470 or 480?

[Zairs]

As there are some cracking deals on these at the mo.
I was wondering if I would be ok running 2 470 on my mb
I don't think I can run 3 can I?
Or should I go for the 480 as its only £10 more

 

[SkodaMart]

What power supply have you got?

I have just come from GTX 470 SLi, and it's still very good today.

 

[Zairs]

What power supply have you got?

I have just come from GTX 470 SLi, and it's still very good today.

Will be getting xxx 850w for xmas

 

[Gtiracer]

As there are some cracking deals on these at the mo.
I was wondering if I would be ok running 2 470 on my mb
I don't think I can run 3 can I?
Or should I go for the 480 as its only £10 more

You can run 3 but an 850w psu might not cut it, for sli would be fine, I would watch out for temps though, i had sli 480's, very powerful but noisy and hot when stressed

Make sure you have good case cooling, also if you are buying second hand a new application of thermal paste will work wonders gelid gc extreme is really good

 

[Zairs]

Might sell my 470 and get 2 480 would my 850w handle that

 

[SkodaMart]

Might sell my 470 and get 2 480 would my 850w handle that

Potentially it is right on the limit

You might get away with it with a high quality PSU.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/233

It should be noted that Furmark is the worst case scenario and games are not likely to ever be that demanding.

 

[setter]

If you add a second gtx 470. your 850w psu will be fine with that setup. I used to run sli 470's and a 4.2ghz i7 920, couple of hdd's and 5 or 6 fans. Total power draw at the wall in games was 630w according to my plug monitor, (btw that includes lcd monitor too). Furmark was 740w. My psu is a corsair HX850, gpu's were clocked at 750mhz. Beware though, that the temps and noise with 400 series cards in sli will be pretty high, good case airflow is a must have with theese cards.

 

[SkodaMart]

Might sell my 470 and get 2 480 would my 850w handle that

 

[setter]

I personally wouldnt reccomend running sli 480's on an 850w psu, once you factor in any cpu overclocking, you could be running the psu right on the limit. Ive seen posts on here from several users who had motherboards killed running highly oc'd gtx 470's on 850w psu's on the older i7 x58 platform, iirc Greebo and Arcane were two members on here who had this misfortune.