Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3GHz (333MHz x 9)

Cooling: Corsair Nautilus500 (Supplied by Corsair) with Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (Supplied by Arctic Cooling)

Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE X48-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Memory: 2 X 1GB Kingston PC6400 DDR-2 3-3-3-10 (KHX6400D2ULK2/2G) (Supplied by Kingston)

Hard Disk(s): Seagate 250GB 7200RPM SATA-2 7200.10 (Supplied by Seagate)

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista SP1

Drivers: ForceWare 174.53 (9 Series)

With the 9800 GTX in hand we took the time to see how it goes up against other high-end retail cards like the HD 3870 X2 from ASUS and the 9800 GX2 from Zotac. While Dual GPU cards are good in theory, if the application isn't able to make full use of the power then high-end single core cards can outperform them. Let's find out how the 9800 GTX goes against these Dual GPU wielding cards.

3DMark06

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 110

Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com

Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/

Buy It Here

3DMark06 is the very latest version of the "Gamers Benchmark" from FutureMark. The newest version of 3DMark expands on the tests in 3DMark05 by adding graphical effects using Shader Model 3.0 and HDR (High Dynamic Range lighting) which will push even the best DX9 graphics cards to the extremes.

3DMark06 also focuses on not just the GPU but the CPU using the AGEIA PhysX software physics library to effectively test single and Dual Core processors.

Straight away we can see that 3DMark06 is able to make full use of SLI and Crossfire technology, so the 9800 GTX lags behind a bit. The biggest difference in performance between the single GPU card and the dual GPU ones are at the higher resolution.