Related Articles

Power Usage

To measure power usage, we used a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter. Note that the above numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we ran a demanding part of 3DMark06.

Remember, the XFX 9800 GX2 requires both a 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connector.

The XFX 9800 GX2 requires a great deal of power for operation, but not an unreasonable amount. Make no mistake though, this isn't exactly 'green gaming.' NVIDIA recommends a 580W or higher PSU, while XFX recommends a 630W or greater for smooth operation. We tested with a Corsair HX620W power supply, which likely is fine in most cases; but if you are going to get this demanding video card, you might as well go the extra distance and get yourself a quality PSU; all the more so if you have multiple hard drives and optical drives. If you are hoping to cut the mustard with your $50 500W power supply, you might be in for a nasty shock -- not to mention possible hardware death.

Conclusion

The XFX 9800 GX2 isn't for everyone -- but for the small amount of people that this card is for, well, they are some very lucky gamers. This video card truly is a monster, and if you put down the coin to capture this creature, it'll serve you well. You can expect to run any possible game you have at the absolute maximum settings possible without any hiccups. In fact, one of the biggest 'problems' of having this card would be that right now, there really isn't all that much out there that'll make use of all this power -- except for Crysis, anyways. But rest assured, it will not be long until the new titles of 2008 will be demanding of entirely new levels of juice, and come that time, you be ready if you have this Godzilla of a video card in your rig.

If you are interested in this level of performance -- i.e, the ultimate level of performance -- then I would recommend getting the XFX 9800 GX2. You may however want to hold off on this purchase, for even just a month from now though, to wait for prices to fall, as they surely will when the rest of the NVIDIA line comes out (which is rumored to happen soon). That being said, I fully expect the performance crown to still be sitting on the head of the 9800GX2 when the dust settles after the revealing of the new NVIDIA GPU's. In fact, I would put money on it that the performance crown will not be usurped from the 9800 GX2 anytime soon.

If you are willingly and able to pay the price, then you can buy a ticket straight to gaming Valhalla with this giant and heavy, solid bar of graphics processing power that is the XFX 9800 GX2.