The Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTX SLI consists out of two GeForce 9800M GTX in SLI mode. Each 9800M GTX is based on the G94 core with 112 shader processors. The chips are produced in 65nm. The power consumption of the SLI combo is 2x as large as of a single card (2x75W). Therefore, the 9800M GTX SLI is only suited for big laptops with good cooling solutions.



The SLI version of the 9800M GTX is about 0-40% faster than a single 9800M GTX (depending on the SLI support of the game and the driver version). In some games there may even be a slight decrease of performance. Futhermore, some games may suffer from micro stuttering in the range of 30 fps (because of the different frametimes). This means you may need more fps for a fluent gameplay experience. Still DirectX 10 games should run in high detail settings and resolutions fluently (see gaming section below).



As all cards with DirectX 10 capabilities, the GeForce 9800M GTS renders the 3D images using "Unified Shaders". There don't exist any more dedicated pixel- and vertex shaders but 2x112 so called stream processors make the graphic work (which has been done by pixel and vertex shaders in former days). Furthermore, the shader units are higher clocked than the chip (1250 MHz).



An advantage of the GeForce 9000 series is the integrated PureVideo HD video processor. It is able to help with the decoding of H.264-, VC-1-, MPEG2- and WMV9 video material in HD quality and eases the CPU.



In conjunction with the Nvidia 9100M G integrated graphics, the 9800M GTX supports Hybrid-SLI (only HybridPower). HybridPower is a technique to choose between the integrated and dedicated graphics core, if performance or battery runtime is needed. This works only in Windows Vista. Up to now the user has to use a tool to switch between the GPUs. Later Nvidia wants to switch automatically in the drivers. GeForceBoost is not supported with this card, as there would be no performance gain to combine the integrated GPU with the 9800M GTX.

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the 9800M GTS SLI should be a bit slower than the GeForce 8800 GT in SLI mode(which has a higher memory clock rate).

For more games that might be playable and a list of all games and graphics cards visit our Gaming List