The Card

The main thing to look at with the reference based GX2s is the sticker that they choose to use on the card. In this case GIGABYTE has opted for the same design used on the front of their box which looks very cool.

What's cool about the GIGABYTE card is that they've also placed a sticker on the other side of the card so you can actually see what brand it is when installed in your case.

The rear of the card has a number of vents where the air is pulled in via the fan to help keep the two cores at a reasonable temperature.

Across the top of the card we have with us two PCI Express power connectors; one is the standard 6-pin connector that we're used to seeing, and the other is the 8-pin. Fortunately, if you don't have an 8-pin connector on your power supply then you can use the provided cable in the box.

Next to the power connectors we also have a little square; under that is the port for the loop back cable if you want to make use of the HDMI port and have sound carried through it.

Continuing across the top of the card we find ourselves with a little latch which reveals a single SLI connector. Unlike the 9800 GTX which has two connectors and supports up to three cards, the GX2 has only a single one supporting up to two. Fortunately, two of these cards give you the grand total of four cores.

The I/O side of things is just as you would expect for a reference based 9800 GX2. We have two Dual Link DVI connectors along with a HDMI port. We also have some vents at the bottom which let the hot air get out of the case.

Specifications

Like we mentioned earlier, the 9800 GX2 from GIGABYTE is just a reference design, so we find ourselves with the standard 600MHz Core, 1500MHz Shader Clock and 2000MHz DDR memory clock on the 1GB of GDDR3.