NVIDIA Quad-SLI with the ASUS EN9800GX2

Name: NVIDIA Quad-SLI with the ASUS EN9800GX2 - Page 9
Brand: NVIDIA

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 09:00 AM EDT

Performance Summary: A pair of ASUS EN9800GX2 cards running in a quad-SLI configuration showed increased performance in every application we tested versus a single GeForce 9800 GX2. Overall, performance was extremely good and in the majority of tests the Quad-SLI configuration was the fastest of the bunch, occasionally by a large margin.

This most recent incarnation of NVIDIA's Quad-SLI technology is vastly superior to 2006's version. A single GeForce 9800 GX2 is fast, but a pair of them running in Quad-SLI mode is extreme, albiet not for everyone. Although we're certain Quad-SLI won't scale in every game, it did scale with every application we threw at it here today and its performance was top notch. And in the near term, we expect NVIDIA to further improve Quad-SLI's performance scaling as well with upcoming driver releases. What the long term future holds remains to be seen, however, because it is getting increasingly hard to leverage multi-GPU configurations with more advanced rendering techniques.

Quad-SLI with a pair of GeForce 9800 GX2 cards also consumes less power than the competition's quadruple GPU configuration. While idling AMD's implementation used less power, but once put under load, NVIDIA's Quad-SLI was clearly more efficient - not only was it faster, but it used less power.

Of course, this kind of power comes at a price. A pair of GeForce 9800 GX2 cards will currently set you back a cool $1200, provided you've already got the necessary nForce chipset-based platform to install them in. Cutting edge PC hardware has always been an expensive proposition, however, so we're sure none of you are surprised by this.

In the end, we're impressed with GeForce 9800 GX2 Quad-SLI and hope NVIDIA continues to improve the technology. Scaling is good, power consumption is high, but in line with expectations, and it actually costs less than a pair of GeForce 8800 Ultras did at launch.


Great Performance Most Powerful PC Graphics Configuration Good Scaling Scaled with DX9, DX10, and OpenGL	Expensive Won't Scale All The Time

Tags: Nvidia, Asus, sli, X2, 980, N9, id

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com