NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX 512MB

The GeForce 9800GTX is a hefty graphics card, but not the largest we have encountered. As can be seen from the picture below, the GeForce 9800GTX is a bit larger than the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT but noticeably smaller than the workstation-grade ATI FireGL V8600 1GB.

Cooling the NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX is a dual-slot cooler and covers the entire PCB, which is identical to the reference design. On the face of the cooler for the EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR is their logo, "e-GeForce 9800GTX" branding, and some minor artwork (resembling fireworks). The GeForce 9800GTX is a PCI Express 2.0 graphics card, but is backwards compatible with PCI Express 1.0 slots. On the side of the graphics card are two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. Both of these connectors must be fitted for proper usage. NVIDIA recommends at least a 450W power supply when using a single GeForce 9800GTX. A few centimeters away from these power connections is an HDMI audio input. Unlike the R600+ GPUs, the G92 has no integrated APU. If you wish to use audio over an HDMI cable with video, a pass-through cable must run from the audio source to the graphics card.

The GeForce 9800GTX supports up to three-way SLI. Scalable Link Interface is one of the NVIDIA technologies that is supported on Linux. There is sufficient area around the graphics card cooler's shroud for the SLI bridges and PCI Express power connectors. At the end of the graphics card are two dual-link DVI connectors. Using the included adapter, there is also support for outputting to TVs with HD support.

On the back of the graphics card the black PCB is exposed. There are a number of stickers on this side as well as power circuitry. The GeForce 9800GTX graphics card cooler can be easily removed by taking out several screws.