Can GeForce 8600 GT SLI be used as a single card?

[BurningIce]

Hi there.

I hope someone can help me, someone I know is selling 2 x GeForce 8600 GT (Gigabyte 256Mb GDDR3) cards. I'm assuming he used SLI action with the two cards. I ran a search online to get more info, in my results I saw that on the card's box it says SLI so it can be used for SLI. However I want to know can use just one of these cards alone on its own without SLI action, will it work? I think it should

Also I would like to know, is the GeForce 8600 GT (Gigabyte 256Mb GDDR3) better then the GeForce 8500GT 1024mb DDR2? Generally it is better but I'm asking since this 8600GT has only 256mb memory. Its DDR3 though which is way faster and better then DDR2 so thats a big plus. Any info on the matter will be appreciated thanks

 

[gracefully]

Yes, they can be used separately. I'm thinking that the seller wanted to sell both cards at once.

At higher resolutions, you would benefit from more memory. Especially if you enable anti-aliasing. Your FPS will suffer horribly, especially if the application needs more. I think the 8600 supports "TurboCache" (I'm not sure if this is the term nVidia uses), which allows you to use system RAM as video RAM.

I don't recommend you buy that card/those cards, unless they are dirt cheap. You can probably get a 9500 GT that has 1 GB of DDR3 and supports newer technologies such as DXVA acceleration for AC3 and VC-1 codecs. The 9 series is also more efficient that the 8 series.