as fast as 9600gt sli. :D
 
bluehaze013 said:
I have done this myself, stepped up from 8800GTX SLi to 9800GTX SLi and with a mild OC versus the max OC i could run my 8800's at there is a mildly noticeable performance improvement but where thing really start to become substantial is when you lower the resolution of Crysis to 1680x1050 from 19x12. You see when you do this you can now start enabling very high setinngs very much playable with 9800GTX SLi whereas with 8800GTX the card seems to already be maxed out so FPS are virtually the same at 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 etc...Lowering the resolution doesn't help enabling more eye candy.

It really makes me drool over the thought of a 9800GTX with 768Mb framebuffer and 368 bit bus but alas that is not the case however for the time being I am able to run Crysis at 1680x1050 with a q6600 overclocked to 3.6ghz and 9800GTX SLi with all settings very high except for 3 that are at high don't remember which 3 I think object quality, game effects and one other. Though with 8800GTX Sli I tried lowering resolution to 1680x1050 and it just didn't make a substantial enough difference to be able to enable more eye candy.

I suppose if you insist on running games at 2560 then the 8800GTX might be best as it doesn't lose much performance regardless of resolution but if you don't mind lowering resolution to enable more eye candy then the 9800GTX SLi will rock the socks off an 8800GTX SLi setup!

That is best info I can provide from my experience with both cards.
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Sounds very promising. I have yet to test Crysis on my system though.
 
Vaiks said:
Why the review does not use the settings on very high on Crysis?
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You have been registered for 1.7 years and you still don't know how the [H] does their reviews. For shame. Actualy, if you read the review you will understand exactly why very high isn't shown.

Please be aware we test our video cards a bit differently from what is the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that each video card provides. The Highest Playable section shows the best Image Quality delivered at a playable frame rate. To get a better understanding of what we do, please read this page.
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Plainly, Very High didn't maintain a playable framerate. It never has on any system to date, even with the guy who had 9800GX2s in SLi ("quad"). He may have been able to get 80fps at Very High at 16x12 something, but the sucker still had a low fps of about 14/15. It's going to take the 9900/G200 series or the one after before we can get that minimum FPS up to 30-40fps via a single card solution. Throwing 240-256 optimized "G80 Series-2" SPs with adequate bandwidth and bus width might get the job done (if not better) assuming all other support hardware is up to snuff.
 
Good review, One thing i found on the COD4 tests though- I have a 8800 ultra SLI system with 2 GB DDR2-1200 and a QX9650 @ 4ghz, anyways i got some better results on the bog as expected but since your guys motto is best settings to FPS etc, Playing with TRSS AA @ 4X to 16X cramps the game in certain maps such as some 3rd mission with SAS or a misson like All ghillied up as there is a lot of Transparent textrues (grass etc) on those levels comparing to the bog- I go down to 25-30 at certain points and all the way up to 150 etc
 
Vaiks said:
Why the review does not use the settings on very high on Crysis?
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Really?

NEVERLIFT said:
Interesting review, the 9800gtx sli really looks to shine in Crysis vs the 8800gtx sli.

I compared the [H] review to these Techreport
and Anandtech

Good job guys and thanks for the review, would like to see some overclocking thrown in... and I think its safe to say the 3870x2 looks to be about as fast as 9600gt sli. :D
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Weird how SLI works now?:confused:
 
Hmm I guess in one sense i cant really try to compare FPS in your COD bench as i dont know what your guys start and end point is-
 
NEVERLIFT said:
0% :eek:

at least in Crysis anyway...
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How do you figure that? Crysis is still shadder limited, not frame buffer limited like CoD4. a Third graphics card should give a boost of 50%-overhead so something like 25-40% boost, since the latest SLI optimization patch. I don't recall Crysis not supporting TRI-SLI, but I could be wrong. I don't keep up with that game too much.
 
When are you are going compare two 9800GX2 running in quad SLI? So far you compared 9800 GTX, single 9800GX2 to 8800GTX and AMD video cards but not 9800GX2 Quad...

Now that would be interesting!!!! Cause I got two EVGA 9800GX2 running in SLI mode...:D:D:eek::):p
 
Okay, then... NOW FOR THE BIG DADDY!!! When are you guys going to compare what everyones is waiting for. Comparing the 9800GX2 in quad SLI mode????

That's going to be interesting. Cause I got two EVGA 9800GX2 running in Quad mode....

:eek::eek::D:D:D
 
NEVERLIFT said:
Ok maybe 0% is a little off, but the sad fact is that 1 card is enough for most games and sli with 2 is enough for the anything else.
3way sli and 9800gx2 sli for some quad loving is just not showing the gains it should.

Techreport and Anand both have done some reviews.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14161/7
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14524/9
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3275
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I'm writing this as I look through these articles so lets go...


First off I looked at the anandtech review. It is a big reminder of why I use [H]ard reviews. They don't mention the version of crysis they used. Which means it was probably done without the latest patch that has fixed most of the problems with crysis and not scaling well.

Lets now look at this link to the techreport review you mentioned.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14161/7
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The last graph on the page which is "Very high 1920x1200 w/ 4x AA" shows a diffrence of 27 fps vs 19 fps vs 12.6 fps between Tri-SLI vs Normal SLI vs single card. Thats pretty nice scaling if you ask me. Iinfact it is a 42% increase in fps vs only a 50% increase in "number of cards" which gives it an overhead loss is 16% of the theretical (42%/50% = 84%... 100-84% = 16%.)


The last article they put up that they couldn't get it to run at 4x AA. So they immediatly drop it to no AA, which we already know isn't going to scale well because your running into the "not graphics limited wall" in crysis. Where that wall comes from I'm not sure. They still don't mention the version they are using.

Now the real question is the 512 MB frame buffer coming into play here? I'm not sure. Could very well be. Of course if you reduced the settings associated with memory buffer size, and not raw shader power you should be able to over come this. And still see solid game play advantages from the last card.

Of course on all the other games you weren't really seeing this problem. Just Crysis.
 
Ok I looked deeper nto the anandtech review they show "vhq 19x12" which I am assuming means very high quality 1920x1200, shows 18.3,34.6, and 49.1. This is very good scaling. Oblivion next to it on that charts shows 25, 45.5, 51.2 Which isn't as good of scaling, but still a 13% increase. That is at 2560x1600 4x AA. I'm am really surprised the frame buffer doesn't come into play here.

This is all making me very curious as to what the GT200 will have in way of a frame buffer and memory bus and if it is going to saturate the PCI-E 2.0 in TRI-SLI. But thats stuff for a diffrent post in a diffrent thread ;p
 
Here's Anand's chart.
3waycrysisoe1.jpg


and here's Techreports.
crysisveryhigh4xaa1920mw1.gif

Both Anand and Techreport had trouble with the 3way sli with AA on and the 9800gx2 sli also choked with AA on.
Only the 8800 Ultra pulled it off.
 
NEVERLIFT said:
Here's Anand's chart.
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Umm.... this is the chart from the next page of your quoted link That is in refrence to the V-sync and where you disable it... I'm going to assume your not reading the whole article and not trying to deliberatly mislead people.

3wayscale.jpg


and here's Techreports.

Both Anand and Techreport had trouble with the 3way sli with AA on and the 9800gx2 sli also choked with AA on.
Only the 8800 Ultra pulled it off.
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Here is what they showed w/o AA
crysis-veryhigh-1920.gif


I think it is pretty clear that they are running into memory frame buffer issues here. If you the quality of things that take high frame buffers, but still kept the high shader options you'll get something like what anandtech shows. But then again, [H]ard covered this in thier review. Or did you not bother to read it and you just looked at the "pretty pictures"?
 
I read everything so dont assume other wise.

And I dont see the GTX scaling all that great with or without AA and high res with very high setting.

But hey people can blow money on stuff if they like. ;)


Right now if anyone had money to blow they would get the 8800 ultra's if they could find one.

Edit: wait I found one...
 
NEVERLIFT said:
I read everything so dont assume other wise.

And I dont see the GTX scaling all that great with or without AA and high res with very high setting.
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What part of this graph that is at 1920x1200 with very high settings and no AA do you not seem to understand?

3wayscale.jpg


It's from your own link....
 
Trepidati0n said:
You have been registered for 1.7 years and you still don't know how the [H] does their reviews. For shame. Actualy, if you read the review you will understand exactly why very high isn't shown.
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Trepidati0n, you have been registered for 3.5 years and you still don't know how to be polite on a forum. For shame.

Miscommunication, thank you for answering my question.
 
What a monster, almost makes me regret buying the two 8800GT cards I got back in November. :)
 
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