It crashed at 850 core. The temps weren't too much higher, but the card just couldn't do it. At 100% the thing is extremely loud. I'd add it to my water cooling loop, but I'm going to step up when the next card comes out and that'd void my warranty.
No, I had two 9600GT's in SLI that I returned. My score with the 9800GTX is higher than I could get those, though I did have issues with SLI.