Talking about SLI, we tested two Leadtek 9600GT Extreme samples and compared the results with the 9800GTX reference board. Performance wise you can easily judge that SLI can give you quite some extra performance, up to roughly 70% increased FPS! Here and there you'll stumble upon games which have less support for NVIDIA's multi GPU-technology, there you'll have to do it with around 30% extra performance. But on the other hand, even with the 9800GTX having only one GPU and thus probable less configuration problems, the card never took the lead in average frame rate over the dual 9600GT's branded Leadtek. Yet, again, in CM DIRT for example, the GT's had to deal with the phenomena called Micro Stuttering, this does not occur when using single GPU configurations.

~ Leadtek 9600 GT SLI reviewed and compared with 9800 GTX.

A few words on SLI. I cannot deny nVidia's SLI, while exciting at first is now thought of as a marketing gimmick which seduces the Gamer or PC-Enthusiast into spending twice the amount of money for two cards which produce twice the heat, require twice the power and take up twice the real-estate. The choice to release QUAD SLI updates in the future seems 4x as silly. The founders of 3DfX are more than likely rolling over in the proverbial 3Dfx grave, excavated while trying to integrate multi-GPU technology onto a single PCB. SLI reborn as Scalable Link Architecture IMHO probably coined the internal marketing phrase Profiting off the passion. Sadly we see this occurring throughout the PC-Industry. While I do respect Asus without whom there may be no "Enthusiast" since they were the pioneers of OEM, they are in the end a for profit enterprise.

~ Asus Extreme N6600GT Review - SLI on a Budget.

Both of these 9500 GT's perform well enough in my eyes. They're low-end and thus by definition not breaking and performance records. As both cards were released on day 1 of the official release, the prices are a bit high for low-end cards, especially when you compare against their DDR2 brothers and sisters. However, these prices will certainly drop and with the 55nm version coming, I cannot say these are not worth to consider. The last part of that sentence is important ... 'worth to consider' ... there are a lot of different products on the market and most of them are pretty much equal in terms of price/performance ratio. Some are better; some are cheaper and in the end it all depends on what card you feel is best for you. In the low-end segments, there is nothing like THE best card, there are a lot of possibilities. My advice, in other words, is that you should at least consider the 9500 GT when buying a low-end card.

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