Published in Graphics

More Geforce 9800 GX2 information appears

by on06 January 2008
Image

Has HDMI and S/PDFI out


Tom's Hardware Taiwan has scored several more pictures of what's currently known as the Geforce 9800 GX2, and it's now a lot clearer why the cards are designed the way they are. Still no PCB shots, but we'd expect these to turn up soon enough.

What we're looking at is a dual PCB, dual slot card with a pair of DVI connectors, an HDMI out, as well as optical S/PDIF. This is the first time we've seen an Nvidia-based card with this type of port configuration, and as far as we can remember, it's the first Nvidia card ever to feature optical S/PDIF; although we're not sure if this is an output or input, as it could well be an input for taking the optical signal from a sound card to work in conjunction with the HDMI connector.

The GPU is supposedly the G92-400-A2, which is the same GPU that the new 8800 GTS 512MB cards are using. The cards will feature a single SLI connector, which means that you can forget about running more than a pair of these cards at once. The SLI connector seems to be covered up by a sticker when the card ships, so this has to be removed if you want to run SLI. Next to the SLI connector is what appears to be an S/PDIF in connector which should be attached to a sound card or motherboard header.

Considering that you'll get four GPUs or quad SLI, we think this is a pretty fair trade-off. Let's just hope that Nvidia puts a but more effort into supporting these cards with drivers than they did with the 7950 GX2. The cardsalso has a six and an eight-pin PCIe power connector and a 580W PSU is recomended for a single card.

The cooling for the cards is meant to have been designed by Cooler Master and it looks like the fan is taking reasonably cool air in from the front of the case and exhausting it out the rear of the case.

You can find the pictures here and make your own mind up, and there's even a sneak peek of Nvidia's upcoming 790i board with a pair of cards fitted in it.

Last modified on 07 January 2008
Rate this item
(0 votes)