Whereas NVIDIA is inching towards releasing its DirectX compliant GF100 GPU from which it has high expectations, some of its partners don't seem to give up on the two-generation old G92. Galaxy has almost finished designing a graphics card that uses two GeForce GTS 250 GPUs on one PCB, in an SLI on card setup. It refers to the card as "DualCore GTS250", and consists of a long blue PCB which holds two G92-426 GPUs (G92-426 GPUs are used on low-power variants of the GTS 250).

Each GPU is wired to 1 GB of GDDR3 memory across its 256-bit wide memory interface (total 2 GB on board). The two GPUs are connected to the system over an nForce 200 BR-03 bridge chip. The multi-GPU system is contained within the board, with no SLI fingers for expansion, even though G92 chips are Quad SLI capable.

EVGA finished its twentieth release of the EVGA SLI Enhancement Patch, a software that adds to the GeForce system drivers' SLI profiles specific to applications. These SLI profiles help applications take advantage of multiple GeForce graphics cards in SLI, or dual-GPU GeForce accelerators such as the GeForce 9800 GX2 and GeForce GTX 295. Version 20 (01.15.10) adds SLI profiles to Dark Void, Serious Sam HD, and Avatar (Demo). This patch is based on GeForce drivers 195.81. The latest version of GeForce drivers from NVIDIA bring SLI profiles to the latter two games. Registered EVGA users can download the software from here.

Slated for CES '09, the GeForce GTX 295 would spearhead NVIDIA's quest for performance supremacy. The dual-GPU card consists of two G200b graphics processors working in an internal multi-GPU mode. VR-Zone collected a few more details about this card.

To begin with, the two GPUs will offer all their 240 stream processors unlike what earlier reports suggested. On the other hand, the memory subsystem of this card is peculiar. The card features a total of 1792 MB of memory (896 MB x 2), indicating that the memory configurations of the cores resemble those of the GeForce GTX 260, while the shader domains resemble those of the GTX 280 (240 SPs). The entire card is powered by an 8-pin and a 6-pin power connector. The construction resembles that of the GeForce 9800 GX2 in many aspects, where a monolithic cooler is sandwiched between two PCBs holding a GPU system each. The total power draw of the card is rated at 289W. The card has a single SLI bridge finger, indicating that it supports Quad-SLI in the same way the GeForce 9800 GX2 did (a maximum of two cards can be used in tandem).

From the beginning of this month EVGA started selling its first GeForce 9800 GX2 water block - the Hydro Copper 18 waterblock with a 100% copper design and SLI compatibility. Starting today, EVGA will start offering the block along with an EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2 video card (part number: 01G-P3-N899-AR). Regardless of the full cover high-performance water block, the EVGA card comes with stock clock speeds - 600MHz for both NVIDIA G92 GPUs, 1512MHz for the 256 Stream Processors and 2000MHz for the 1024MB of GDDR3 memory. This bundle is compatible with all 1/2" and 3/8" water cooling systems, barbs are also included in the package. The e-GeForce 9800 GX2 Hydro Copper 18 1024MB is available now in extremely limited quantities, so if you can afford to pay the $699.99 premium for it, hurry up.

Have you ever thought that gaming parts like NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GTX video cards for instance, can be used for building a supercomputer. Maybe no, but researchers at the University of Antwerp in Belgium have proven that it's possible to build one. Using four NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards, AMD Phenom 9850 processor, 4x2GB Corsair Twinx DDR2 PC6400 memory and MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard, FASTRA costs less than 4000EUR to build and thanks to NVIDIA's CUDA technology and delivers roughly the same performance as a supercomputer cluster consisting of hundreds of PCs. This new system is used by the ASTRA research group, part of the Vision Lab of the University of Antwerp, to develop new computational methods for tomography. Tomography is a technique used in medical scanners to create three-dimensional images of the internal organs of patients, based on a large number of X-ray photos that are acquired over a range of angles. ASTRA develops new reconstruction techniques that lead to better reconstruction quality than classical methods. You can read more about the FASTRA GPU SuperPC project over here.

EVGA is proud to announce the first ever EVGA designed GeForce 9800 GX2 water block - the EVGA 9800GX2 Hydro Copper 18 waterblock (part number: 200-CU-HC18-B1) with a 100% copper design and SLI compatibility. Being a full cover block, the Hydro Copper 18 is compatible with all reference 9800 GX2 cards and can be used in both 3/8" ID and 1/2" ID water cooling systems. Available now for pre-order, you'll have to hurry up if you want to buy one, because the block is said to be produced in a limited quantities. The price is little steep though, $249.99.

NVIDIA was reported today to plan on changing the G92-450 GPUs found on current GeForce 9800 GX2 cards with an updated G92-451 parts. However, the transition will be almost invisible as the G92-451 is pin to pin compatible to G92-450. Cards won't even need an updated BIOS. The reason for this change is due to improved manufacturing yields and ensured continuity of NVTTM production supply. That's also the part where previous reports of NVIDIA shortening the life-span of GeForce 9800 GX2 become somewhat doubtful.

XFX is widening its NVIDIA graphics card line-up with the introduction of two "Black labeled" GeForce 9 series cards. Available in limited numbers the G92 products include XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 1.0GB DDR3 Black Edition (PV-T98U-ZHB9) overclocked to 700MHz/1700MHz/2.1GHz core/shader/memory clocks and XFX GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB DDR3 Black Edition (PV-T98F-YDB4) with factory clock speeds of 760MHz/1900MHz/2.28GHz for the core, shaders and memory clock speeds. Both cards will come bundled with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed game.

This information from Expreview may dissapoing many GeForce 9800 GX2 owners if true. NVIDIA is about to EOL (end-of-life) the GeForce 9800 GX2 line-up in just three months, as a result of two new GT200 cards - the single GPU GeForce 9900GTX and the dual GPU GeForce 9900 GX2. One of the GT200 cards will have similar performance and production cost as the GeForce 9800 GX2, which will force the manufacturer to cut down the "older" card. There will be no rebranding for 9800 GX2, like the GeForce 8800 GS which will become 9600 GSO, but just a sudden death. Meanwhile, details of the new GT200 graphics are still unknown.

Asetek, the firm that created the mighty Vapochill phase-change cooling system and recently became entirely OEM cooling manufacturer has announced the availability of its latest creation - a full-cover liquid cooling block for GeForce 9800 GX2. The block is using a hybrid cooling technology whereby the GPU is cooled by a liquid cold plate while the memory and power sub-systems are cooled by a fan. This enables the cooling system to reduce the GPUs' temperatures by over 25°C compared to the standard all-air solution and do so while maintaining noise levels of just 22dBA. Asetek's GeForce 9800 GX2 cooling system is said to be ready for OEMs but its price tag has not been revealed. From what I know this type of cooling might pop-up in the form of the next gen exotic ASUS and Leadtek graphics cards, where the water block price will be included in the overall price.

As of next week water cooling experts Aqua Computer will start offering the aquagrafx 9800 GX2 for all GeForce 9800 GX2 video cards. Made out of 2 pure copper water blocks (99.9%) connected via a terminal made of Delrin, the aquagrafx 9800 GX2 is said to be extremely thin and therefore pretty light, with total weight under 800g. The aquagrafx cools both GPUs, all mosfets, the GDDR3 RAM chips and the bridge chip. The fittings of the aquagrafx are G 1/4". Pricing for the cooler will be 129.90 Euro. Aqua Computer also offers to sell you a GeForce 9800 GX2 card with the block preinstalled and covered by their warranty for 619.90 Euro.

EVGA is now introducing an update to the fastest graphics solution, the EVGA 9800GX2 Superclocked, KO and SSC. Up to 86.4 Billion/sec Texture Fill Rate on the SSC Model gives you the ultimate in extreme performance. 100% testing ensures the highest level of performance and stability possible. This same level of testing and quality allowed Vince "k|ngp|n" Lucido to hit nearly 30,000 points with a single EVGA 9800GX2. EVGA makes the GX2 even more extreme giving you the ultimate in high-definition gaming performance.

Alienware this afternoon upgraded its Area-51 gaming tower to take advantage of NVIDIA's latest video offerings. The new system uses NVIDIA's just-introduced nForce 790i Ultra SLI mainboard and now has the option of adding a single GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card. These two GPUs on a single card will boost the price by $600. The new system will be available on April 10th.

Introduced just a few hours ago, the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 can already be voltmoded thanks to the clever guys at VR-Zone. If you're lucky enough to receive your brand new dual GPU card soon, and the stock clock speeds and voltages are not enough for you, feel free to follow these steps here and voltmod your 9800 GX2.

Although there's not yet been an official press release directly from NVIDIA, a number of graphics card manufacturers have today released their GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards. The card itself features two graphics processors with a reference speed of 600MHz core and 2000MHz memory, with 256 stream processors and DirectX 10 support. All cards released so far come equipped with 1GB GDDR3 memory. You can take a look at techPowerUp!'s own Zotac GeForce 9800 GX2 review here. Companies that have already released a 9800 GX2 include Zotac, XFX, Point of View, BFG, Club 3D, Leadtek, SPARKLE, Inno3D, EVGA, Albatron, Walton Chaintech and Foxconn.

NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card is now available to pre-order from shopblt.com, for a price of $598.41. Although the release date is still unconfirmed, the site has an estimated time of arrival as 03-22-2008, which could well be the official launch day. The actual card being listed is from PNY Technologies, although no extra details are given.

Graphics card manufacturer Albatron sent us some pictures of its upcoming GeForce 9800 GX2 today, which are shown below. The company commented that NVIDIA is allowing it to display the cards at CeBIT 2008, but as the launch date is not officially until later this month it was not able to provide any specifications.

Still unreleased the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 can already be fitted with a 197 Euro water block. Set to cool all the card's vital components like GPU, RAM, the bridge chip and PWM area on both PCBs this block is Quad SLI ready and able to fit on all reference GeForce 9800 GX2 cards. Unfortunately, German is not my best language and that's the main reason for the brief introduction. Readers seeking for more information can click here.

German site Allround-PC.com has acquired a few new pictures of NVIDIA's upcoming 9800 GX2 graphics card, which is set to become the company's flagship consumer card when it's released next month. The card will have two 65nm GeForce 8800 GPUs working in SLI on a single card, with a 600MHz core, 1GHz GDDR3 memory and a 1.5GHz shader clock. The pictures are below.

VR-Zone informs that the upcoming GeForce 9800 GX2 launch will be delayed again till March 18th. No reasons was provided by NVIDIA, but the delay is probably due to driver issues. Right now, according to unconfirmed reports the card is scoring about 14k+ in 3DMark06, which is lower than Radeon HD 3870 X2.

NVIDIA finally revealed the clock speeds of the GeForce 9800 GX2 codenamed D9E-40 today to its partners. Stock speeds for all 9800 GX2 cards are set to 600MHz for core, 1.5GHz for shaders and 1GHz for the yet to be finalized in size GDDR3 memory. Hypothetically the card's performance should be slightly higher than 2 x 8800GT in SLI. Today also marks the start of GeForce 9800 GX2 working sample shipments to all NVIDIA partners, so expect more and more pictures of the cards over the net from now on. The official launch is less than a month away on March 11th, two days after the end of CeBIT 2008.

Some last minute news from the informer VR-Zone. According to this information, NVIDIA has canceled the GeForce 9800 GX2 introduction during CeBIT 2008. All NVIDIA partners are ordered not to show the new card during the German computer show. The official launch date is set for March 11th and partners will receive the reference cards about a week before this date, meaning that working samples will already be available during CeBIT, but none of them will show its power.

According to VR-Zone the launch date for GeForce 9800 GX2 has been set to March 11th this year. The second NVIDIA dual card will see public for the first time during this year's CeBIT. Working samples and final specs are still to be released. NVIDIA has also asked its partners to put a label on their product boxes to address concerns about end users plugging in the 8-pin connector for motherboard into the 8-pin PCIe power connector on the 9800GX2 card.

Pictures from the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 dual card popped up online again, showing some new exclusive details never seen before. More pictures can be found here.

Some bad news coming from the NVIDIA corner, if true. Expreview reports that almost all of NVIDIA's upcoming products will be delay till March. That includes: nForce 780a, 750a, 790i, 790i and Ultra chipsets, as well as the GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics. There's no official reason for the delay, neither new release dates. The delay will probably make ATI's Radeon HD 3870 X2 video card, the fastest available graphics in the market for a while. Only GeForce 8200 will make it in time and stick to its original February launch schedule.