Which 9800GTX Video card ???

[CarbonFire]

Thx for the comments and the links..

Where did he say the 9800 was the 8800 with a new name ???

Well the 9800 series cards are running the same chip as the 8800 refresh card (the G92 chip), so they are very close to the same.

You can think of it this way (though it's not truly a 1:1 comparison):

The 8800GT is a refresh of the 8800GTS 320MB
The 8800GTS 512MB is a refresh of the 8800GTS 640MB
The 9800GTX is a refresh of the 8800GTX.

The relative performance differences between the cards remains, just the chip has been changed (from the G80 to G92) to bump the speed and processor efficiency up a bit. All the G92 cards will run cooler (and thus quieter) than their corresponding G80 brother.

All that means is that if you are in the market for a brand new card, and not looking to replace one of the older 8800 cards, the 9800GTX is still going to have the best price performance. But only for a single card solution. 2 GTs will stomp on it in SLI, as will the Radeon 3870X2. But both of those cost more than one 9800GTX.

[Cain]

I thought the 9800GTs would run cooler than the 8800's, not sure why though ... Is it a smaller die ??

[juneau]

I thought the 9800GTs would run cooler than the 8800's, not sure why though ... Is it a smaller die ??

It's exactly the same (well apart from the old G80 8800's). However i'm not entirely sure if Nvidia have been playing with the voltages. If the new 9800GTX does have a lower voltage then it should run slightly cooler.

[Duke{CLR}]

Cain here is a link to the EVGA forums about the 9800 series video cards.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tt.asp?forumid=39