GTX480 Tri SLi review

[Cookie Monster]

Maingear GTX480 Tri SLi review

Maingear GTX480 Tri SLi vs HD5970 XFire

I was wondering what performance would be like in Tri SLi. Well I came across this, and its quite mind blowing in terms of performance and power draw (1500W PSU is required).

Also note from the reviewer:

If you have any testing requests over the next couple of days, let me know - because I can't keep these cards here forever.

Btw, the case interior is that of the Raven 1 with a custom outer shell. Looks pretty neat.

 

[Udgnim]

so the answer to can it play Crysis maxed is GTX 480 Tri-SLI

 

[JSt0rm]

finally we have something that can play crysis!

 

[happy medium]

So the ultimate gaming system is 2 or 3 gtx 480's.
2x 5970 scale preety bad. Sometimes 2 gtx's beat it.
I guess if you have the money for 1000$+ in video cards ,you can afford a better psu.

 

[OCGuy]

Wow...insane!

And I doubt you need a 1500w PSU. The 2nd and 3rd cards are not as stressed as the primary.

You can get away with a 900w PSU for 2 (there is a guy on EVGA forums running 2 on a 850w), you would not need to add 600w for a 3rd.

 

[Skurge]

I think the 5970s are running out of video memory as the review says there were momentary slowdows. id like to see what the new 4gb 5970 can do.

 

[Apocalypse23]

I still think 3x 5870 in CF would be better in-terms of performance, cost and efficiency. The reviewer also missed out on Dirt 2 and BFBC2.

 

[DooKey]

I still think 3x 5870 in CF would be better in-terms of performance, cost and efficiency. The reviewer also missed out on Dirt 2 and BFBC2.

I just got rid of 5970+5870 trifire because it doesn't scale as well as 480 SLI. 2x 480 cost $1K, 3x 5870 cost $1.2K and still loses to 480 SLI. Pull off your fanboi hat. I don't get you people. Right now best performance for games is 480 SLI, bottom line.

 

[OCGuy]

It looks like for those with the cash, 480 SLI is the way to go.

 

[Apocalypse23]

I just got rid of 5970+5870 trifire because it doesn't scale as well as 480 SLI. 2x 480 cost $1K, 3x 5870 cost $1.2K and still loses to 480 SLI. Pull off your fanboi hat. I don't get you people. Right now best performance for games is 480 SLI, bottom line.

I really doubt you had a tri-fire 5970+5870 set up first off. Secondly, I'm not a fanboy, I look at what appeals to me most in terms of cost and efficiency as money surely doesn't grow on trees for me. The 5870 in tri-cross fire on 10.3 drivers should give top notch performance, about 3 gb in memory plus a ton of overclock headroom. Benchmarks have shown that the single GPU cards CF better together. The potential and mammoth of the tri-fire 5870 performance should be noted. The games that really matter these days, are the newer titles such as Dirt 2 (Dx 11), then BFBC2, Metro2033, Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. Also, 3dMark Vantage is a worthy benchmark not to be ignored. We all know that most of the rest of the older titles can play fine on any card.

I don't get you anonymous posters.

 

[Skurge]

And you guys come to that conclusion when he tested 3 TWIMTP games?

 

[happy medium]

And you guys come to that conclusion when he tested 3 TWIMTP games?

As far as I can see most games are TWIMTP. At least the better ones.
I have about 25 games on my drive and most of them give the little Nvidia song.

Can't blame Nvidia for working to make games work better on there cards,can you?

 

[Skurge]

As far as I can see most games are TWIMTP. At least the better ones.
I have about 25 games on my drive and most of them give the little Nvidia song.

Can't blame Nvidia for working to make games work better on there cards,can you?

I could've phrased my post better, what I meant was it seems a bit premature declaring 480SLI the best for gaming when the only games tested were games widly known to run best on NV hardware. Crysis is a good test. but batman and FC2? really? Batman wasn't even a complete bench.

Metro 2033, Stalker, BC2, Dirt2 would have made much better tests.

 

[smackababy]

It looks like the SLI scaling is as nVidia promised (almost 100&#37. Not bad, but I still enjoy my 5850 CF months ago.

 

[mhouck]

Wow...insane!

And I doubt you need a 1500w PSU. The 2nd and 3rd cards are not as stressed as the primary.

You can get away with a 900w PSU for 2 (there is a guy on EVGA forums running 2 on a 850w), you would not need to add 600w for a 3rd.

Yeah, just checked out slizone and they have a couple 900w PSU's listed for 2. They have a couple of 1200w listed for 3 way. It's still fairly intense but what why are you going to buy a 1000w+ PSU if you aren't going to use it.

Interesting comparison. As others have mentioned I would like to see some more dx11 games. If there is a current GPU limited game Metro is it from the reviews I've seen. Put 3x480 to that and see how it runs. According to Legionhardware, that game is nearly full bottlenecked at the GPU.

 

[ronnn]

And you guys come to that conclusion when he tested 3 TWIMTP games?

Don't wreck their fun. They have been promising these cards since October and they almost have some for sale.

 

[Attic]

I don't know if i'd want to bite on 480 tri sli, but if I had the money i'd go 480 sli with watercooling matched with a Corsair 1K.

I would not want to run 480SLI no matter it's performance unless I went watercooling due to the noise they produce in tandem.

But i've done watercooling before, it's a bitch to upgrade graphix with a GPU in a water loop. 480Sli should last,... right?... well we'll see. But if I had the money I'd give the setup a whirl.

 

[toyota]

I really doubt you had a tri-fire 5970+5870 set up first off. Secondly, I'm not a fanboy, I look at what appeals to me most in terms of cost and efficiency as money surely doesn't grow on trees for me. The 5870 in tri-cross fire on 10.3 drivers should give top notch performance, about 3 gb in memory plus a ton of overclock headroom. Benchmarks have shown that the single GPU cards CF better together. The potential and mammoth of the tri-fire 5870 performance should be noted. The games that really matter these days, are the newer titles such as Dirt 2 (Dx 11), then BFBC2, Metro2033, Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. Also, 3dMark Vantage is a worthy benchmark not to be ignored. We all know that most of the rest of the older titles can play fine on any card.

I don't get you anonymous posters.

about 3gb of memory? 3 5870 cards will have 3gb total but only 1gb of usable ram. thats the problem with the 5970 too at 2560 because its actual usable ram is 1gb so with plenty of AA it exceeds that in some games at that res.

I dont get the Batman score for gtx480 though. in the 16x AA and phsx run going from 1 to 2 cards gave only 3 fps but going from 2 to 3 cards gave 35fps? I think they used the 3rd gtx480 as a dedicated physx card when running 3 cards but clearly used regular sli when running just 2 cards in that phsx run.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Yes. Twas a poor review and any further discussion would be moot.

 

[SolMiester]

That case sure is nice though....

 

[Grooveriding]

I can confirm the Crysis findings with my setup. At 2560x1600, once you turn on AA, 5870 1GB crossfire gets hammered due to lack of VRAM. It's the only game where I'm seeing that. Crysis has massive textures and AA is killer with all the foliage. The 2GB 5870s will definitely rectify that.

GTX 480 sli looks nice. It's a shame that with a full half video card cycle to produce the card, nvidia could only give us a 15% increase over the 5870s though, should of been closer to 40%.

Have to wait and see if nvida actually has anything that can touch the 6XXX series later this year, or if it's just another string of promises to keep people in the market for the high end waiting six months.....

 

[Apocalypse23]

about 3gb of memory? 3 5870 cards will have 3gb total but only 1gb of usable ram. thats the problem with the 5970 too at 2560 because its actual usable ram is 1gb so with plenty of AA it exceeds that in some games at that res.

I dont get the Batman score for gtx480 though. in the 16x AA and phsx run going from 1 to 2 cards gave only 3 fps but going from 2 to 3 cards gave 35fps? I think they used the 3rd gtx480 as a dedicated physx card when running 3 cards but clearly used regular sli when running just 2 cards in that phsx run.

Crap I didn't know that the memory would be a bottleneck....argh...

Question: If I run the following setup, will I be memory bottlenecked?

(2GB 5870 + 1GB 5870) CF ?(in this case does the system use 2 GB of memory if 2gb5870 is in slot 1)?
(2GB 5870 + 2GB 5970) CF? (in this case, would the system use 2GB of memory per gpu in CF)?
(2GB 5870 + 4GB 5970) CF (in this case, would the system equally use 2GB of memory?)
(4GB 5970 + 1GB 5870) CF (" ")

I'm getting a little worried now looking at bottlenecks...Running extreme settings and going eyefinity proof, I'm wondering if the 2GB 5870 and 4GB 5970 is something I would have to look in to?

Let me know.

 

[toyota]

Crap I didn't know that the memory would be a bottleneck....argh...

Question: If I run the following setup, will I be memory bottlenecked?

(2GB 5870 + 1GB 5870) CF ?(in this case does the system use 2 GB of memory if 2gb5870 is in slot 1)?
(2GB 5870 + 2GB 5970) CF? (in this case, would the system use 2GB of memory per gpu in CF)?
(2GB 5870 + 4GB 5970) CF (in this case, would the system equally use 2GB of memory?)

I'm getting a little worried now looking at bottlenecks...Running extreme settings and going eyefinity proof, I'm wondering if the 2GB 5870 and 4GB 5970 is something I would have to look in to?

Let me know.

only in the last case would you actually have 2gb of memory.

 

[Apocalypse23]

only in the last case would you actually have 2gb of memory.

That's crazy, so basically I'd be looking at spending something like $489 CAD on a 2GB 5870 + ($699-$799) on a XFX 4GB 5970 = $1289 on just two video cards...I already spent $1570.91 including taxes on 3 video cards! lol!

 

[MagickMan]

Screw that, you'd have to channel the ghost of Nikola Tesla to find a way to power a machine with 3 of those.