NVIDIA 3-Way SLI With GeForce 9800 GTX Graphics Cards
Armed with an nForce 780i SLI motherboard and a set of GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB video cards in 3-way SLI, we push the limits of graphics technology on our 30" Dell monitor at a resolution of 2560x1600. A couple of months ago we showed you 3-way SLI with a set of GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards, but today that is old news. Sit back and see what 3-way SLI looks like with a set of GeForce 9800 GTX graphics cards!
Today is April 15th, 2008 and that means that it is the day taxes are due in the United States. While this is a time of stress for many Americans it shouldn't be as you might be one of the many that is expecting a substantial income tax refund this year. It turns out that over 70 percent of Americans get money back at the end of the tax year, with the average refund being close to $2,000! Rather than having those precious dollars being absorbed into your normal spending routine or being used wisely to pay off bills you could do something crazy with your refund, get three GeForce 9800 GTX graphics cards for triple SLI! Actually, with a street price of $289 plus shipping buying the graphics cards will only set you back $867. This sounds like a large amount, but keep in mind a single GeForce 8800 Ultra cost $829 when it launched back in early 2007.
My buddy just built a system with this XFX mobo and 2 of the 9800GTXs. He'll be happy to see this review and be ready to add the third 9800GTX by the time he finishes reading it. And to think, he wanted to go with 8800GTX's but I was able to convince him that the driver support would come and the 9800s would step up in TripleSLI. Thanks for making me look good. ;)
Gamer - Thermaltake Element S | PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Black | Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L | Intel E8400 | Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro | 4GB OCZ Reaper Ram | XFX 8800GTX | Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer | Seagate 7200.10 320GB
HTPC / Folder - Palit 9600GT 1GB Sonic | AMD Phenom 9600 | Corsair DHX 4GB | ECS GF8200A | OCZ StealthXStream 500 Thanks to Palit, AMD, Corsair and ECS for sponsoring the 2008 Folding Give-away!
Is thier any reason why Crysis wasnt used in this as a benchmarking tool?
Main Rig: C2D 6850 @ 3.0Ghz, 2Gb DDR2667Mhz @ 833Mhz 5-5-5-15 Timings , XFX xXx 8600GTS @ 730/2260 , Gigabyte Ga-945GCM-S2L
JukeBox: Currently in an Upgrade but im too lazy to do it at the moment I² keepin it real
it seems like the 3d mark scores are being GPU limited to me. i would have to see the numbers of those palit cards in the other bench marks to be sure. You know what sucks? a 9800gtx costs the same amount i payed for my 8800gt in december the 8800gt is a great card though, so i dont regret it much. and this is way off topic but why is 16xQ aa an option in crysis? is this so it can still stress graphics card like 3 years down the road?
Another great review, and right when I was searching for sli tests on the GTX.
I'm still thinking if I should wait for the new ATI generation and go for a x48 motherboard because of crossfire, or if a Nvidia board for some SLI. But by your test SLI at the moment is better then crossfire.
If that test was made instead on a 790i motherboard the results would be even better? I've read in a review that the pci-e 2.0 of 780i boards is limited.
SergioRoadster wrote:If that test was made instead on a 790i motherboard the results would be even better? I've read in a review that the pci-e 2.0 of 780i boards is limited.
If it was done on a 680i you bet, but on a 780i no way. The PCIe 2.0 Bus is not saturated, so no difference should be noted. The 780i uses DDR2 and the 790i uses DDR3, so actually you should see better performance on the DDR2 board as we had the DDR2 overclocked to 1GHz with pretty good timings. To match that bandwidth you'd need over 1800MHz on the DDR3 board with CL7 timings, which puts it in a new price category.
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the 8800gt is a great card though, so i dont regret it much. and this is way off topic but why is 16xQ aa an option in crysis? is this so it can still stress graphics card like 3 years down the road? 
