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GeForce 9800 GX2 nabbed
THE GREEN TEAM is usually pretty good at keeping its future graphics plans under wraps. Usually it shares them only with selected websites and "partners" who are NDA'd up to the eyeballs to avoid the information leaking onto the web.
But the straight-up folks at HardOCP have posted fresh pictures and information about Nvidia's roadmap today, including a look at the dual-GPU beast which will be known as the 9800 GX2.
The card is similar to the 7950 GX2, with two 8800 GPUs on separate PCBs, slammed together and running in SLI. It is due to launch at the end of February or early March, the site reckons, and will take over the crown of fastest card from the 8800 Ultra - at least in games that support SLI.
Heat should be less of a problem than in existing SLI setups, as the new 8800 GPUs are die-shrunk to 65nm.
The rest of the roadmap takes a decidedly unwelcome skew, as Nvidia adopts DAAMIT's tactics of rebranding current-gen products with a new name. The 9800 series will be a small revamp of the 8800, with support for Tri-SLI and some tweaked clocks and specs. The 9600 will do the typical trick of being a new mid-range card that doesn't perform as fast as well, bang for buck, as previous generation cards.
It seems that we won't have anything genuinely new from Nvidia for quite a while - it's possible that we won't see a truly next-gen graphics architecture for another nine months. If R700 continues to see delays, there will be little incentive for Nvidia to push out anything sooner.
You can read some more details over a HardOCP here and here. µ
Tags: Nvidia
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They really need to come up with a way for the drivers to support 6-GPU SLI using three of these GX2 cards in a tri-PCI-e system.
The GX2 will probably suck ass like the 7900GX2 thanks to shitty driver support. I want to know about the 9800GTX.
The aren't very good, 


Here are other better pics : http://infomars.fr/forum/index.php?showtopic=1286
Do you think you'd be able to run it on a Crossfire motherboard (seeing as it only takes up one slot) or would an SLi motherboard be required?
You did consider those pictures @ HardOP are computer generated?

Poor overall detail quality, very good small unimportant detail quality, very strange perspective, strange shadows and so on.
Ok so NV has changed the Ultra to GX2, then from there you get the normal line up of cards plus there models.

So, ok to be released the "9800 GX2" and so on... wouldn't it be oh so easy for NV to push the clocks a little bit and so on then release a "9900 XXX"? Can anyone else see that happening?
Nvidia doesnt need to release anything new yet, it can continue to develop and test at its own rate, because ati is quite frankly crap, thier products are nowhere near NV capability, so why release any new cards, the 8800 series are doing fine, and personally id liek to see a series of cards last longer then 6 months b4 they become obsolete anyway, im glad they are strecthing it out
Rebranded current-gen? No! The new 8800 GT and GTS (512MB) are really based on newer, 9th gen chips (65nm vs. 80 of old, a reworked memory interface, and perhaps there is more to it).

So, they gave a current-gen-ish brand for a new gen chip before, instead.
If at first you don't succeed....?
It is just a refresh to the 8800 series