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Help with SLI.. 460's vs 480

A

ability

Member
Hey,

I've been doing a lot of research lately and have discovered that two 460's in SLI would be better than getting a single 480 in my setup. However, I have already bought the RAM (dual channel) and CPU (i7-870) in my setup.

I am curious if the limitations on all 1156/P55 motherboards with the PCI-e slots running at 8x/8x together will be a problem (I haven't found one where you can run both PCI-e at 16x). From what I can tell, the 1366/X58 motherboards run both PCI-e at 16x/16x.

In the end, the SLI 460's will cost slightly more due to the motherboard upgrade vs the 480, but taking into account the better performance, the lower power consumption, and possibly the noise, according to most benchmarks I've read.. I think it's worth it. I'm just not sure if the 8x/8x will hinder the cards and make them not perform as well as one 480 running at 16x.

I'm not familiar at all with SLI, so please help. Thanks.
 
long time user of sli/crossfire here. I would definately take one GTX 480 over 2 460's .

8x/8x will not be a bottleneck. countless reviews have show this already
 
Happy gtx460 sli owner here, your question about 8x 8x has been answered. Not a performance factor.
With any multi-gpu setup, a 5970 type or two cards some extra attention sometimes needed for driver profiles for maximum performance.
I have the gigabyte p55 ud4p board that has a extra slot between the two cards. Works nice.
 
Why pay more for less performance just for a possible upgrade later, which would cost even more! Go with a 460sli.

Right now the 460 is the best bang for the buck, which means its value won't drop as much as a 480 will when you sell it to help pay for your next upgrade.
 
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If a single GPU, in this case the 480, will do the job for you it's the better solution. There have been, and I'm sure will continue to be, SLI/Crossfire issues that you don't have to worry about with a single GPU.
 
Well make sure you get a good power supply if you think you'll do two GTX 480s. Don't get anything rated lower than 750W, and if you plan to overclock get the biggest PSU you can afford.
 
cusideabelincoln said:
Well make sure you get a good power supply if you think you'll do two GTX 480s. Don't get anything rated lower than 750W, and if you plan to overclock get the biggest PSU you can afford.
Click to expand...

I was planning on the AX850 from Corsair. I have a i7 870 which will be slightly overclocked, nothing extreme.

Should that work with two 480's?
 
I would suggest a good 850W. A single stock 480 can draw close to 300W. If you want to OC a pair of them, though, 1KW wouldn't be overkill.
 
suprising that nobody mentioned 6970. that looks to be significantly faster than gtx 480 and will be out in ~ 6 wks. announcement is this week.

would definitely choose a single card solution every single time vs dual card/gpu as long as performance is reasonably close. all those websites pimping sli/xfire probably use single cards themselves for their own gaming rigs.
 
One 480 would be my choice. 460 SLI is about 20% faster most of the time, but not all the time. You have to ask yourself and check benches to see if that 20% actually brings you a level of playability in the games you want to play that the 480 doesn't.

For a 20% increase it may not be worth some of the drawbacks of SLI. Also, you leave yourself open to getting a second 480 if you want more.

You might want to consider waiting one week to see how 6870 Crossfire performs and/or one month to see the 6970.

If your preference is an nvidia card, waiting is still to your benefit as they should be dropping prices soon. Particularly, I would guess for a 480 price drop as the 6970 will be a faster card than the 480, so long as the 6970 does not get priced too far above $450 the 480 should come down a bit in cost.

If the 480 got chopped down to $350 or so, 480 SLI would be some potent performance for $700.
 
What resolution are you going to be playing at? If you don't feel like waiting for HD6000 series launch, then I would probably grab 2x factory pre-overclocked GTX460 such as MSI Hawk (780 mhz GPU) for $210 x 2 = $420 if your monitor is 1920x1200 or less.

These 2 cards should be fast enough for almost any game out there other than Metro 2033 with heavy tesselation and depth of field. When this setup is too slow for you, grab another 1 or 2 cards in 2 years. Buying 2x GTX480s in an $800+ is pretty steep imo (esp. when 6970 is around the corner and these cards will surely plummet in value soon after).

If you are going to be playing at 2560x1600, I would probably wait for 6950 CF or 6990.
 
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Grooveriding said:
One 480 would be my choice. 460 SLI is about 20% faster most of the time, but not all the time. You have to ask yourself and check benches to see if that 20% actually brings you a level of playability in the games you want to play that the 480 doesn't.

For a 20% increase it may not be worth some of the drawbacks of SLI. Also, you leave yourself open to getting a second 480 if you want more.

You might want to consider waiting one week to see how 6870 Crossfire performs and/or one month to see the 6970.

If your preference is an nvidia card, waiting is still to your benefit as they should be dropping prices soon. Particularly, I would guess for a 480 price drop as the 6970 will be a faster card than the 480, so long as the 6970 does not get priced too far above $450 the 480 should come down a bit in cost.

If the 480 got chopped down to $350 or so, 480 SLI would be some potent performance for $700.
Click to expand...

Due to my monitor choice and the 3D capability I want to have, I'm gonna stick with nVidia. I have had two ATI cards in the past (long long ago) and both have been incompatible with games before. I know this is the past, but nVidia has grown on me during that time.
 
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