X-bit labs

Affordable Multi-GPU: Two GeForce 9600 GT in SLI (page 6)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 04/19/2008 | 01:41 PM ]

Test Results

First-Person 3D Shooters

Battlefield 2142

This game does not support display resolutions of 16:10 format, so we use a resolution of 1920x1440 pixels (4:3 format) instead of 1920x1200 for it.

Every graphics card tested can ensure comfortable gaming conditions here. You don’t have to buy a second card to have more speed in Battlefield 2142. However, the SLI configuration with two GeForce 9600 GT cards delivers the highest performance: it is ahead of the GeForce 9800 GX2 at 1920x1440 and rivals the 3-way and 4-way CrossFireX configurations based on Radeon HD 3870.

BioShock

BioShock does not support FSAA when running in Windows Vista’s DirectX 10 environment. That’s why we benchmarked the cards without FSAA.

As we learned in our GeForce 9800 GX2 review, the game is compatible with dual-chip configurations but we can’t achieve a noticeable performance growth using a pair of GeForce 9600 GT.

That is a bad news for affordable SLI even it’s just a single failure. Purchasing a GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB or 9800 GX2 will free from you potential problems with software support for SLI technology.

If you don’t have the necessary sum of money, you can still play the game on one GeForce 9600 GT as the frame rate is high enough even at 1920x1200.