BFG and XFX GeForce 9800 GTX cards
For our testing of the 9800 GTX our good friends at BFG Technologies and XFX sent us some retail samples and it is with their combined efforts that we get to test some 3-Way action. 

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The 9800 GTX is a two-slot design that is very similar to what we have seen on the newer 8800 GTS cards though the plastic on this card design is a bit cheaper feeling. 

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The connections on the front of the card included two dual-link DVI outputs, a single HDTV output and an LED light (located above the black screw on the left side of this photo) to indicate if you have power properly connected to the card.  I am curious to see NVIDIA suddenly drop the HDMI port that the introduced on the new GeForce 9800 GX2 card – it was a welcome addition. 

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Power is supplied by two 6-pin power connections and both are required for operation.  One REALLY annoying problem with this cooler design is that the tabs cut out of the heatsink plastic for the clips on the power connections are just not correct.  I am sure that NVIDIA will say they “built it to spec” and that everyone else is wrong but the fact is that on the power supply that NVIDIA sent with their initial 3-Way SLI configuration, a 1200 watt PC Power unit, the 6+2 connections just don’t fit without some twisting action. 

Why NVIDIA recently decided to mess with the power connection process, as they did on the 9800 GX2, is beyond me…

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Here is the magic that will permit us to test not just two-card SLI but three cards as well.

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The BFG bundle is fairly sparse with an HDTV dongle, single power adaptor and single DVI adaptor rounding it out.

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Here are the two XFX cards that were sent over – they are identical save the purple color scheme of the stickers.

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A little more robust, the XFX card came with the HDTV dongle, twin power and DVI adaptors, S-Video cable, HDMI audio cable and a copy of Company of Heroes. 

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