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Early Thoughts On My GTX 480 SLi Rig + Gelid Solutions Icy Vision

Overslop

Overslop

Overslop

Soldato
Joined
22 Oct 2005
Posts
4,013
Location
Thailand
It's a bit silly to spend so much on graphics cards, I know. But man oh man these are a real pair of beauties! :D

I will go onto describe my experience so far using a couple of stock clocked GTX 480s with an i7 920 D0 clocked at 4.3Ghz (will try to push it a little further) with turbo mode and hyperthreading enabled. I've got 6GB of DDR3 clocked at 1600Mhz and my screen's resolution is 1920x1080. I run all my games with V-Sync on and my screen's refresh rate is 60Hz.

Got a couple of GELID Solutions Icy Vision coolers strapped onto them and under wraps with my fan controller. Got their fans turned down to a fairly low RPM so they're quiet but still performing very effectively. Maximum load during gaming is high 70s and the fans remain constantly at the same low RPM which is very nice. Slightly odd is that even at 100% they get too hot to run Furmark at maximum settings and stress level after about 5 minutes whereas the stock coolers can handle it no worries. I can't imagine any game will push them that hard though so am not really concerned.

Onto the games now and I played a few hours of Crysis Warhead and Aliens Versus Predator tonight. Performance in both games greatly exceeded my expectations... :)

I have absolutely everything maxed out in nVidia Control Panel (latest official driver version) except for anti-aliasing which I leave for the individual applications to control. Any recommendations for features to switch off for the most taxing games? I expected supersampling maxed out to make the games unplayable but they managed fine. Really well in fact...

In Crysis Warhead I set everything to Gamer and antialising at 2x. I knew these cards performed very well in this game but I didn't expect it to run just so fluidly. The entire time it stayed locked at 60FPS, except for the odd moment when the action picked up and even then it would stay within the 50s. Tried upping the AA to 4X and all settings to Enthusiast. Gameplay was at many would consider very playable with frame rates average at around 50, with some sections rock solid at 60, others dipping to high 30s. Maxing out Crysis Warhead is now a very real possibility. :)

Aliens Versus Predator played out just like Crysis Warhead. Everyting maxed out this time except AA to 2X. I was very pleasantly surprised to find the game runs exactly to my ideal 60FPS without a hint of slowdown in sight! :D Was expecting this game to bring even a rig such as mine to its knees at these settings but it managed it no problems. 4xAA lead to some sections experiencing drops to high 40s so I switched it back to 2X.

Gonna try out some more games tomorrow and perhaps get down to the nitty gritty of overclocking. I want to see how good I can get a fully maxed out Crysis Warhead with 4xAA running at with these bad boys juiced up.

All in all, first impressions are excellent. It's a **** load of cash but if you have any doubts that these cards will destroy pretty much everything in its path, then I would like you to put those thoughts to rest. Next up, Metro 2033!.. :eek:
 
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480 SLI and you're player crysis with gamer settings..they an do enthusiast no problem.

480 SLI rocks, even more so if you clock the cards, 800 core will net some impressive gains.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
480 SLI and you're player crysis with gamer settings..they an do enthusiast no problem.

480 SLI rocks, even more so if you clock the cards, 800 core will net some impressive gains.
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I prefer to have a solid 60FPS than higher settings. If I notice the frame rate drop suddenly then it bugs me and detracts me from the immersion.
 
4.92ghz 920 here, hopefully a trio of the above cards with a gaming res of 2560x1600. I'm much like yourself, I need a solid fps of around 45+ to keep me happy.


Anyway, nice little read! Glad your happy with them, shows that the extra £120 outlay for 2 of these over 2 5870s is very much worth it :)


Andy
 
Dang, so close to 5Ghz Andy...gogogo OC OC OC! :D

That is under water I assume mate?

Haven't tried 5870 Crossfire but I did buy a couple of 5850s at launch and had them clocked to 1Ghz so they actually outperformed stock 5870s. In the end, they were just too noisy for me and I really dislike the ATi CCC. It's a shame I didn't record all my results to make an apples to apples comparison but my 480s quite significantly outperform them, that's for sure. Have no regrets about buying those 5850s though. Got plenty of use out of them and they are the only pieces of computer hardware I've bought new (I repeat, at launch no less) and then went on to sell them much later for a profit!..:eek: :D
 
I think Andy has his 920 under phase change if I remember rightly. Damn you Overslop, you've just made me REALLY want two 480s in SLI now!

Are you cooling them on air yes? Think I will have to make do with one, but I hear the performance scales very well when overclocking them. Look forward to seeing what you can clock them to :p What make did you buy out of interest?
 
madindehead said:
I think Andy has his 920 under phase change if I remember rightly. Damn you Overslop, you've just made me REALLY want two 480s in SLI now!

Are you cooling them on air yes? Think I will have to make do with one, but I hear the performance scales very well when overclocking them. Look forward to seeing what you can clock them to :p What make did you buy out of interest?
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Haha, sorry about that madindehead! ;)

They are cooled on air, but that's with the aforementioned Icy Vision coolers. The stock coolers are way too noisy for my liking, but you may get on fine with them.

Will do the OCing sometime this weekend, am hoping to get 850 on the core but we shall see.

Went for the Zotac brand as it has 5 years' warranty and was £360 inc where I bought them. I don't imagine they would notice that I had replaced the coolers. If you take them off carefully and replace them if you need to RMA then I can't see how they would tell they had ever been removed.
 
Haha, no problem mate :p I am also planning on gettting a Zotac card, I've been very happy with my current GTX 275 from them. Hoping to get mine under water eventually (hence that lack of budget for a second one :p)

However, I might just justify one. My girlfriend will probably kill me, but hey. Will be nice to see what you get on clocks.
 
Crysis warhead on gamer and 4xAA with 480's in SLI. :eek:

Whack the settings up mate you have bags of room to go. ;)

93259892.jpg
 
Razor Time said:
Crysis warhead on gamer and 4xAA with 480's in SLI. :eek:

Whack the settings up mate you have bags of room to go. ;)

93259892.jpg
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Damn, very impressive results mate! :o

I'm interested in which control panel settings you are using. I am wondering that if I turn down some like supersampling then I could get the in-game settings higher.
 
Cheers. :)

Control panel is on default but I do add TRSAA when I play the game. 2x TRSAA show no real hit and the foliage looks so much better. I haven't experimented much with 8xTRSAA, since they improved the performance in the newer drivers. Apparently the performance increase was fairly large.

I have tried 32xCSAA with ambient occlusion and that ran fine and looks bloody nice.

I haven't tried 64xCSAA yet but plan to do so when I get off Metro 2033. Which BTW you will also be able to max out with DOF on. :)
 
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