The first thing you’ll notice when seeing the card for the first time is its length. The card is as long as the 7950GX2 in many cases, meaning that some people will have to work a little to get the card installed in their case. The length is exactly the same as the 3870X2 from ATI. The 9800GX2 is a 2-slot card meaning that two adjacent slots in the case are required to install the card.

XFX decided to go with the reference NVIDIA cooling, two PCBs facing each other cooled by the enclosure. There’s a XFX logo on the front of the card and the GeForce 9800GX2 name. The 9800GX2 requires a 8-pin power connector and a 6-pin power connector to operate these are on the top of the PCB, right next to each other.

The IO on the card is kind of interesting. There are two Dual-Link DVI-I ports on the panel. Note, that the first one is the position where you need to insert the monitor input, as using the second one is useless. The last connection on the card is a HDMI connector for those that have HDMI monitors. NVIDIA does not support dual monitor on a single 9800GX2 like ATI does with their HD3870X2 cards.