Really not much at all, for something like a weirdo quad sli system it could be useful......
Actually there are a few cases of people running quad SLi/crossfire when doing benchmark runs and too much current gets drawn through the ATX connector, and due to the increased resistance between the connector and the plug they end up melting. IIRC there was even someone on this forum who had this problem.
Really? I say except for a few quad sli systems, and you say, actually there are a few quad sli systems it might help.....
This almost always kills the potential of these kinda cards
I can't count how many great designs have come out just as the cards are going EOL and costing 70+% more than the reference card. They need to get it kicking off as soon as they have access to the cards and running promos on release and atleast get them to the market within 2-3 months.
Yup, these cards are always late, always expensive and for no reason.
In reality if the cooler ACTUALLY cost more it might make sense, though of course often they whack on a bog standard overclock every single card ever made is capable of to justify the cost. Its just madness.
Better coolers, same cost to AIB's for AMD/Nvidia, less rma's due to lower running temps and quieter cards, etc, etc.
I guess to a certain extent too good cooling encourages uber overclocking and voltages but, meh.
As for the 580gtx cooler being ok, not really the core itself has a better thermal profile its not much down to the cooler, the 6970 isn't massively cooler than the 5870, despite the vapour chamber cooler, its mostly a gimmick because while vapour evap/condensing CAN transfer more heat, the heat all ends up in the same heatsink, basically no distance away and still ends up limited ENTIRELY by the heatsinks capacity to cool coupled with the airflow going over it.
THe 5850 stock cooler is basically as good, and a simple prolimatech, which is big but only because its not designed for a specific card, dropped load temps by 40C when overclocked/over volted.
6970/580gtx's can basically run 20-30C cooler with a "proper" cooler and proper fans, and silently on top of it.
Of all users, probably 99.5% of cards ever sold will be used in single card setups, 0.4% of cards will end up in sli/xfire computers and 0.1% will end up in tri/quad setups, and I'm probably being generous.
Even then most mobo's are now being more inteligently designed with big gaps between their two main pci-e slots.
Look at the pics of the EVGA dual, "whatever the frack it is" GTX, actually thats more like Gainward naming scheme there, that cooler is still dual slot but I have literally no doubt at all it would spank an equivilent dual slot blower "standard" type heatsink.
Blower fan coolers got in peoples heads and now they are convinced it massively lowers case temps, increases cpu overclocks and saves endangered animals around the world. Like memory heatspreaders, which do smeg all, the general public convinced themselves they need them, so now few people will risk selling "high end" memory without heatspreaders.
