NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 set up in 3-way SLI, tested against Radeon HD 5870 and 5970

Not many mortals will ever have to worry about choosing between a three-way GeForce GTX 480 SLI setup, an equally numerous Radeon HD 5870 array, or a dual-card HD 5970 monstrosity, but we know plenty of people would care about who the winner might be. Preliminary notes here include the fun facts that a 1 Kilowatt PSU provided insufficient power for NVIDIA's hardware, while the mighty Core i7-965 test bench CPU proved to be a bottleneck in some situations. Appropriately upgraded to a six-core Core i7-980X and a 1,200W power supply, the testers proceeded to carry out the sacred act of benchmarking the snot out of these superpowered rigs. We won't spoil the final results of the bar chart warfare here, but rest assured both camps score clear wins in particular games and circumstances. The source link shall reveal all.

[Air2ground Posted Apr 20th 2010 4:57AM]

How many FPS can the triple SLI GTX 480 rig get playing WoW in 640x480 window?

[mikachu Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:09AM]

@Air2ground Not sure but my guess would be... Full. :D

[Jaster Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:18AM]

@mikachu LOL ... can you even run WoW in 640 x 480 :D ....

[incognito Posted Apr 20th 2010 4:59AM]

Hey, sexy mama... wanna kill all humans?

[Ducman69 Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:06AM]

My two 4870x2s don't choke on anything thats out on my 1080P bigscreen, so not seeing the point of these unless people are running tri-monitor setups.

[amneziac Posted Apr 20th 2010 8:27AM]

@Ducman69 The point is...they're trying to make people buy 3 video cards, instead of 1 or 2.

[Dummy00001 Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:16AM]

5790 Cross Fire for 1140€) v. 480 3-SLI for 1650€ ...

ATI doesn't look all so bad.

[MGS88 Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:26AM]

@Dummy00001 thats what all about to me "performance by money"

[combouser Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:22AM]

my slot 1 PII needed more power than this back in the day. Well maybe not...

[revoltracers Posted Apr 20th 2010 6:01AM]

@combouser Ah, the days when we used micrometers to describe manufacturing processes, not nanometers.

[iLikePickles Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:33AM]

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!!!!!!!!!!!!

[iLikePickles Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:38AM]

hey, if you watch closely, you can see that those 3 cards make a perfect surface for a frying something... meat! lots of meat! i like meat.. and pickles!

[weekender Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:38AM]

time for me to upgrade my Voodoo FX.

[SpeedyJDK Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:48AM]

Now, if only the link would work. Then..........

[fadishehadeh Posted Apr 20th 2010 6:04AM]

NVIDIA?!!!!!

[cdf74dc9 Posted Apr 20th 2010 6:22AM]

I have to turn up my room AC to 65*c with just one hd5870. I will never plan to do anything more than that simply it's not necessary, because I play every game max out @ 2048 x 1152 (1 lcd) with one card. This is like saying "hey global warming, take this! And when your there, tell Mars he's next."

[Oshada Posted Apr 20th 2010 7:33AM]

@cdf74dc9 65*C? Sounds wrong. Degrees Fahrenheit surely.

[scots79 Posted Apr 20th 2010 8:20AM]

@Oshada That's what I was thinking. I'd hate to live in a place where you turn the AC to 65 degrees C to cool down. Haha

[GreatSunJester Posted Apr 20th 2010 7:44AM]

OOOOO..... you can use it to heat a greenhouse AND make the neighbors lights flicker when you game.
But the big question is: When using this to play, do you really notice anything better in the games?

[SSD Posted Apr 20th 2010 7:50AM]

unfortunately you can't buy any 480 and 470 cards. The first batch of 8000 GPU's is sold out. We will have to wait 3 to 4 months for the reworked edition. Nvidia = Fail

[Cautionfire Posted Apr 20th 2010 7:52AM]

but sacrifices must be made

[n1hmrd Posted Apr 20th 2010 9:06AM]

what next 2000 watt min requirements ,and if how long before we see that ?

[heatgap Posted Apr 20th 2010 9:40AM]

The sexiness continues...

[ThomasBags Posted Apr 20th 2010 10:55AM]

90+ degrees Celsius temp for Nvidia
oh god, you can cook bacon on it

[magallanes Posted Apr 20th 2010 11:06AM]

Most videocard's fan are not suited for to be used in a SLI configuration.

[npa189 Posted Apr 20th 2010 11:14AM]

Wow, it didn't glass our planet?!

[Ignition1 Posted Apr 20th 2010 11:41AM]

I'll stick with my 1.8Ghz AMD Super Hot CPU laptop and jaw dropping integrated graphics (running at a smooth 64mb). I can play Max Payne 1 at 30fps...until there's some heavy particle physics required in the game...in which case it drops to around 7fps.

Anyone wanna buy my laptop for lots of money?

[xdeiri Posted Apr 20th 2010 12:22PM]

run this and you have a Chernobyl reactor on your home, and by the way ati is way cooler and cheaper, i dont give a heck for the extra 9% performance on some games

[KingFaisal94 Posted Apr 20th 2010 12:34PM]

Why couldn't the 5970 be used in triple crossfirex?

[Ericloewe Posted Apr 20th 2010 2:49PM]

@KingFaisal94
That would mean 6-way crossfirex, since each of them has 2 processors.

[2401 Penitent Tangent Posted Apr 20th 2010 12:36PM]

On a wholly unrelated note, my $485 laptop can run Crysis. Just sayin'.

[techi25 Posted Apr 20th 2010 1:41PM]

if it takes 3 NVIDIA cards to beat 1 ATi card than that's sad. Unless i've read this wrong... >.>

[Slick Posted Apr 20th 2010 2:59PM]

lol... that with 6 to 12 displays, and you might need your own power plant

[Ericloewe Posted Apr 20th 2010 3:00PM]

@Slick
This thing is THE cause of global warming!

[alan8008 Posted Apr 20th 2010 4:33PM]

hmmm. Is this the same 5970 XFX is trying to promote with this video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dWziA_u5OU

[Ryan P Posted Apr 20th 2010 4:35PM]

This is disgusting. I want it.

[nomadewolf Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:28PM]

So...
ATI wins more tests...
ATI cards are 6motnth old...
ATIs are cheaper...
There will be ATI OpenSource drivers by the end of the year...

Is this a contest?

[nomadewolf Posted Apr 20th 2010 5:34PM]

Oh, i forgot one...
ATIs are way COOLER. In both ways... :)

[michaspi Posted Apr 20th 2010 7:48PM]

Delicious pork shoulders

[onlysublime Posted Apr 20th 2010 11:33PM]

i can picture the lights dimming in my room when 3 of these nvidia cards are at full power...

[abazaba Posted Apr 21st 2010 12:43AM]

From hardware.info translated:
"Anyway, the question of how the highest frame rates out of your system transforms answer: save your piggy piece, look for three GTX 480 cards and play it!"
I *think* they mean the GTX wins...
Love google translator