[SUBMAN1]

Correction - THe 9800 GX2 is now king card. Seems NVidia fixed its driver issues with this one (amazing they fixed any driver issue at all!)

-S

Toms take on it:

Having said this, we do not recommend buying a GeForce 9800 GX2 for those who rarely change graphic cards and want to invest in a very high end card and keep it for a long time. There are times when a card like this should excel, like when games are played at high resolutions and with demanding settings, but the 9800 GX2 is barely better than a simple GeForce 8800 Ultra. The problem, as is the case with the 3870 X2, is the relatively meager 512 MB of memory, which is incompatible with very high resolutions and when antialiasing is activated. The numbers speak for themselves: the 9800 GX2 out performs the 8800 Ultra (with 768 MB) by 29% on average and up to 41% at a resolution of 2560x1600, while activating antialiasing at this resolution shortens the gap to 13%. Yet, for many games, it's the only mode that still isn't smooth and the 9800 GX2 doesn't deliver much.


At the same time, this is clearly the new very high end card from NVIDIA and it's sold as such. The Point Of View model was announced at €500 ($791) and even with the lower price announced by NVIDIA ($600), the price difference compared to the 3870 X2 that we can find for less than $400, barely matches the average performance gap. The price-performance ratio of the 9800 GX2 isn't the best and gets worse at very high resolutions. So, the card is in the very high-end price category, but it doesn't rank very high when it comes to price-per-performance.