Verdict: A single 9600 GT provides excellent bang per buck; the same is true of two.

Traditionally, ATI and Nvidia used to mark the launch of a new series of GPUs with a high-end card capable of demolishing any game - and any enthusiast's bank balance - it came across. However, the GeForce 9-series debuted with the mid-range 9600 GT, which to confuse matters even further was priced at only a few pounds less than the awesome five-month-old mid-range 8800 GT.

Despite its GeForce 9-series moniker, the 9600 GT is less advanced than the GeForce 88-series GPUs. It has far fewer stream processors (64 as opposed to 112 or 128), although it still has 512MB of GDDR3 memory. The GPU core is typically clocked at 650MHz, while the stream processors run at 1.625GHz. The GDDR3 runs at 900MHz (1.8GHz effective) and is connected to the GPU via a 256-bit memory controller. Thanks to this sensible balance of stream processors, memory and clock frequencies, the 9600 GT is relatively power-efficient, with our test rig drawing just 292W from the wall with a single 9600 GT running flat out. This is all the more impressive when you consider that its power consumption is a good deal less than that of the 320MB 8800 GTS, yet the 9600 GT is up to three times faster in some games.

A single 9600 GT will set you back around £110, which costs around £20 less than an 8800 GT or ATI Radeon HD 3870. The single 9600 GT achieved a smooth frame rate in most of our test games, although Crysis and ArmA proved to be too much for it and jerked along, with minimum frame rates in the mid-teens. However, the 9600 GT has lots of overclocking potential ,so it may be possible to make these games playable if you overclock the GPU, stream processors and RAM.

Still, for £110, a single 9600 GT provides adequate performance in most games, although the single-slot stock cooler is pretty noisy and the GPU temperature gets rather high.

Two-card SLI

If you have a compatible motherboard, you can link a pair of 9600 GTs together in SLI. Given that each card has only a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector, two-card 9600 GT SLI doesn't consume a silly amount of power - merely an additional 86W over a single-card configuration.

With SLI, Crysis still wasn't quite smooth enough for our liking, with a minimum frame rate of 23fps, but the second GeForce 9600 GT increased the minimum frame rate by 53 per cent at 1,680 x 1,050. ArmA benefited much more from SLI, with the minimum frame rate leaping from a jerky 16fps at 1,680 x 1,050 to a trouble-free 30fps. Other first-person shooters also benefited from two cards, and we were able to ramp up the resolution in Call of Duty 4 from 1,680 x 1,050 to 1,920 x 1,200 while still maintaining a smooth minimum frame rate of 35fps.

Both driving games responded well to the second 9600 GT, with DiRT accelerating from a borderline minimum frame rate of 20fps to a considerably smoother 31fps, allowing us to guide the car around corners and obstacles with far greater precision.

Disappointingly, although the second 9600 GT nearly doubled the average frame rate in Supreme Commander, the minimum frame rate remained stubbornly at 11fps, a mere 2 per cent faster than it was with a single 9600 GT. Worse still, like many SLI systems, the two 9600 GTs ran Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts slower than a single card, although the drop of between 4 and 6 per cent is far more palatable than the colossal fall you see with some 8-series cards in SLI. That said, a drop is a drop, so it's definitely worth disabling SLI when playing this game.

The minimum and average frame rate also dropped a few frames per second in Oblivion, although the game still ran smoothly, allowing us to run through the angry blue elf in the Arena with our sword without too much trouble.

Conclusion

A single 9600 GT is one of the best mid-range cards to buy right now, as it can play most games smoothly at medium resolutions - bar Crysis and ArmA. It's encouraging, to see that adding a second 9600 GT significantly improves the frame rate in most first-person shooters and driving games, and increases the average frame rates in RTS titles, if not the minimums. A second 9600 GT brings 1,920 x 1,200 gaming within reach in many games, too, including ArmA.

The GeForce 9600 GT shows SLI off to the best of its abilities, as a second card yields decent speed boosts across many of our games. This doesn't mean that investing in two GeForce 9600 GT cards is always a brilliant idea. If you need to change your motherboards to run in SLI, don't bother; but if you already have one, there's a strong argument for adding a second card. Two 9600 GTs in SLI are quicker on average than any of Nvidia's single graphics cards, aside from the GeForce 9800 GX2. At £220, the cost of a pair of GeForce 9600 GTs is considerably cheaper than the £350 9800 GX2 too. There are benefits to having a single card, of course - it's quieter, cooler and you won't need to worry about your favourite games needing an SLI profile - but a pair of GeForce 9600 GTs is as good as dual-card SLI gets.

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