Testing

For graphics card testing we run through a series of synthetic and real world benchmarks and compare the results to previous cards that we have tested. The tests we run are as follows:

3Dmark06, 3Dmark05, 3Dmark03, FEAR benchmark, X3 Reunion benchmark, HL2: Lost Coast benchmark and two different resolutions of our own BF2142 demo (1600*1200 & 1280*1024).

To achieve as accurate a score as possible all tests were run 3 times and the average of the results was taken.

The other hardware I used to test this card was as follows:

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.48ghz
Crucial Ballistix PC8500 @ 897mhz
MSI 650i P6N SLI Platinum
Antec Earthwatts 500w

The driver's used for this review were Nvidia's 158.19.

Tests were run with a single 8600GT, overclocked 8600GT and 2 overclocked 8600GT in SLI.

Overclocking

Since I had overclocked a single card in my review of the 8600GT I knew roughly what one of the cards was capable of and since you can't set each card at seperate frequencies I set both cards to 640/835. Luckily for me, the new card handled this fine so I began the testing.

NB. Both cards were capable of holding this overclock without the aide of any active cooling. However, I placed a single 120mm fan above them to guarantee stability.

Results

The performance jump from SLI can be clearly seen in these 3Dmark benches. There are huge gains in 03 05 and 06 with a near 100% score increase in 03! The 06 score is equally impressive with the final score coming close to what an 8800GTS 320mb would yield.

Again we see huge gains from having two cards in SLI over the single overclocked card. In every benchmark bar X3 reunion there is near 100% gain. It's nice to see the synthetic and gaming benchmarks agreeing for a change.

Cost

For two of these cards you are looking at spending around £180 which is about £20-£30 less than an 8800GTS which is their nearest rival at this price point.