well the 9800gx3 is gonna be dual gpu, and its supose to be 30% faster than the ultra, if the 9800gtx isnt faster then a 9800gx2, and is only slightly faster than an ultra, and is just gonna be a new chip, where gonna have alot of ****ed off people here on tech forums.
Here's the best way I can explain it:
The 9800GX2 is technically, at the hardware level, pretty much 2x G92 8800GTS in SLI in one card (two PCBs though). All the specs are the same. And some early reports are indicating this performance-wise.
Now... in the past, the new flagship from a new series would always beat the flagship of the old series, even when the old series was in SLI. So an 8800GTX would've beat two 7900GTX in SLi. Seeing as how the G92 technology is 8-Series technology and it's been used to its full potential (the 8800GTS G92 has all SPs enabled, higher clocks would not yield major improvement) The next single-gpu flagship from Nvidia, for the 9 Series, should be a new GPU entirely, and it should be more powerful than the 9800GX2 for that reason. They really should've named it the 8800GX2 or 8900GX2, or something within the 8 Series.
The only thing I can see working at this point is that their single-gpu 9 Series flagship becomes the 9900GTX, but what happens if the single-gpu flagship is weaker than the GX2? Then what? If it's slightly weaker, then why not go to the GX2? If it's much weaker, then why not go to an 8800Ultra? It just won't work to have the single-gpu flagship weaker than the 9800GX2, so it either has to be stronger... or maybe, not even exist at all
What if the 9800GX2
IS the flagship 9 Series card.. what if there is no 9800/9900GTX, what if we have to wait until the 10 series before we see a huge revamp in the gpu tech??