![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Sunday , March 09, 2008
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
BFGTech 9600 GT OC in SLI vs. GeForce 8800 GTX
Will two BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC video cards SLI'd offer a better gaming experience than a GeForce 8800 GTX? NVIDIA thinks so. Let’s see what the real-world differences are with 9600 GT SLI and an 8800 GTX in Crysis, COD 4 & UT3.
Introduction
Two and a half weeks ago the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT was launched. We evaluated a BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC which produced amazing performance results in games.
The GeForce 9600 GT in summary is a performance-mainstream sub-$200 GPU aimed at an MSRP between $169-$189. (Although it can be found lower as of last week.) The GeForce 9600 GT contains 64 stream processors, 16 ROPs and is clocked at 650MHz core frequency and 1.625GHz shader clock frequency. The GeForce 9600 GT also brings with it a new compression technology that makes data compression more efficient across the narrow memory bus. Our BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC has a slightly higher core frequency of 675MHz. Memory is comprised of 512MB GDDR3 on a 256-bit bus clocked at 1.8GHz.
In our evaluation we found the BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT to be riding right on the coat tails of the GeForce 8800 GT. Its performance amazed us, thoroughly taking the crown away from the ATI Radeon HD 3850. While it performed well as a single-GPU, we did not get around to testing it out in SLI at the time of evaluation. During our briefings on the GeForce 9600 GT NVIDIA had made some interesting statements in regards to performance in SLI. They claimed that two GeForce 9600 GTs in SLI would actually be faster than a single GeForce 8800 GTX! This is a direct quote from NVIDIA’s ‘GeForce 9600 Reviewer’s Guide:
Of course, we must test this claim for ourselves and see what kind of gaming experience two GeForce 9600 GTs in SLI allows. Therefore we will be testing directly against a GeForce 8800 GTX in this evaluation.“In real-world performance, a pair of GeForce 9600 GT cards often outperforms a GeForce 8800 GTX.”
BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OC in SLI
Two BFGTech GeForce 9600 GT OCs await to show their stuff.
Installation is exceptionally easy with these 1-slot video cards. We placed each one into the appropriate slot, installed the bridge connector, power connectors, and were up and running after a driver install. Since both video cards are in a single-slot design there is plenty of space between them to allow good airflow.