Sli ready graphics card but no bridge pins

They don't need the bridge because they just do all the communicating over the PCI-E bus and the commands otherwise handled by that connector are done in software instead. Of course it also introduces additional CPU overhead for such software SLI as well. A Single 9500GT would probably outperform those two cards in SLI though so I'd return them if it was me.

thank you very much for your help.

a friend and i got them a long while back. he upgraded his last week so he gave me his one for free since i have a sli motherboard and the same card already. i figured using 2 would be better than 1 even though all i do with my pc these days is browse the internet or watch videos. i do not have intentions on spending to upgrade atm; i intend to do a major/complete upgrade of all parts early next year.

do i just have to update the nvidia drivers and slot the other one in and viola? or is there anything else to do?

I did some testing with that generation of cards, and you can enable SLI without the bridge. HOWEVER, my tests revealed that performance only went up in OpenGL apps, not DirectX games. In fact, putting two cards in SLI without the bridge can LOWER your DirectX performance, so don't do it.