Power consumption:An extra card brings along next to the performance increase an increase in power consumption. We tested our SLI configuration in both idle and load test environments and noted down the power draw of our complete setup.
As you will see, the increase in power consumption is quite noticeable as one 9500GT at full load will draw as much power as two 9500 GTs SLI at idle.
In idle mode, the increase is 41.86%, in load mode, 21.62%, which is considering the performance increase not that bad.
Evaluation:First of all, let's have a look at the total performance increase charts. We calculated the performance increase in all different tests and averaged them to find the average performance increase over a reference 9500 GT single card solution.
Almost 60% increase, which is definitely not bad for an SLI configuration. In most cases, adding an extra card does not have this kind of improvement. Probably due to the weakness of the card, as at reference speed it's not that fast. Compared to an overclocked card, the SLI configuration is only about 30% faster. Notice that changing to the 9600 GT will make your gaming experience almost twice as good, because of a close to 100% performance increase.
At first sight, you'd all be cheering for the SLI configuration, but ... there is a little problem; to be more specific a little money problem. Below you find a price rating chart for which we consulted Geizhals.eu (€) and Froogle.com ($) and averaged the prices of 9500 GT and 9600 GT. The 9500 GT SLI rating is just two times the single 9500GT price, as you might have guessed.
A single Geforce 9600 GT is less costly than two 9500 GT cards. The choice is not hard to make.
Conclusive thoughts:In the end it is very difficult to recommend a configuration which is clearly outperformed by a card that is, if we follow Nvidia's logic, considered to be a bit faster, a configuration which is clearly using more power and is, to end with, more expensive. No, if you have to choose, don't go for the 9500 GT SLI configuration, but for the 9600GT instead.
However, the most interesting question is the upgrade cost if you want better performance than a reference clocked 9500 GT. My first answer would be: consider overclocking it! As you can see, the Galaxy sample comes factory overclocked and is about 20% faster than a reference card. If overclocking is not your thing, or you want even more performance, then there are two solutions:
Add one extra 9500 GT, costs about €63/$96. Don't consider this option if you don't have an SLI-ready motherboard. Otherwise the extra expenses will be dominated by the money you pay for a new motherboard.
Change to the 9600 GT, costs about €110/$170, which roughly is 75% more expensive than adding an extra 9500GT. However, if you sell you 9500 GT for 65% of the price, which is not much if the card is in good condition, you will be paying €69/$108. And that is close to the same you pay for an additional 9500 GT card.
Change to ATI HD Radeon 4670 which has proven itself to be almost on par with the 9600 GT performance wise, but with a below €100 price tag!
To finish, I would like to thank Selene from Leadtek and Igor from Galaxy for allowing us to re-test their 9500 GT based products, MSI for the P7N Sli Platinum, Vvikoo for being able to re-use the 9600GT and Tones.be, Belgium’s Biggest Hardware Shop for providing the Intel E8500 CPU.
'Till the next time, stay tuned!