Staying ahead of the game in the world of personal computing is never easy and certainly not cheap, thanks to ever-evolving advancements. Yet, if remaining on the very cusp of performance technology is your driving aim -- and money is no object -- then graphics expert NVIDIA has a brand new slice of cutting-edge equipment that no discerning PC system should be without.
NVIDIA unleashes its new GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card. Credit: NVIDIA.
Priced at between $600 and $650 USD, the new overtly muscular GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card is NVIDIA’s latest and greatest offering pumped up specifically to outperform anything else currently available on the PC market.
So what’s growling under the hood of the GeForce 9800 GX2? Well, it comes with two 128 Processor Cores with 512MB of GDDR3 RAM attached to each. It also offers a core clock rate of 600MHz, while boasting a 1500MHz shader clock and a memory clock of 1000MHz, which should all culminate in the GeForce 9800 GX2 chewing up almost any performance challenge thrown into its path.
Factor in NVIDIA’s keenness to point out the card’s 16X anti-aliasing, 128bit floating point high-dynamic lighting, physics computations, DirectX 10 support, 2560x1600 pixel video with support for HDCP (high-definition content protection) through DVI and HDMI outputs, and the GeForce 9800 GX2 just might begin threatening the bank accounts of hardened gamers left, right and centre in the near future.
However, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is not just an obvious graphics card monster, it is also distinctly aware of its ecological responsibilities too. Moreover, NVIDIA has equipped its beast with HybridPower Technology, which enables the card to save on power by switching usage over to the integrated graphics card (on any NVIDIA motherboard) whenever lesser tasks are being processed by the system.
That being said, a related report in the Washington Post warns that the GeForce 9800 GX2 might not be a wolf in lamb’s clothing and certainly not for everyone.
Quite apart from its steep price tag, it arrives as a “double-wide card” that is unlikely to fit the chassis of slim profile computers. Also beastly performance begets beastly power requirements, which sees NVIDIA’s new card slightly negating its honourable HybridPower label thanks to needing a whopping 197 watts of juice for operation.
If keeping your gaming PC well ahead of the chasing home console pack is of paramount importance to you, and the prospect of shelling out up to $650 USD doesn’t prompt cold sweats, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is likely to make your knees buckle for all the right reasons.
If so, expect gathering temptation to rise further during this week as benchmark performance numbers begin to flood the Net.
View blog reactions
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)
Advertising
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)