nvidia 8600GT SLI

You would be significantly better off with a single 8800GT.

Depending on the game, a 2nd 8600GT will give you a 0-80% improvement over a single 8600GT.

You wont even come close to 8800GT performance, ever.

Any decent shop owner wouldve suggested a single 8800GT over SLI'd 8600's any day of the week.

If he did, then good on him / her.

If they didn'nt... make sure you count your change before leaving.. as they've already robbed you for performance!

I dunno Darkstar Im using a Single 8600GT at the minute and it's not all that bad after a 25% O.C to gpu & shaders.

At least op didn't get one of the barebones "gaming machines" from tigerdirect that come with 2 7300s or 2 8400s.

To the op - What size monitor you playing on? and what kind of settings do want to play games at? and what games do you play?

As everyone is saying two 8600GT is nowhere near one 8800GT.

A couple examples -
Crysis - http://www.legionhardware.com/docu [...] id=710&p=2
Fear - http://www.legionhardware.com/docu [...] id=710&p=5

You may achieve 50% scaling with two 8600GT vs one 8600GT. But as you can see even if we consider 100% scaling for fun (not going to happen), a single 8800GT is still ahead.


At current prices, an 8600GT is a good card, close but not quite as good as the somewhat cheaper HD2600XT. But two 8600GT is not the best for the money. It easily puts you above the cost of an 8800GS or even 9600GT, which are both better solutions for the money.