• Two graphics chip on one PCB
• 65 nanometer process
• 600MHz clock speed
• 2.0GHz memory speed
• 1.5GHz Shader Clock
• 256 Stream Processors
• 256-bit memory interface
• 64GB/second memory bandwidth per GPU 128GB/second total
• 754 million transistors each GPU 1.508 Billion total
• Total memory 1GB (2X512MB each GPU)
• ROPS 32
• Texture Filtering Units 128
• Texturing Rate: 76.8 Gigatexels/second
• HDCP Support Yes
• HDMI Support Yes
• Connectors: 2 Dual Link DVI-I One HDMI
• RAMDACs 400MHZ
• Bus Technology PCI Express 2.0
• Form Factor: Dual Slot
• Power Connectors: 1x 6-pin 1x 8 pin
• Max Board Power: 197 Watts
• GPU Thermal Threshhold: 105 Degrees Celsius
• Quad SLI capable

The 9800GX2 is reminiscent of the 7950GX2 in many ways in terms of design. There are two PCBs each facing the other with a single heatsink/fan between them. NVIDIA says there are several key advantages of this design including each GPU would dissipate heat to its dedicated PCB, two PCBs offer more room to route traces to memory, allowing higher memory clocks.

The 9800GX2 supports all of the features of DirectX 10.0 including Shader Model 4.0 and full 128-bit precision throughout the graphics pipeline. NVIDIA first introduced Pixel and Vertex Shader 4.0 supporting cards in the form of the GeForce 8800GTX a couple of years ago, and today the vast majority of games and applications support DirectX 10 features.

The 9800GX2 has a clock speed of 600MHz for the core GPU. This translates into a maximum texel fillrate of 76.8Gigatexels/second with the 128 texture filtering units on two GPUs. The memory clock on the 9800GX2 is 2GHz effective, giving a total of 128GB/second of memory bandwidth with two GPUs and the 256-bit memory bus.

One thing that is worrying about the 9800GX2 is the inclusion of a 8-pin and a 6-pin power connector. NVIDIA recommends at least a 580W PSU to run one 9800GX2 and a 850W approved SLI PSU to run Quad SLI mode. Power requirements for a dual video card are impressive enough without the added connectors. NVIDIA says that the 9800GX2 draws a maximum of 197W, which is significantly higher than a 9600GT.