# ZOTAC GeForce GTX 480 SLI



## W1zzard (Apr 10, 2010)

Today we have on our testbench two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 accelerators. Just the graphics cards alone will cost you $1000. Is this something that can be justified? Performance aside, what's going on with power and heat when running two of these cards?

*Show full review*


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## qubit (Apr 13, 2010)

Awesome, nice!


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## Fourstaff (Apr 13, 2010)

Rapes all other cards in terms of power and power consumption. I am amazed it has more price/perf compared to GT210. I am also surprised by the fact that W1zzard's house is still around, 472w peak?! 103w at idle is also excessive, seeing that 5770 takes in 112w max. Industry standard review as always.


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## W1zzard (Apr 13, 2010)




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## dir_d (Apr 13, 2010)

Once again great job w1zz...Cant believe it really dosent scale as much as a 5970 even though it does own all.


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## HalfAHertz (Apr 13, 2010)

Great Job! I noticed temps are much better and ~10  degrees lower did Nvidia increase the fan speed? Are any noise updates to follow?


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## erixx (Apr 13, 2010)

' Industry standard review as always.' I second that, very detailed review!

It becomes clear that in a high resolution scenario, there is nothing as powerfull as 2 480's. These cards fly away at max res.

But they still are non adequate for a mainstream, even freak gamer, unless you traffic with drugs or weapons.


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## Lampmaster (Apr 13, 2010)

Man, that's some impressive scaling.. Nearly 100% in Clear Sky at 2560x1600. Wow.


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## mlee49 (Apr 13, 2010)

Holy Scale-Ability Batman!  SLI Finally pays off!

Highlight of the article:


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## W1zzard (Apr 13, 2010)

mlee49 said:


> Holy Scale-Ability Batman!  SLI Finally pays off!
> 
> Highlight of the article:
> 
> http://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_SLI/images/sliscaling.gif



single card is 100% .. let me fix that to make it more clear


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## Deleted member 24505 (Apr 13, 2010)

Nice review as usual W1zzard.Thank you.


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## the54thvoid (Apr 13, 2010)

Any chance of the usual decibel levels being depicted - we know it'l be loud, we just want to know how loud.

Also, are there any tri crossfire 5850 reviews out there so i can compare?

And finally, good review and tells it how it is.  Uber powerful but at a considerable and frankly 'not worth paying' cost.


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## xkche (Apr 13, 2010)

Nice review!
Tnks!!!!

Now, to much power to feed this SLI! :S
Higher perfomance
Higher consume
Higher price


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## caleb (Apr 13, 2010)

Nice review. Wizzard any chance of getting some benchmarks on BF Bad Company 2?
Also I am wondering what was max power consumption of the whole system ?


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## cadaveca (Apr 13, 2010)

Scaling is pretty good for that much gpu power. I'm shocked, actually...


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## DanTheMan (Apr 13, 2010)

These cards just seems like overkill - for most applications and games a 5870 or 5970 works fine


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## jellyrole (Apr 13, 2010)

Nice review.


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## shevanel (Apr 13, 2010)

oh no he didn't


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## Frick (Apr 13, 2010)

The cards alone draw 600W? Whoosh!

Insane amounts of power though.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Apr 13, 2010)

dugg


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## kora04 (Apr 13, 2010)

makes want them. but that's a lot of money down the drain.


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## fatguy1992 (Apr 13, 2010)

Good review, my only comment is that maybe that 3.8GHz i7 is bottlenecking the higher end cards in some benchmarks, mainly 3D mark.


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## mdm-adph (Apr 13, 2010)

WIN: Nvidia has finally improved SLI-scaling to a level where it's pretty damn respectable -- I got to give them props for that.

FAIL:  Two GTX 480's are only 13% faster than a 5970, yet they draw nearly twice the power.  There's something really wrong with that.  What the hell is a dual-GTX 480 going to look like?  Three PCB's, one just for the power circuits?  Is it even possible?



fatguy1992 said:


> Good review, my only comment is that maybe that 3.8GHz i7 is bottlenecking the higher end cards in some benchmarks, mainly 3D mark.



Yeah, Wiz, your puny 3.8GHz Core i7 is making other review sites laugh at us -- we demand a LN2-cooled 7.0GHz PhenomII right away.


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## Fourstaff (Apr 13, 2010)

mdm-adph said:


> Yeah, Wiz, your puny 3.8GHz Core i7 is making other review sites laugh at us -- we demand a LN2-cooled 7.0GHz PhenomII right away.



Bad move, he will just pack up and leave, leaving us with no more reviews


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## fatguy1992 (Apr 13, 2010)

mdm-adph said:


> Yeah, Wiz, your puny 3.8GHz Core i7 is making other review sites laugh at us -- we demand a LN2-cooled 7.0GHz PhenomII right away.



I think a 4.2GHz-4.4GHz bloomfield or guftown would do just fine.  But i'm sure that would be heaps of work to re-test with so many gpus.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Apr 13, 2010)

Fourstaff said:


> Bad move, he will just pack up and leave, leaving us with no more reviews



sarcasm?


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## W1zzard (Apr 13, 2010)

fatguy1992 said:


> I think a 4.2GHz-4.4GHz bloomfield or guftown would do just fine.  But i'm sure that would be heaps of work to re-test with so many gpus.



send me a gulftown, i'll use it in the next round of reviews, otherwise i have to use what most people can afford


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## Fourstaff (Apr 13, 2010)

[I.R.A]_FBi said:


> sarcasm?



Indeed


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## erocker (Apr 13, 2010)

mdm-adph said:


> WIN: Nvidia has finally improved SLI-scaling to a level where it's pretty damn respectable -- I got to give them props for that.
> 
> FAIL:  Two GTX 480's are only 13% faster than a 5970, yet they draw nearly twice the power.  There's something really wrong with that.  What the hell is a dual-GTX 480 going to look like?  Three PCB's, one just for the power circuits?  Is it even possible?
> 
> ...





fatguy1992 said:


> I think a 4.2GHz-4.4GHz bloomfield or guftown would do just fine.  But i'm sure that would be heaps of work to re-test with so many gpus.



I disagree. A 980X is not a gamer's CPU. Considering most of the review content is based on games, I would rather see a more mainstream CPU do the work and face it, two of these cards blows everything else away with even a "puny" i7. I for one am glad the review is geared towards the gamer and no those looking to extend their e-peen. I would love two of these cards. Gaming with more eye candy on than I even care to use would be very fun.


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## W1zzard (Apr 13, 2010)

sorry about that cf scaling confusion, bta helped with the conclusion and got the wrong numbers. i fixed it now


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## douglatins (Apr 13, 2010)

Temperatures look fine, what happened? Winter with open windows? 100% fan cycle? Or maybe you summoned blizzard on the room?


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## xkche (Apr 13, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> sorry about that cf scaling confusion, bta helped with the conclusion and got the wrong numbers. i fixed it now



tnks!

I like the scaling... over 50% in 1920x1200! is very good!

I wait for a GTX460


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## HalfAHertz (Apr 13, 2010)

mdm-adph said:


> WIN: Nvidia has finally improved SLI-scaling to a level where it's pretty damn respectable -- I got to give them props for that.
> 
> FAIL:  Two GTX 480's are only 13% faster than a 5970, yet they draw nearly twice the power.  There's something really wrong with that.  What the hell is a dual-GTX 480 going to look like?  Three PCB's, one just for the power circuits?  Is it even possible?
> 
> ...



It's 18% u nub! 
25x16 is the only resolution you should be concerned with when evaluating something of this magnitude...


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## Sasqui (Apr 13, 2010)

Wow, the performance and power draw, both jaw dropping.

Didn't know TPU Testing Labs were located in Springfield, LOL


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Apr 13, 2010)

To put it all in perspective...

5870 CF






480 SLI





Scaling seems about even between brands.


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## Delta6326 (Apr 13, 2010)

what? ATI?


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## erixx (Apr 13, 2010)

haha you outbid him


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## fritoking (Apr 13, 2010)

man im not a "high powered " user..but i bet that  those cards pull more juice than my quad and  tri core systems combined...wtf....i would hate that electric bill,and trying to cool the room they are in. its hard enough to cool this room w/ a tri core..quad and a dual.......and the arcade.


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## human_error (Apr 14, 2010)

excellent review as always w1zz, i've been loking forward to your SLi review 

One thing i am dissapointed about is that the sli scaling isn't as good as i was led to believe on other sites (i dont bother looking at numbers there, just read their summaries)- i was hoping for 70%+ scaling (i even read nearly 100% scaling on some reports). Guess i'll have to wait longer for sli and crossfire to offer the performance jumps i would like...


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## OneCool (Apr 14, 2010)

Nice review!

Monstrous cards. 

Those power numbers are just wrong


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## crow1001 (Apr 14, 2010)

So the smart man goes with 2x 5870's, or the smarter man does 2x 5850's and clocks them, fanboys go down the 480 SLI path. 

And great review.

Trub has his TRI SLI heaven 2 bench up, eye watering wattage used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GMJkVQiq5c


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## Soylent Joe (Apr 14, 2010)

It maxed out Crysis at all but one resolution. The beast has been slain at last!


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## dinmaster (Apr 14, 2010)

great review! for a single monitor. I got to wait longer to see the scaling and performance of multi monitors (3 displays) and perhaps where ati or nvidia really kick ass.


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## overclocking101 (Apr 14, 2010)

nice review w1zz!! thanks! I think its better to do the review the way you did it simply because not everyone everclocks their i7's to 4ghz+ in fact a lot dont. more people own prebuilt dells etc that dont oc with i7's than system builders, he tageted the review to the masses not just one group. and sli scaling is better with the GTX480's nice! the CF scaling is high but upon release it was terrible, just think this is an unoptimized setup when newer drivers come and stuff like that sli scaling will be better and eventually out do ati all together I think.


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## Zubasa (Apr 14, 2010)

douglatins said:


> Temperatures look fine, what happened? Winter with open windows? 100% fan cycle? Or maybe you summoned blizzard on the room?


Mini-Jet digivolved into Jumbo-Jet 

It would be nice to include noise and 5870CF in the review W1z.


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## ShRoOmAlIsTiC (Apr 14, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> send me a gulftown, i'll use it in the next round of reviews, otherwise i have to use what most people can afford



haha,  then why you using the 480 in sli!  Most people cant afford that either.  J/k wizz!  Love ya man and great review as usual.


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## johnspack (Apr 14, 2010)

Gawd,  I'm just getting ready to sli gtx260s,  these must be a blast!


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## btarunr (Apr 14, 2010)

mdm-adph said:


> FAIL:  Two GTX 480's are only 13% faster than a 5970, yet they draw nearly twice the power.



Over twice the power. Remember a single GTX 480 draws more than a single HD 5970.



caleb said:


> Also I am wondering what was max power consumption of the whole system ?



No, just the cards.



mdm-adph said:


> Yeah, Wiz, your puny 3.8GHz Core i7 is making other review sites laugh at us -- we demand a LN2-cooled 7.0GHz PhenomII right away.



Phenom II will make other sites laugh at us, whatever the GHz. Core i7 "Bloomfield" at 3.8 GHz can't bottleneck anything.


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## Eva01Master (Apr 14, 2010)

crow1001 said:


> So the smart man goes with 2x 5870's, or the smarter man does 2x 5850's and clocks them, fanboys go down the 480 SLI path.
> 
> And great review.
> 
> ...



The Smart man goes with 2 x 5870
The Smarter one goes with 2 x 5850
And the SMARTEST of them all have a good enough work to go with 2 x GTX480, doesn't care about power draw, uses Watercool to get them chilly and silent and then he enjoys the PhysX and 3D Vision surround.


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## Steevo (Apr 14, 2010)

Physx for all 16 games that use it, and the insane power bill from running these with F@H for any length of time.


Impressive review, but holy space heater batman. What are they trying to do, melt the polar ice caps this year hoping the flood waters will cool Fermi?


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## Hayder_Master (Apr 14, 2010)

great w1zzard you did it so quickly, amazing review


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Apr 14, 2010)

So will anybody be reviewing 4 way 480 sli and sapphire/asus/xfx's special 5970s in CF? Would be neat to know which to pick for "ultimate" builds.


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## wahdangun (Apr 14, 2010)

btarunr said:


> Over twice the power. Remember a single GTX 480 draws more than a single HD 5970.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



WTF, 600 watt for SLI ? wew and 600 watt of heat,

BTW, are you use DX 11 setting in DX 11 title ?


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## W1zzard (Apr 14, 2010)

wahdangun said:


> WTF, 600 watt for SLI ? wew and 600 watt of heat,
> 
> BTW, are you use DX 11 setting in DX 11 title ?



metro and unigine were running in dx11 mode


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## poo417 (Apr 14, 2010)

NIce review Wizz.  Any news yet on getting the surround drivers?  We really need to see how these work with 5760 x 1080/1200 +   Then hopwfully you will get hold of the 4gb 5970 as well.


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## Mr McC (Apr 14, 2010)

Eva01Master said:


> The Smart man goes with 2 x 5870
> The Smarter one goes with 2 x 5850
> And the SMARTEST of them all have a good enough work to go with 2 x GTX480, doesn't care about power draw, uses Watercool to get them chilly and silent and then he enjoys the PhysX and 3D Vision surround.



Achieving maximum perfomance whilst ignoring all other concerns, such as heat and noise, doesn't seem too smart to me; however, if performance is to be judged in isolation, why wouldn't the "SMARTEST of them all" simply crossfire 5970's?

Edit: nice review.


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## Lionheart (Apr 14, 2010)

These cards are powerful beats, but the heat and power consumption ruins it, also the price, gonna wait for the yields to get better and maybe some GTX 485 SLI action


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## Wile E (Apr 14, 2010)

Mr McC said:


> Achieving maximum perfomance whilst ignoring all other concerns, such as heat and noise, doesn't seem too smart to me; however, if performance is to be judged in isolation, why wouldn't the "SMARTEST of them all" simply crossfire 5970's?
> 
> Edit: nice review.



Rumor has it that 480 can do Quad SLI. If not, we know it can do Tri SLI. I wonder what wins then 3xFermi or 2x 5970?


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## wahdangun (Apr 14, 2010)

Wile E said:


> Rumor has it that 480 can do Quad SLI. If not, we know it can do Tri SLI. I wonder what wins then 3xFermi or 2x 5970?



maybe that's was just evga exclusive


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## hat (Apr 14, 2010)

Maybe the "will it max Crysis?" jokes will finally start to end 

thanks for a great review, w1zz


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## claylomax (Apr 14, 2010)

That's a nice review and must have been a expensive one by the looks of it; I don't know how much electricity costs in Stuttgart, but I'm sure it can't be cheap.


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## Andrew (Apr 14, 2010)

Nice review...


What would be the performance with 3 monitors @ 5760x1080?

thanks


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## mdm-adph (Apr 14, 2010)

erocker said:


> I disagree. A 980X is not a gamer's CPU. Considering most of the review content is based on games, I would rather see a more mainstream CPU do the work and face it, two of these cards blows everything else away with even a "puny" i7. I for one am glad the review is geared towards the gamer and no those looking to extend their e-peen. I would love two of these cards. Gaming with more eye candy on than I even care to use would be very fun.





btarunr said:


> Phenom II will make other sites laugh at us, whatever the GHz. Core i7 "Bloomfield" at 3.8 GHz can't bottleneck anything.



You know, I'm just going to go ahead and start using the snark mark ("~"), because it seems that the Science of Sarcasm is already a lost art. 

That okay with everyone?~


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## nick11 (Apr 14, 2010)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_5970_CrossFire/7.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_SLI/7.html


•All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
•All games were set to their highest quality setting

both reviews have the exact same system setups but there is a huge difference in results except for windows vista 32bit/sp2 vs windows 7 64bit  which review do we trust Mr.Wizzard?


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## kid41212003 (Apr 14, 2010)

Newer drivers I suppose.


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## HalfAHertz (Apr 14, 2010)

kid41212003 said:


> Newer drivers I suppose.



I thought that was supposed to *increase *performance


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## kid41212003 (Apr 14, 2010)

Yeah, I missed that after switching tabs so quickly.

Anyway, do you find the HD5970 is quite weird in that benchmark? It's scale 2.3x compare to a single card, even though with lower clock speed. I haven't seen anything like that in before.


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## W1zzard (Apr 14, 2010)

different in-game settings, unless the specs table is EXACTLY the same, dont compare old and new reviews


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## Hayder_Master (Apr 14, 2010)

i im very shocked cuz i see first 200% SLI performance


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## steelkane (Apr 14, 2010)

That was An Awesome review, the power & heat would be fine with me to have that kind of performance with a 30" panel, If one can buy two card, 30" panel, the PSU & all the other hardware to make it run smooth.. why would they be worried about heat when water blocks are available.


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## nick11 (Apr 14, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> different in-game settings, unless the specs table is EXACTLY the same, dont compare old and new reviews



•All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
•All games were set to their highest quality setting

That's what you wrote in both reviews.. so which one is correct and which is wrong or did you miss something, the fps are just abnormally different, like 20fps+ difference in some cases lol.. go back and see, your setups are 100% the same except for the OS


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## PopcornMachine (Apr 14, 2010)

Steevo said:


> Physx for all 16 games that use it, and the insane power bill from running these with F@H for any length of time.



Yeah...the results of Folding with GTX 480s:

Good News:  We cured all diseases known to mankind!

Bad News:  Ensured the doom of all life on planet Earth.


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## ty_ger (Apr 14, 2010)

PopcornMachine said:


> Yeah...the results of Folding with GTX 480s:
> 
> Good News:  We cured all diseases known to mankind!
> 
> Bad News:  Ensured the doom of all life on planet Earth.



The GTX 480 doesn't even support Folding yet.  NVIDIA is supposed to be working on a revision which will allow the card to support Folding within a couple of weeks.


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## Fourstaff (Apr 14, 2010)

PopcornMachine said:


> Yeah...the results of Folding with GTX 480s:
> 
> Good News:  We cured all diseases known to mankind!
> 
> Bad News:  Ensured the doom of all life on planet Earth.



It is a good tradeoff: Imagine a world without diseases and idiots. Ahhh, bliss.

Update: Its supposed to read like this: GTX480 will cure all the diseases by wiping out mankind. Without man, there is nothing to infect


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## WarEagleAU (Apr 14, 2010)

Good one Popcorn and Fourstaff. Looks like SLI/Xfire scaling is finally paying off. Some of the highest numbers yet. Thanks for that speedy review W1zz!


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## Wile E (Apr 14, 2010)

Fourstaff said:


> It is a good tradeoff: Imagine a world without diseases *and idiots.* Ahhh, bliss.



But then what would the rest of us do without you?  

lol. Sorry, I just had to. You kinda set yourself up for that one.


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## Sanhime (Apr 15, 2010)

Nice review Wizz.  However, you guys need to start including Bad Company 2 (Dx10 and Dx11) in your benchmarks considering it is currently one of the most popular games out right now.  I would like to see those numbers.


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## jimmylao (Apr 16, 2010)

Sanhime said:


> Nice review Wizz.  However, you guys need to start including Bad Company 2 (Dx10 and Dx11) in your benchmarks considering it is currently one of the most popular games out right now.  I would like to see those numbers.



+1/2nded/agreed

I would go as far to say that it's equally (depending on what scenes) as graphic intensive as Crysis.  Maybe I'm wrong.

Edit:  Don't hate if I'm wrong.


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## EastCoasthandle (Apr 16, 2010)

Any F@H results with just 1 card?  I've read that one guy folded all night and temps were clock to 90C.


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## erocker (Apr 16, 2010)

It needs a new client, there's already news about it at F@H.  So does ATi, but I honestly doubt that will ever happen. Looks like I'm still not folding.


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## HalfAHertz (Apr 16, 2010)

When will we get GPU virtualisation? Then you would be able to run 2-3 unoptimized clients on a more powerful GPU...


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## YautjaLord (Apr 26, 2010)

Finally a valid GTX 480 review in SLI. Now i can say that you rightfully call yourselves "The latest in hardware & gaming" as you imply to yourselves. The only downside to the review i see is that you didn't included AvP3 & Call of Pripyat as another DX11 benchmarks, but that's just me.  Great job, nevertheless. Keep it up.

P.S. +53% & +69% SLI scaling in 1920x1200 & 2560x1600 correspondingly : ZOMGWTFBBQ !!!!!! That's exactly how i wanted to see SLI scale for real. As for temps - i wonder how the 2 will be cooled down when placed in something like HAF932.


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## Sanhime (Apr 29, 2010)

Must be some high quality PCB/silica if Nvidia thinks long term 90C+ temps are tolerable and normal.


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## Raziel317 (Apr 30, 2010)

Hey W1zzard, great review, I am running some comparrisons on my system at the moment and I just wondered what setting you had tesselation on in the Unigine Engine Test?

Thanks

Raz.


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## zOaib (Jun 24, 2010)

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html

i had to use this website to figure out what my electric bill will be just by using my pc , posting it here because this review made me decide to go with a second gtx 480 and us emy 3d vision surround + physx at optimal ..............


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