Sell GTX 480s for 1 580??

[Predicament]

I had a 470 SLI set up until one of the cards died on me!
It was extremely powerful, but hot and noisy and to be fair overkill for my 1900*1200 res.
While the RMA was being sorted I bought an MSI 580 FROZR II card to play with and sold the remaining 470.
I don't get micro stuttering, the rest of my rig doesn't get baked and it is allot quieter.
At my res the 580 is still over kill.

In summary.

Do I miss the performance of the SLI set up? Yes, but only when running benchmarks!
Do I enjoy the new found silence of my rig? Yes
Did the micro stuttering annoy me? Yes
Do I care about the reduced cost of running my rig? No
If one of my cards had not failed would I have considered it? No

It cost me about £80 to change to the 580 and at some point I will buy another to return to SLI!

Hope this helps.

Matt

+1


I would always go for the choice of having one card (580) versus two cards in SLI/Xfire (480's)

 

[GJ02]

keep what u got and wait for the launch of new cards
not as if 480sli in crap is it ??

 

[Muel]

Yes, Crysis or Crysis 2 are the only things worth keeping them both for, & BF 3 when it comes out!

Crysis 2 is a console port, you will be able to max it on a 5770/GTX460 I reckon.

 

[An Exception]

Yes, Crysis or Crysis 2 are the only things worth keeping them both for, & BF 3 when it comes out!

But I still find that 1 overclocked 480 runs most things better than 2 with vsync on

I just had another go at SLI to see if my old friend micro-stutter has got any better with drivers etc, and I agree, black Ops for me runs better with one 460 even at 2560x1600.
I also wondered if you could just use the other card to handle aa in black ops?

If one 480 gives you better performance, the only logical course of action would be to sell one as your paying more cash for worse performance.

Then comes the dilemma of changing out the remaining 480 for a 580, or spending more on the 480 to cool it and over-clock.

Personally I'd hang around the MM for a used 580, as it will be quiet, faster, and won't dump a shed-load of heat in your case, that way you don't need loads of case airflow which also creates noise.