Asus’ videocard lineup has always included an overclocked version of their vanilla offerings, and even with the 9800GX2’s relative complexity and newness to the market, it proved no deterrent to Asus. The EN9800GX2 TOP is currently on top of the heap of high-end videocards being offered by Asus, at least in their marketing spiel. Just how much does this product deserve the title “fastest”?

                                             Most monoliths deserve a commemorative plaque of some kind.
 

The TOP version of this card nets roughly 11% clock speed increases in the memory, core and shader clocks of the card. In numbers, this equates to 670MHz on the core versus the stock 600MHz, 2.13GHz on the memory to the stock’s 2.0GHz, and a shader clock that’s been pumped up to 1675MHz from the nominal 1500MHz. There are no outward changes to the card – no fancy collection of heatpipes and fins, no exposed fans – simply a manufacturer sticker in place of the reference design’s blank face. In this Asus bows to the difficulty of re-engineering a fresh videocard product – fortunately, Asus did not skimp in any other areas, helped along by the excellence of the G92 chip’s basic excellence of design.

                                             The 9800GX2 is almost like 70% cooling apparatus and 30% PCB + chips.

To whit: the 65nm GPU offers 256 stream processors, 1GB (2x 512MB) of GDDR3, and claims a 512-bit external memory bus  (technically two 256-bit pipelines with a PCI Express 2nd generation controller running the two cards in SLI.) HDMI is on-board, and it also includes the usual gamut of acronyms proclaiming compliance and compatibility to various technologies, like PCI Express 2.0, Shader Model 4.0, and OpenGL 2.1 support, HDCP compliance, plus other software enhancements like Nvidia’s PureVideo HD technology and Quantum Technology.

                                             Both sides of the fan housing host intake vents.

Building their prime videocard on this strong foundation, Asus sweetens the deal with the inclusion of software like ASUS Splendid – for video enhancement during movie watching, ASUS Gamer OSD designed for Real-time overclocking, benchmarking and video capturing in your games, ASUS Smart Doctor serving as a helping hand during overclocking, and even a Video Security Online feature that enables the user to employ a webcam to keep an eye out on your desktop space and work area. The DX10 game Company of Heroes – Opposing Fronts is also included in the bundle, in case you want to test out the card’s capabilities at once.

                                             Two PCBs in one two-slot solution is still an impressive feat. Note the reverse orientations of the DVI ports.

The card itself is – no other word for it – monolithic, it’s basically a rectangle of plastic studded with vents, power connectors, and the interface connectors. Unlike ATI, which opted to design the 3870 X2 dual GPU card onto a single PCB, the 9800GX2, like its direct predecessor the 7950GX2 uses two PCBs sandwiched into one (huge) package. Nvidia however has markedly improved the design of the cooling solution, with both sides of the card drawing air into the cooling cavity and consequently cooling both PCBs almost equally. In the 7950GX2, the “inner” card always ran very much hotter than its exposed twin. The new fan housing design should be a boon to system longevity and of course, overclocking potential. Take note of your casing interior when upgrading as this hunk of silicon is certainly going to be the biggest chunk of circuitry inside the computer besides the PSU, when and if you get one.

                                             Supplementary power ports, uncovered.

Other notable features of the card include light-accented ports for the power, and a shining, yellow light emitting from the rear air vent. The twin DVI connectors are also headlined by twin indicator lights, showing which connection is active at any given moment. The SLI “golden finger” is covered by a tiny, removable door and the top portion of the card sports a gold-colored “plaque” with “Asus 9800GX2” written in a huge font.

                                             SLI finger is covered by a plastic door, seen on the right.

Some nitpicks on the design of the package: primary is the tolerance of the 8-pin power connector housing on the card – unless you’re lucky enough to own a power supply with a single, dedicated 8-pin power connector or at least a 6 + 2 pin connector with a slim plastic clip, there’s a big possibility that the connector won’t fit – even if all the indentations match up to each other. The lower section of the card is somewhat obstructed by the higher than average southbridge heatsink on our MSI P35 Platinum test bench – although thankfully this did not hinder our testing. The two DVI connectors are not oriented in the same manner – in other words, you will have to twist your DVI cable 180 degrees if for some reason you need to transfer your cable from one DVI to the other.

                                             Bundled items is run-of-the-mill as far as Asus goes.

As a dual-GPU unit, this videocard can hardly be called a cool and thrifty solution, with a minimum PSU requirement of 580watts for a single card, jumping up to 850watts for an SLI setup. The 9800GX2 features Hybrid Power technology, although this is somewhat a moot point seeing that this technology requires an on-board GPU for it to function, and as far as I know, there’s a very limited number of choices for a high-end, hybrid capable motherboard with on-board graphics compatible with the technology.

                                             Packaging design is similar to recently released Asus cards. We're hoping for a new bundled game next time around.

Preliminary benchmarks show performance gains in high-resolution gaming – meaning higher than 1600 x 1200 resolution. At lower resolutions numbers are still higher than the usual GPU suspects like the 8800GTX, in both single and SLI configurations, and the 3870 X2. None of the gains are mind-blowingly huge though, although the GX2 has the added advantage of eventually forming the building blocks of a quad – SLI configuration once Nvidia pushes out the proper drivers. It remains to be seen whether the price premium (9800GX2 cards are currently retailing for around P20 to 22k) is worth the admittedly smaller than expected performance increase. Complete benchmarks await the curious in our upcoming issue of HWM. Watch out for it!