Should I SLI my old video card or break down and buy a new one?

Oh man, I think my buddy uses one of those…. as a space heater!

Seriously, I picked up a fanless GT 240 w/ 1GB for under $100 that would eat any of the 8600-series cards for lunch. I don’t do much gaming myself (not enough to justify a $500 video card), but when I do, I want something decent, and I have to say that I am moderately impressed with that Zotac card of mine. Not only is it faster, it has the side benefits of being silent and of drawing less power. There are other modern cards out there in the same price range (~$100) that could likewise pimp-slap even a dual-8600 rig, so I say upgrade.

Just be sure that you get the right one. I wound up with a nice, new 9600-series for my last computer simply because the person who gave it to me accidentally got the AGP instead of the PCI-E version and couldn’t return it. That probably isn’t an issue since AGP slots are rare these days (PCI-E is the norm now) but you just have to be sure.

When @jerv says “9600-series” above he’s talking about a Radeon of course.
My old card is an 8800GTX, not an 8600. They are pretty different IIRC. My 8800 is a two-slot card that is over ten inches long and weighs about six pounds. It takes two Molex connectors to make it work and its squirrelcage fan was the loudest thing in the box.
I took it out because even with my 600-watt power supply the thing would cause brownouts and made my system unstable. I swapped it out for a fanless lightweight GeForce 6500, since I do even less gaming than @jerv does.

SLI is a great thing, but by all means buy a new card rather than SLI an old beast like that. You’ll get more power per dollar and fewer headaches. If you come into more money you can always SLI the new card down the line, right?

@koanhead I remember it was a Geforce 8×00, but forgot the value of x.

Now, the 8800-series were actually decent cards if you go merely by performance; they are about 2–5 times as fast/powerful as the 8600-series and about 50% better than my GT240, but they also draw 2–5 times as much power and put out enough heat that you pretty much have to go with liquid cooling (or liquid nitrogen) if you want to keep your case temps low enough to not fry an egg or your CPU.

I would go with a GTX 460 1gb. It will be about $150—$180 but will be able to run most games at high res at maximum settings without any problems. It is also a pretty power efficient card and won’t cook anything else in your case.

The GTX 460 would be more future-proof as well, so it’s definitely not a bad choice.
My only knock on it is the price. It might be worth it to me if I were more serious about my games, so I think which card you choose depends on your priorities.

SLI is touchy as well as some games don’t fully support it, leaving you running them on just one card as well.

Go for the GTX460 as @Lightlyseared suggested or a comprable ATI card if that’s what you prefer.

I found this list extremely helpful when shopping for a new card, especially when a higher model number doesn’t correspond to better performance:

PassMark Video Card benchmarks

@jaytkay That is my “go-to” site for comparing GPUs. And you are correct; my GT 240 beats a pricier GT 430 even though 430 > 240.

However, I think that if value matters, a GTX 260 might be better; 75% of the performance for 65% of the price. If I wanted to put up with the noise of the GPU fan, I would go that route.

BTW, the closest Radeon card is the HD 5850 which is only marginally faster but notably more expensive. The HD 5830 is a bit slower (somewhere between the GTX260 and GTX460) but still a better value than either and a huge step up over any of the 8600/8800-series GeForce cards. Actually, many modern cards are :/

Thanks everybody, I’ll do some more research and let you all know what I decide!