EVGA NVIDIA 790i SLI Ultra / 9800GX2 1GB Review :: EVGA 9800 GX2 Layout

The first thing you’ll notice when seeing the card for the first time is its length as it’s a bit bigger than the norm. The card is as long as the 7950GX2 in many cases, meaning that some people will have to work a little to get the card installed in their case. The length is exactly the same as the 3870X2 from ATI. The 9800GX2 is a 2-slot card meaning that two adjacent slots in the case are required to be open in able to install the card properly.

EVGA decided to go with the reference NVIDIA cooling, two PCBs facing each other cooled by the enclosure. There’s an EVGA logo on the front of the card and the GeForce 9800GX2 name. The 9800GX2 requires an 8-pin power connector and a 6-pin power connector to operate these are on the top of the PCB, right next to each other on the card.

The IO on the card is kind of interesting. There are two Dual-Link DVI-I ports on the panel. Note, that the first one is the position where you need to insert the monitor input, as using the second one is useless. The last connection on the card is a HDMI connector for those that have HDMI monitors; this is the best connection and offers the best viewing. NVIDIA also supports dual monitor on a single 9800GX2 like ATI does with their HD3870X2 cards, but you have to disable the multi-GPU function to do so unlike the ATI card.