My friends buddy is getting a 2nd 8800GTS 640MB to run SLI.  We sort of have a little unofficial competition going between a few of us.  I was just curious what sort of performance will he see from this? He runs them stock speeds with an E6600 C2D.  Does anyone have this setup or close to it?  What frames are you getting in games and what do you score on 3dMark05 & 06.  Im just curious.

what resolution he plays @ ?

19" so 1280x1024.
 
3dmark has a default setting so that shouldn't matter on that.

He won't see much improvement at such a low resolution.  1 GTS 640 is enough to play almost any game maxed out at that res.  I think he would be better off putting the money toward a larger screen.

Eh, at 19" 1280x1024 he is probably already far exceeding the refresh rate of his monitor, therefor the extra performance is not noticeable. It will, however, raise his 3DMark06 scores most likely. The benefits would probably greater if he was running games in DX10 as well, since that is pretty taxing on 1 GPU... but DX9 or XP... eh. For $250-300 more... not worth it if he is currently getting good FPS in games w/ high settings.

 
He is not techy at all, our mutual friend built his system for him. He plays WOW and not much else, he could run that on pretty much anything. But I think he just want's bragging rights. As soon As my buddy said he was trying 3-way SLI he wanted a 2nd card. for what reason? I dunno.  
 
That's what I did last time I made an upgrade, went from a 17" to a 22" widescreen. It was definitly a wise choice. I got lower frames but its so much prettier to look at.
 
I was just curious, we joke with each other and chop the other one down.  Don't worry if he gets that 2nd card and starts bragging I'll just start into his little 19" screen and say how he has all that horsepower and not enough road.  I got my Core 2 Back when they first came out and he had to one up me with the e6600.  To bad he has not concept of Overclocking and I blew his butt away when I got mine to 3.2GHz.  I think we all just instigate the other into getting something better every so often.

Also, I'll bet money that he will see absolutely NO difference at all in WOW. None... ever... zilch... zero... I'd suggest that he get a bigger monitor with the money instead. He should get a nice 22" wide 226BW for about $339 at office depot. Now that's a well spent investment.
 
Tell your friend that you can:
1. Increase his electric bill  
2. Increase the temperature of his room
3. Increase his fps by 30+, but he will not be able to notice the difference. (Be sure to include the part about him not noticing the difference)
 
All this for the price of a second GTS. Also, tell him we all scoff at his tiny monitor.
 
*Also, does he have an Nvidia chipset? If not, that's an extra $190+ he's gonna need to drop on an SLI motherboard.

I'm running my 8800GTS 640 at 1440x900 and have zero problems with any game I play, from World in Conflict to COD4.  No reason for him to go SLI.  He would only notice a benefit if he saved up another $1700-$2000 and picked up a 2560x1600 HD widescreen.

Wow, I can't wait to hear about how his PSU will go kaputt when he adds in the second card and the other friend that is going to try 3-way.

Yeah he baled out on the 2nd GTS.  Although my buddy did get 3 GTX's in SLI and i still think its a complete waste.  One card is ok temp wise, the 2nd runs hot, the 3rd run super hot.  he has to points a 120mm fan right between them because there is no room to get cool air to them.  He later found only Vista supports Tri Sli and so he did Vista Ultimate 64 bit. He had issues running a number of games. COD4 was AMAZING though. he has a 24" WS monitor running at full res everything cranked up.  I have to admit it looks so pretty. Not worth it though. Crazy fool.

I just got my second 8800gts 640mb card today and put crysis to the test. Freaking Amazing. All settings on high (detail area) and Antilasing set at 8x. Runs smooth at 1920x1200 resolution. Have good cooling for them runs HOT! I have to point a big fan right at it to keep it cool in a full tower(Thermaltake Armor Case). My advise get the second video card, make sure you have a decent size monitor and you won't be disappointed. Have a good one.

My Computer
Asus M2N Deluxe Motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 3.0gh
4gb Crucial Ballistix 4-4-4-12
500gb and 750gb Hard Drive 7200 Hitachi
Thermaltake 850W PSU
2 8800 gts 640mb in SLI
24in Monitor 2ms 1920x1200 Resolution
Windows Xp Pro

No reason to buy the second card for bragging rights.  Running default 3dmarks or playing wow at 12x10, I think he'd be more embarrassed by his results, and money spent, than proud.  Neither would scale well.  
 
Crysis at 12x10 very high though, he would kick some serious butt with that SLI setup.  As an example look at 72% scaling  with dual G92 vs single G92. http://www.digit-life.com/articles [...] -pcie.html