GeForce GTX 480 3-way SLI review [Guru3D.com]

[Guru3D News]

GeForce GTX 480 3-way SLI review
Back in January we already heard that SLI performance would be outstanding with this new series and well that definitely tickled my senses and taste buds. As a results...

More...

[Dahbob]

Great review, massive heat and power consumption but atleast there is massive performance backing it up. I'm really jealous of nVidias SLI scaling vs ATI Crossfire

btw, Comment on this article link is wrong at the verdict, it goes to http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=317785

[Ieldra]

Great review as usual HH.
Power consumption is insane ! But kudos to nV for how well those babies scale

[Omagana]

Wooo awesome scaling compared to X-fire.

Question tho, why does adding a 2nd 480 increase the noise so much more than adding a 2nd 5870 does?

480 SLI put noise up by 12dba
5870 X-fire put noise up by 4 dba

Why?

[Aura89]

I kinda of wonder if the CPU bottlenecking would (in the multi-threaded games like BFBC2) do better with a Phenom II x6? would be interesting to test, at the very least

Oh, and i still want a BFBC2 benchmark article done with cards such as the GTX 260/275/280/285/295 vs the 470/480/460 (when it's released)

[kapu]

ZOMG Performance.

Notes :

- Heavy Bad Comapny 2 Bottleneck - Would like to see SIX Core here tested or heavy OCed Quad - Please Hilbert do it , would be totally awesome Please

- It does play Crysis.

[sdamaged99]

ATI could definitely learn a thing or two from Nvidia's driver team. SLI support is absolutely superb, and as much as i think Nvidia have dodgy business practices, the fact remains that they do MUCH more than ATi to ensure that new games work out of the box on their cards.

So many benchmarks show so many different things though - it's difficult as a consumer to know what is right

link removed

[sdamaged99]

To be fair to Nvidia though, there are many "TWIMTBP" titles as they spend money to work with the developer ensuring their games run as they should. ATi don't do this, and this is credit to Nvidia imo. This is why we have issues like BFBC2 loading problems on the 5*** series and have to wait weeks for a patch. Nvidia try and reduce the likelihood of issues by testing before releasing

I may own ATi cards, but i don't mind admitting Nvidia do more for PC games than they do.

[Ieldra]

Originally Posted by RAVEN1001

LOL, you do know that the 400 cards have the same loading time issues in BC2? which has already been fixed by ATI a few week back, keep looking through them green tinted glasses.

Aight raven... Calm down there. No one in this thread is being partial to nVidia. Maybe we're misinformed, maybe you are. No need to act all high and mighty and treat us like morons

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

Raven is no longer part of this forum for consistently trolling.

[Ieldra]

Originally Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Raven is no longer part of this forum for consistently trolling.

Oh. Well that's solved.
Well now that we have the honor of having the Don himself in this thread... I'd like to ask a q...
If tri-sli hits 1kW, how high do you think it'll go when its on WC with some heavy OC?

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

Originally Posted by Ieldra

Oh. Well that's solved.
Well now that we have the honor of having the Don himself in this thread... I'd like to ask a q...
If tri-sli hits 1kW, how high do you think it'll go when its on WC with some heavy OC?

You know .. what i noticed is that the when the actual fans start to spin up at HIGH RPM the power consumption starts to really rise. So they are part of the problem.

However it's a good question, we have some liquid cooling GTX 480 stuff coming up and I will verify that for you (with a single card though).

[Crimson King]

great review!

i'd like to see a benchmark between 2 5970 and 2 480 instead. the price is almost the same, 2 5870 cost about a half. it should be fun .

for those who complain about scaling i'd remember that most of the game out now are developed with nvidia, how many games do you see with ati logo at the beginning? so yeah, great scaling but also a lot of money spent with game developers. if i remember well amd economic situation wasn't that good, so credit to them that were able to release powerfull, quiet and not power hungry cards. maybe if they priced the 5870 500€ on launch and the 5970 at 950€ they would have quite a few more money to spend...i'm sure there always be people willing to pay 500€ for a card, but they didn't...


ps sory for my bad english

[sdamaged99]

Originally Posted by Crimson King

for those who complain about scaling i'd remember that most of the game out now are developed with nvidia, how many games do you see with ati logo at the beginning? so yeah, great scaling but also a lot of money spent with game developers.

I agree.

[kapu]

Originally Posted by sdamaged99

To be fair to Nvidia though, there are many "TWIMTBP" titles as they spend money to work with the developer ensuring their games run as they should. ATi don't do this, and this is credit to Nvidia imo. This is why we have issues like BFBC2 loading problems on the 5*** series and have to wait weeks for a patch. Nvidia try and reduce the likelihood of issues by testing before releasing

I may own ATi cards, but i don't mind admitting Nvidia do more for PC games than they do.

BFBC2 problems are on ATI and nVidia.

And actually ATI Fixed the loadnig but with newest Drivers while nVidia didnt.

Get your info straight before you post.

I Agree nVidia SLI scaling is better than ATI but it's not huge difference it's not something game breaking.

[sdamaged99]

OK fair enough the BFBC2 problem affected both parties, but i still say SLI support is more prevalent than Crossfire due to more effort on Nvidia's part

[sk8zophrenia]

i like the jet-powered bicycle image u used, hilbert
cant wait for 470 tri sli benchmark

[Sash]

It is safe to say that it will run Crysis
The question is.. will it blend?

Hmm the center card must have a bad day when running GTA 4, Metro, Stalker etc...

[inklimited]

Originally Posted by sk8zophrenia

i like the jet-powered bicycle image u used, hilbert
cant wait for 470 tri sli benchmark

Meh... noone is going to spend that kind of cash to run into a CPU bottleneck.

Damn, that's some power with nowhere to go. 1kW!

[Wanny]

Geez makes me want to go 2-way 470 SLI even more. . . . . . . . . .

[ownz]

think the 480s gives pretty nice fps in most games and not worth getting the third card ..
its like 6degrees+ and what gives 5% more fps bleh

didnt know that 260 216 is hotter then 5970 in temp stress damn my card is hot

[civato]

Nice review , hope you guys do one with watercooling and see what it does on the energy consumption . No more the high voltage fan on that Fermi.

Keep up the good work !!

[Ieldra]

Originally Posted by ownz

think the 480s gives pretty nice fps in most games and not worth getting the third card ..
its like 6degrees+ and what gives 5% more fps bleh

didnt know that 260 216 is hotter then 5970 in temp stress damn my card is hot

3-Way SLi is massively bottlenecked by CPU. Really want a 980X at 4+GHz to see what it can do...
Also don't forget that drivers still have space to mature, particularly for 3-way and 4-way sli

[DF-1]

3x was DYING for a better performing processor.

[Spetznaz]

Nice REview HH

Damn, ridiculous power consumption for a ridiculous performance. If you run 3-way sli with say a 1200w psu I wonder how far can you oc an I7 before you reach the limits of the psu.