12 - The Conclusion
The verdict
I've already stated in the standard single card review that the 9800 GTX hits a certain soft sport. In roughly 4 weeks from now we expect this card to hover at around 250 EUR / 299 USD. And that makes SLI a little more interesting. Right now with one card you'll have excellent performance, but say in a year from now when the more advanced newer games start to take it's toll .. it might be a very worthy upgrade to get some extra life-span out of your PC. Then again, you'd get pretty darn close with 9600 GT & 8800 GTS 512MB in SLI as well. That's something you might want to consider. I'll include some SLI performance updates on such setups soon in the Guru3D VGA charts.
Of course if you are a bit more enthusiastic end-user you can go for two of these puppies right away. Quite honestly, it works pretty darn nice and in 2008, SLI definitely is a proven concept. If you want to go completely crazy, the 9800 GTX cards will allow you to got 3-way SLI. And while that's throwing away money .. the reality is that for roughly 750 EUR you can achieve that goal. And that's a lot better than dropping 1800 EUR on three 8800 Ultra's.
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With the G92 GPU embedded onto the 9800 GTX also come the positives, and the most important one; it's consuming less power than the older 8800 GTX. And when you consider to go for SLI, these are factors you need to weigh into your purchase. Not only is being green cool, it'll also save you money on your power-bill, you can use a lower specced PSU and so on. Obviously you can also opt for a GeForce 9800 GX2, as the benchmarks have shown ... both cards are pretty much equal performance wise.
With the GeForce 9800 GTX the lads from BFG once again place a nice product onto the market. For current series 8800 end-users the advice is simple though, don't upgrade, really. Performance wise you will not benefit from it. If you are in the market for an upgrade, the 9800 GTX comes very recommended due to it's aggressive pricing. BFG tops your purchase off with a life-time warranty (in the USA), which is just a nice feature. Outside the US you are limited to 10 years warranty; which is still incredibly much. Again, in the USA they now also offer a step-up program which might be interesting for you.
Awards time, BFG will get you that truck-load of warranty, which is just awesome as well. Price performance wise your really can't go wrong here either. So yeah, I like their 9800 GTX. With that in mind I'm granting BFG our "Gaming essential" award.
You can check out the POV GeForce 9800 GTX single card review at the link below.
Later guys.
