After recently publishing an article which looked at the performance of two GeForce 7300GT cards in SLI, we have received a number of requests for a similar article based on the 7600GS. More than likely the reason is that the GeForce 7600GS has become a very affordable option over the past few months.

In fact just recently Newegg.com ran a rebate on the BFG 3D Fuzion GeForce 7600GS which reduced its price to $60. Unfortunately that opportunity is now gone, but for a short period of time you could have bought two 7600GS cards capable of running in SLI mode for just $120, which is roughly the price of a single GeForce 7600GT.

If you were to buy a mid-range Nvidia graphics card today, what would you get? Currently a no frills version of the 7600GS will set you back about $95, while the average 7600GT card is ~$140. Because of the close price range and the potential of being able to put two GS cards running in parallel, then the question becomes which will deliver the best performance?

Personally I am not much of a believer of SLI or Crossfire, unless the scenario was that you are upgrading in the long-run to a second, cheaper card than the original one was. However with prices of the 7600GS dipping so low at times, it might become a worthwhile investment. Therefore in today's article we will be comparing an overclocked GeForce 7600GT to two 7600GS cards operating in SLI with their default core and memory frequencies as well as an overclocked configuration.

The 7600GS usually offers a great deal of overclocking headroom whereas the 7600GT does not. However, I did find that once in SLI mode, the overclocking potential of the 7600GS cards were significantly reduced.

Overclocking when in SLI mode can be a little sensitive, as I have found in the past and these two 7600GS cards are not the exception. Using a single 7600GS a core clock of 512MHz and a memory frequency of 944MHz were possible without compromising stability. However, once in SLI the core was limited to 500MHz and the memory to 900MHz. Even without the frequency boost the SLI 7600GS cards should be able to outperform the single 7600GT at higher resolutions such as 1600x1200, or so we expect. Read on for more details.