THE NEW GRAPHICAL king ofthe hill is here: Nvidia's GeForce 9800 GX2. We test¬ed the MSI N9800GX2¬M2D1G. This card is a pow¬erhouse. In fact, it physically feels like two 9800 GTX's sandwiched into a single card and the specs justify that notion -- it has two 128 Processor Cores, 1GB GDDR3 memory (512MB per GPU). With a 600-MHz core clock, 1500-MHz shad¬er clock and 1000-MHz memory clock, it promises to crush benchmark scores.

The 256-bit memory interface is a bit disappointing. Beyond generating topflight graphics, the 9800 GX2 also delivers 2560-by-1600¬pixel video with support for High-Definition Content Pro¬tection (HDCP) over both the card's DVI and HDMI outputs. The card bears the brunt of video decoding for H.264, VC-1, WMV, and MPEG-2 high-definition (and standard-definition) movies; plus, it will handle the all-im¬portant 3:2 and 2:2 pull¬down corrections for video¬philes that crave accurate video reproduction.

This card has support for Nvidia's HybridPower tech¬nology. This cuts down on wasted wattage. When you're performing tasks that don't require the card's full¬blown horsepower, it'll throttle down the GPU and switch over to the integrated graphics card on Nvidia branded motherboards. This is only possible with the newest 790i chip set from Nvidia, though.

The only negatives right now, besides the price, are the size and power require ments to get this beast up¬and-running.)f you have one of those slim-profile PCs, you might as well look the other way: This card won't fit your chassis. The double¬wide card measures about 11 inches, spanning from the built-in fan on one side to the two dual-link DVI ports (and one HDMI port) sprouting out of the back. Before you starting making upgrade plans, make sure you'll have ample room inside your case before you even consider this card. Power consumption is also an issue. This card requires about 197 watts to run.

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If you're ready to swallow the high cost, what do you get for your money? In our performance tests, the 9800GX2 raced to new highs in all our benchmarks. We had to test at 1920x1200 to actually stress this card. And finally, we were able to use Crysis at 1920x1200 at High Quality settings and actually get 40 frames per second. This was with AntiAliasing disabled, though. With 2X AA, it dropped to 27 fps, which is still reasonable.

At 1280x1024, with 4XAA, the card managed to pump out a smooth 40 fps. The other games fared equally well- Company of Heroes got 48 frames at 1920x1200 with high settings, Unreal Tour¬nament 3 got 107 frames at 1680x1050, Supreme Commander got 55 frames at 1920x1200. The final test was 3D Mark 2006, and it scored a healthy 13163 in this. The problem is that the difference between this and a standard 9800 GTX (that costs Rs.15,000 less) is only about 10-20 percent.

Despite being two cards in one, it isn't noisy. The fan runs slowly, and only kicks in when required. This makes it a little noisier, but inside a case it shouldn't sound too loud. The card has an HDMI output on board, and MSI supplies an HDMI cable inside the box. This is useful for connecting it to HDTVs, but you'll need to plug a small cable for audio from the video card to your sound card. This is not as convenient as ATI's approach of putting a sound chip on the graphics card itself, but it works, and the cable is in the box.

The kicker is the price: Rs. 37,500 is a lot of money, and we really don't see too many people spending so much to get a card that offers a 20 percent improve¬ment over a card that costs a lot less. Still, it is a technological tour de force.