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Gtx 480 sli

danielhufton

danielhufton

danielhufton

Associate
Joined
31 May 2008
Posts
47
Hi guys,

I currently have a gtx 480 and have always wanted sli.

With the card being £70 on the bay, am I able to get a different make or do I need the same?

I've got a asus card now, could I get a evga to sli?

Assume I can mix and match?

Cheers
 
£70 seems a bit much for one as I quickly looked on the MM and saw one sold for £40 and another with a custom cooler for £60.

Is your motherboard SLI capable?

It can be a mix of different manufacture cards.
 
GTX 480 Sli isn't a good place to start with Sli at the present time.

You'd be better off selling your 480 and buying a GTX 760/670/680/770 or AMD 7950/7970 or similar for around £100 ish for similar performance with more Vram. (2nd hand option)

Be aware the AMD card have a higher chance of being used for virtual coin mining which may affect life expectancy if they were run hot 24/7. The chances of this will still be low.

New cards you'll be looking to pay at least £150+.

Additional:

Primary rule before going SLI or Crossfire. Find out how much will a single card cost for the same performance?

If the answer is about the same or only 10-20% more go for the single card option.
 
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I'd sell your old GTX 480 and try something more modern, anything from HD 7950 to GTX 760 will be just as good as GTX 480 without power and SLI issues, also heat will be less.
 
you guys are underestimating sli gtx480's my mildly overclocked 480 sli was a bit faster than my 7970 lightning overclocked. i have to say they do put out a lot of heat and they will easy max out that 750w psu with the 980X in the rig as well.
 
Jumper118 said:
you guys are underestimating sli gtx480's my mildly overclocked 480 sli was a bit faster than my 7970 lightning overclocked. i have to say they do put out a lot of heat and they will easy max out that 750w psu with the 980X in the rig as well.
Click to expand...

But they only have 2GB VRAM, even at 1080p my HD 7850 crossfire was running out of VRAM even though both where 2GB models. It is why I upgraded to R9 290.
 
Yeah, 1.5 GB low memory and that 980X on a 750 W PSU, GTX 480 SLI would be right on the safe limit with everything at stock.

Replacing it with one of the cards I mentioned may or may not as fast, it would depend on the individual game as they are in the same ball park, but you could over clock both CPU and GPU with no worries, and with the NVidia cards SLI in the future should be ok on the 750W PSU.

But it leaves SLI or crossfire option in 3-12 months time without trying to flog 2 old cards. :)
I would expect the price to drop on the cards I mentioned when the next line of AMD and then NVidia cards get released.

I know I'm keeping a close eye on the future cards and I suspect a lot of people still using GTX 670 (and similar level cards) are too. There will be bargains to be had when the new cards get released. :D
 
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arc@css said:
1.5gb vram, iirc. :)
Click to expand...
I had sli 470's, hot, noisy, used a massive amount of power. Switched to a single gtx 670. Yes my max fps went down a bit. But the difference in noise, heat and power use dropped quite signifigantly. But some of those i later negated by going sli 670.:D
 
setter said:
I had sli 470's, hot, noisy, used a massive amount of power. Switched to a single gtx 670. Yes my max fps went down a bit. But the difference in noise, heat and power use dropped quite signifigantly. But some of those i later negated by going sli 670.:D
Click to expand...

The Gigabyte GTX480 SOC I had was one of the very finest cards I've ever owned. :cool:
 
arc@css said:
The Gigabyte GTX480 SOC I had was one of the very finest cards I've ever owned. :cool:
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The SOC cards were on a different level mate, they were like a finely tuned race car. Iirc they actually used less power than the standard cards, and ran a lot cooler. My 470's were reference cooled gigabytes, and when they were able to clock to 850mhz core, you could forgive the wee niggles of heat and noise. As for power consumption, this is overclockers uk forum, not greenpeace lol.:D
 
setter said:
The SOC cards were on a different level mate, they were like a finely tuned race car. Iirc they actually used less power than the standard cards, and ran a lot cooler. My 470's were reference cooled gigabytes, and when they were able to clock to 850mhz core, you could forgive the wee niggles of heat and noise. As for power consumption, this is overclockers uk forum, not greenpeace lol.:D
Click to expand...

Eventually, mine started to artifact, so I rma'd it and got a GTX570 SOC as a replacement. On paper, it looked to be slightly inferior in every way, but I wasn't disappointed; the 570 turned out to be even better in terms of cooling, noise and temps (even at load it was incredibly quiet). It's easily the quietest card I've used, and was a tad quicker than the 480 to boot. All in all, a tough call between the 570 and Voodoo 5500 as to what is my all time fave card. :)
 
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