ASUS EN9800GX2 review - first look at 9800 GX2

Written by Димитър Динчев a.k.a. Veseliq

Monday, 24 March 2008

 

Page 11 - Conclusion

Heat dispersion

Indeed this paragraph might seem out of place, but was intentionally left for the last page with the hope that it will catch the attention of more people. The card does have some problems with its cooling! Even at the first test we ran, within few minutes artifacts popped up and very shortly the whole system crashed, the cooler was too hot to be touched. And all that when the parts were out of a case (we kept them like this as to ease the frequent hardware swapping), so the temperature around the card was equal to the room temperature, this meaning it wasn't above 18-20 degrees centigrade. We found that the automatic control of the fan isn't working at all, so we deemed it was necessary to be set manually through riva tuner (another surprise we found in NVIDIA's new drivers - ForceWare 174.53, you see there is no panel for setting the fan RPM). After this operation the card indeed did not overheat anymore, but by god it did it's best to deafen us with it's Jumbo-jet like sound.

Conclusions

As whole we didn't expect much from 9800 GX2. This was because of NVIDIA's previous (honestly speaking - pitiful) attempt for such a product - the GeForce 7950GX2. Also our recent experience with HD3870X2 sure gave us a bitter taste, due to numerous driver problems of the card. It's just this - these cards rely heavily on good driver support and there are plenty chances to screw up.

Well, 9800 GX2 definitely managed to surpass all expectations. Apparently NVIDIA's software developers did their job perfectly, we never experienced any problems. And not only with the few tests you saw, but also with other popular games like Command and Conquer 3, Gears of War, Bioshock, Half-Life 2, Call of Duty, Enemy Territory, which sadly we couldn't include in the official review.

Otherwise NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 absolutely not the choice for people looking for good price/performance ratio. The card is targeted at people demanding the best, regardless of the price. This is the fastest card on the market and with a price of 1140 leva (~570 Euro(for ASUS EN9800GX2)) it's sure not meant for the mass user. We advise potential users that besides the card, acquiring high end system, with decent overclock potential and a dual/quad processor working at least at 3.6-3.8GHz is a must, but when you're spending, better get something that goes up to 4.2-4.5 GHz or even higher.

Maybe some of you might feel that getting two 8800 GTS 512 would give them the same (or at least close) results at a lower price, and you would be right. But using two separate cards in SLI requires all or almost all of the available space on the motherboard and requites a NVIDIA chipset (although if you use the 9800 GX2 with other than NVIDIA motherboard you won't be able to use the HybridPower technology and the card will be sucking vast amount of power while doing her Jumbo-jet impersonation all day long). NVIDIA had also promised that soon a finished QUAD SLI driver will be available, and when this becomes a fact you'll be capable to connect two 9800 GX2 (hopefully NVIDIA's upcoming attempt at QUAD SLI would be better than the last).

About ASUS, well they did their job rather nice (if screwing up a referent card is possible at all). We can't say if their card is a "best buy" since at the time of this review their's is the only 9800GX2 available on our market. The price of ASUS EN9800GX2 is logical - 1140 leva (~570 Euro) tax included, while the 8800 GTS 512 is about 500-600 leva (~250-300 Euro) depending on how much of brand name it is and whether there is a game in the bundle. While in the huge ASUS box you get beside the standard bundle (and the card) a very interesting game - Company of Heroes. ASUS had been around for a while, they are good at what they do - quality is on the level, and if there is any problems with the card (which are not that unlikely considering the complexity of GeForce 9800 GX2), warranty is sure to be excelent.

We justly rate the card with 7.5/10 (for its great performance and lot's of extra stuff, but a high price and problematic cooling), a friendly reminder though, should you be looking for the fastest card - this is it, but 9800 GX2 is a reasonable buy only if money are no object and you have more than enough not only for it but for a high end computer system too, because that's you'll need to to take advantage of it's full potential.

Again we thank our partners from Multirama and Solytrade , that made this review possible!

Author: Dimitar Dinchev a.k.a Veseliq

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