Several 9800's on eBay

http://computers.search.ebay.com/9800_Desktop-Laptop-Components_W0Q...

It seemd like AMD's 3000 seris and nvidia's 9000 series are just refreshes of the previous gen. Back in the day, the 9800GTX would have been the 8900GTX.

Nvidia is now recycling same hardware but baring different names. Now they are at the path of extinction if they go forward that way.

ATI 4000 series will be out this June. One reason Nvidia releases prematured video models with not much new on it.

Meh..

These specs look fake. 256-bit? 512mb? The 8800GTX was 384-bit and 768mb. Why would a 9800GTX have lower specs?

At most, this card would barely surpase the 8800GTX. BARELY.

So, barely any faster than a GTS 512 then? It barely seems worth the wait when you can easily overclock a GTS to those speeds?

I guess this explains why none of the vendors chose to address the obvious bandwidth limitations of the G92's 256bit memory bus .

Lets hope ATI can surpass all expectations and produce a winner, soon. I don't buy a new graphics card every year and I'm not about to buy last year's tech.

It would be fun to upgrade from my ATI 9800 to a Nvidia 9800

how many derivatives can nvidia of the G92 core ?
8800gt, 8800gs,8800gts, 9800gt, 9800gtx, 9800gtX2, 5 all ready + xxxx + xxxx?
the latest (one or 2) are still unknown from what I've read on a internet
PS the G92 is a victim of her success:)).

It's going to need to be under $450 and a fair bit faster than the 8800GTX Ultra to beat the current leader 3870 X2.
Not worth it if it's up in $600 territory.

IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAND

Although from a business point of view, I can understand why Nvidia is milking the G92. It's pure profit right now.

However, I don't understand their naming convention. They didn't leave too much room for higher clocked models, although I suppose they could use 9900...

1688MHz memory clock? That sounds like they're desperately trying to get as much marketable clock speed out of the chips as they can manage consistently. 1675MHz I think would have been enough. Or 1676 if going for the even number due to DDR.

OK, guys before you get all over excited, the code name for the 9800GTX is the G92-420, could it have 420 stream processors, maybe? That would make it tons more powerful than the 8800GTX.

It looks like they planned on using 9x00 names when 8800gt released, but didn't for some reason? That would have been just like 6x00 to 7x00 and gf3 to gf4.

EDIT: My guess is to keep up sales of 8800 gts/gtx.

I sense that nVidia wants to do the 9xxx series names quickly, and do something different (name wise) for their next generation architecture rather than do "GeForce X". If they do name it that then someone should fire their marketing guys.

The 9600GT looks like a good purchase for the midrange buyer, and is what the 8600GTS should have been last year. This 9800 seems barely more powerful than the previous best, it should have been an 8900 (and the 9600GT an 8700GT).

Anyone interested in a 9800GTO sticker to put on their 8800GTS512's?

You may not be aware that nVidia has a full bore design effort going on the true next gen GPUs. It started a long time ago after the G80 design was completed. The intent is two-fold -- to simultaneously address the GPGPU market and the graphics market. The next gen will have full double-precision data-paths, latest Dx10.x incarnation, may have some architectural changes to better address parallel computations in GPGPU applications, and obviously include the bevy of video-processing features associated with the latest G9x chips. The Ageia acquisition may have some influence on the architecture of the new GPUs, but there will never be a dedicated PPU from nVidia. The GPGPU part of nVidia's business is rapidly expanding and is highly profitable. Their GPUs using the CUDA toolset are being employed as desktop powerhouses for engineering and research computation. The demand for such accelerated computation is huge. Time in money/lost-opportunity in industrial applications.

nVidia has been very coy about the timing of their next-gen introduction. Certainly likely before the end of this year. Meanwhile, nVidia is very cleverly re-configuring the current G8x/G9x architecture to cater for the pent-up mid-to-lower range demand for decent graphics acceleration, while simultaneously competing with ATi's efforts in a similar massaging of the R6xx architecture.

The G9x/9xxx designation of the latest product offerings seems to be more of a marketing ploy than anything else. The only obvious excuse for the 9xxx designation might be the shrink to 65nm coupled with lower-power and the significantly improved video-processing features in the G9x group of GPUs.

Will the true next-gen family of GPUS from nVidia have a G10xx designation? It sure will NOT be G9x... Maybe nVidia does not yet know quite how they will present that evolution to the marketplace.

9800GTX = 8800GTS 512 OC w/ 3-way SLI (something it should have had from the beginning)

Nvidia is going to get a chunk bitten out of it's ass by AMD if they don't step up their game. Sure, their cards are the fastest right now but how long will that last? AMD will have a "proper" GPU with 32 ROPs (instead of the R600's 16) and 480 shaders out very soon. AMD's UVD playback is cleaner than Nvidia and they have good driver support going for them lately as well. Also for the F@H crowd, AMD is the only way to go and the client will be out pretty soon (I'm in the know, don't ask).

If it's G92-based, sounds like nVidia's just plain ignoring DirectX 10.1. AFAIK, none of their cards are compliant yet (only the Radeon HD 3850/3870 are).

Kind of disappointing there, if this is true.

Maybe they should have called it the 8900GTX or something, it seems like an upgrade along the lines of the old 7800 to 7900 lines.

You'd think they'd reserve a big product name like 9800 for a brand new arch/chip design.

I think alot of you have gotten way caught up into the whole videocard race. Performance has reached the point where it can play ANY games out at very high resolution and high details. Even then, its not just the video cards that determines the level of realism, its the creative design and the proprietary game engines (Unreal 3, CryEngine, etc).

So really, who cares about the latest videocards and their benchmarks. I want to see some new designs that makes these cards quieter, smaller, and takes less electricity.

So 18 months on we'll get something 15% quicker than an 8800GTX. That card has to be the best PC gaming investment I've ever made.

Agreed. $600 very well spent.

So 18 months on we'll get something 15% quicker than an 8800GTX. That card has to be the best PC gaming investment I've ever made.

Wow, I'm underwhelmed. The "next generation" of video card is an overclocked 8800GTS-512?

I think I will hang on to my 8800GTX for a while longer.

So still 256-bit? I guess it's 8800GTS 512 via Step-Up for me, then.

I was waiting for 9800GTX to be G92 with >256bit, but it looks like that's not happening.

Sucks when there isnt competition to push progress along...

That's some very minor tweaks. There are already 8800 GTS offerings with 675MHz core speeds.

Three-way SLI looks like a dud right now.