While i love my games and my current xfx 8600 zalman 256mb edition lets me run everything iv'e thrown at it on medium settings from todays range of games.

I've been given the opertunity to get another of these cards i could SLI for £43 which is cheaper than anywhere else i could find this card, but of course befor buying a second one for SLI i know im still going to be stuck on 256vram but i cannot find any card that would give me a better upgrade alternative for the same price.

I know it might be helpful to know what games i do/would like to play and so:

Currently, Savage 2, Unreal tournament 2008, C&C3 Kains Wrath and Age of conan (which this card handles far better than i expected)

Would like to play, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Spore.

I just dont want to be stung by thinking SLI is the answer and up to 90% improoved performance as labled could be anything and i've head a few stories of only minimal gains from SLI and with a tight budget at the moment, i dont want to throw my cash down a potential SLI toilet.

Often i see a good bit of advise floating arround here and as a forum search for 8600GT revealed nothing usefull i thought i's ask, hoping some of you who are more well informed than myself might have a suggestion.

My thanks to any and all who read/reply

SLI'ed or not, the 8600GT is weak. If you read this: http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2007.html you can see that even with SLI, the 8600GT is slow.

Best solution is to save up and grab something like an 9800GTX+, HD4850, 9800GT, etc.

SLI'ed 8600GT does not offer much of a performance boost to justify the cost; performance still sucks.

SLI is worth it only for the high end cards in my opinion 'cause the only to get better performance is to link an identical card (as an example, there is no single nVdia card that will beat a 280 GTX).

Save up some money, even if it is only a few £ per week, eventually you will be able to a single faster GPU that can beat two 8600GT SLI'ed without breaking a sweat.

you can probably pick up an 8800 GT which is a substantial boost in performance for around a 100 bucks now and i think thats about 50£

or save up a lil more and get a 4850 which is a substantial boost from the 8800 gt for about 75 - 80£

take a look at the 4850's - well worth it massive jump in performance

you can google around the web for sli and, you will find out that it is not really worth it,when you consider that 1 8800gt will play/run most games available and most up coming at very enjoyable frame rates,furthermore sli'ing is not environmentally friendly at all,,in conclusion no an 8600gt is not worth upgrading,if you liked the 8600 then an 8800gt will blow you away,and very nicely too,and for a not bad price also... bottom line is this,once you get a video card that can output 40-60 fps no matter what is on screen anything after that will not be noticable,,after all the movie industry has gotten away with 24fps for about 100 years or so..

Buying another 8600gt is a very bad way to spend £43. You can pick up an 8800gt (new) for about £80 now and that will offer much better performance. If thats too much then grab a 8800gt or similar off ebay.

If you're really tight on cash get either a 9600gt, 9600gso, hd3850 or hd3870.

I've had two 256mb 8600 GT in SLI before and its not at all thrilling, it was actually quite a let down, i still couldn't push Crysis more than med settings with no AA, which is why i ordered a 9800GT, which should be here soon, if i were you just hold out and save up for an 8800GT or better, and don't buy a card with less than 512MB of mem either, 256 is the new 128, 256MB just doesn't cut it anymore

My advice is to save up for a 512MB 8800GT or 9800GT. You won't regret it

I'd personally choose the 8800 GT since its cheaper and the same banana. but at the same time look for a 4850, since it will be even better than the 8800 GT, and some do cost around the same.

Plus you'll have DX 10.1, and Star Craft 2 will have that Woohoo (diablo 3 as well if I'm not mistaken )

as black widow said, a geforce 9600-series or radeon HD38x0 series card would be a good bet. If you can afford to spend a bit more, get an 8800GT, or even a 4850.