so mwparrish..do think ill be just fine with my current 850watt:
ANTEC SIGNATURE 850watt
http://www.newegg.com/Pro...;Tpk=antec%20signature
Quadruple rail design for a total of 65A (780W) on +12V
Multiple GPU and CPU ready

see my sig for OC, and other components, i dont run EXTREME oc's, and i probably wont be OC'ing the 480sli , at least not right away

Great thread man, thank you so much for posting!

I'm getting seriously impatient over here in Europe, actually just looked at some last minute flights to the US... lol

That is serial.

kram36


That is serial.

Well, seems like a quick trip across the pond is out of the question. My tax guy would call it 'economically inadvisable'.

Anyway, seems like I might be getting 2 GTX480s on Monday. Not sure tho, as it will be either Zotac or Gainward. Had good experience with Gainward in the past, but tbh I don't feel comfortable turning my back on EVGA's warranty, as I will be watercooling.

It's just that slowly bute surely the rumours are solidifying that EVGA will be last to the table in Europe by a looooooong way. Not sure what went wrong there, but I'm being told ETA for SC cards is 6/30 now... Not really prepared to wait that long.

mwparrish, thanks for all your details.  Between you and garnetandblack this is some great information.

Do you by chance have Metro 2033?  garnetandblack posted benchmarks with his single 480.  I am dying to see results from 480 SLI.  Other than for very high AA settings it seems that is one of the few games that really needs more than a single 480 when gaming at 1920x1200 (which is my resolution).  If you do have it and can bench it at that resolution I would greatly appreciate it.  I am also curious about the difference between DOF on and off.  I have read that DOF on for 5870/5970 cards nearly halves the frame rates.  I wonder if that is true for the 480s as well.

twack3r

kram36


That is serial.

Well, seems like a quick trip across the pond is out of the question. My tax guy would call it 'economically inadvisable'.

Anyway, seems like I might be getting 2 GTX480s on Monday. Not sure tho, as it will be either Zotac or Gainward. Had good experience with Gainward in the past, but tbh I don't feel comfortable turning my back on EVGA's warranty, as I will be watercooling.

It's just that slowly bute surely the rumours are solidifying that EVGA will be last to the table in Europe by a looooooong way. Not sure what went wrong there, but I'm being told ETA for SC cards is 6/30 now... Not really prepared to wait that long.

Whoa that is a long wait, seen some places here say 4/20 to get them in stock and I thought that was bad.

ok now screw the fake benchs
i want some crysis benchs!!!!!

mwparrish


Okay, hold on tight...

I tried my best to get three screens. This shows about the max you're gonna get and mimicking the requester: 419 fps



This one with some dense textures: 206 fps



This one with some action in the mix too: 193 fps



Not a hard fast comparison like a bench is... but it shows you some of the raw horsepower none the less.

Ahh that is good solid performance there, in some cases faster than a Quad SLI GTX 295 setup and in other cases a mild difference
But yeah, overall it is a worthy upgrade, even if the speed diff isn't large in some cases, otherwise they mostly are better, you do have the new API support and such so as that goes, this is a very nice setup man, thanks for posting  Don't worry man, them GF100's will only get more powerful over time as drivers improve and then as seen in some cases that two GTX 480's in Dual SLI will leave two GTX 295's in Quad SLI far behind, the shot of the mountain was a very good example hehe.

chwisch87





This is what i was talking about. 

Of course, from your post kram, it seems when you bump up the AA to 8x and the tessellation to extreme the 5970 takes far greater a hit than the 480s ... pretty impressive.

At normal levels we need to have the clocks down to where the GTX 480 was in this test I have posted here or have a test at normal with the GTX 480 at 4 ghz? (thats gotta be around here somewhere lol). 

awesome comparison , really shows how fermi shines in tesselation!

jabachata


so mwparrish..do think ill be just fine with my current 850watt:
ANTEC SIGNATURE 850watt
http://www.newegg.com/Pro...;Tpk=antec%20signature
Quadruple rail design for a total of 65A (780W) on +12V
Multiple GPU and CPU ready

see my sig for OC, and other components, i dont run EXTREME oc's, and i probably wont be OC'ing the 480sli , at least not right away

That PSU may work but it'll be tight on the +12v rails. You need roughly 1 whole rail for 1 480 because the 250W TDP is just over 20A.

I'm concerned with 2x 480s taking up 500W or about 42A that only leaves a little bit to run your MB and CPU. Cutting it very close if you ask me.

My PSU runs 840W on the +12v and 70A which is why I have a pretty good comfort zone.

jasonanderson


mwparrish, thanks for all your details.  Between you and garnetandblack this is some great information.

Do you by chance have Metro 2033?  garnetandblack posted benchmarks with his single 480.  I am dying to see results from 480 SLI.  Other than for very high AA settings it seems that is one of the few games that really needs more than a single 480 when gaming at 1920x1200 (which is my resolution).  If you do have it and can bench it at that resolution I would greatly appreciate it.  I am also curious about the difference between DOF on and off.  I have read that DOF on for 5870/5970 cards nearly halves the frame rates.  I wonder if that is true for the 480s as well.

I don't have Metro 2033 -- parts of it look interesting -- other parts cliche -- so it wasn't worth me dropping the money on it.

urbanshaft


ok now screw the fake benchs
i want some crysis benchs!!!!!

I guess I should DL the CRYSIS bench, then...

Awesome, you guys are the best taking the time to run all these benches and give us all these results.  EVGA should cut you in on their profits when orders spike now that all this info is out. ;)hehe

So, I notice you said you weren't fooling around with the fans much (leaving them around 70% I think you said?), so what kind of temps are you seeing with two of these in your system?  What about if you kick the fans up to 100% (which is where I generally run mine anyway....the noise doesn't bother me).

I haven't tried fans @ 100% constant -- just left them at auto initially. I need more time to get familiar with their temperature profiles under different conditions before I try fiddling with that...

I can say this: the ambient temperature in my office is 70-72*F or about 22*C. Under the EVGA OC Scanner they reached 99*C on Auto and 100*C on 70%.

I haven't tried to OC them to see what happens. The noise really doesn't bother me either if it's steady -- the ramping up and down is annoying.  I use G35s so steady noise is just extraneous with the cans on my ears. I'll work on it some tonight.

mwparrish


I haven't tried fans @ 100% constant -- just left them at auto initially. I need more time to get familiar with their temperature profiles under different conditions before I try fiddling with that...

I can say this: the ambient temperature in my office is 70-72*F or about 22*C. Under the EVGA OC Scanner they reached 99*C on Auto and 100*C on 70%.

I haven't tried to OC them to see what happens. The noise really doesn't bother me either if it's steady -- the ramping up and down is annoying.  I use G35s so steady noise is just extraneous with the cans on my ears. I'll work on it some tonight.  

Just a fyi, watch your power numbers when running the scanner or furmark, it really sends the power use through the roof.  With an 850w power supply you don't want to stress it too close to max.

eek..  29.7k gpu score

Everest Ultimate would be a great program to monitor all your voltages- cpu/gpu/plus 12V;5V & 3V rails; fan speeds cpu/gpu/chasis; it will also provide currents/ powers/ and statistics/overall summary.

http://www.lavalys.com/pr...everest-pc-diagnostics

minger66

mwparrish


I haven't tried fans @ 100% constant -- just left them at auto initially. I need more time to get familiar with their temperature profiles under different conditions before I try fiddling with that...

I can say this: the ambient temperature in my office is 70-72*F or about 22*C. Under the EVGA OC Scanner they reached 99*C on Auto and 100*C on 70%.

I haven't tried to OC them to see what happens. The noise really doesn't bother me either if it's steady -- the ramping up and down is annoying.  I use G35s so steady noise is just extraneous with the cans on my ears. I'll work on it some tonight.  

Just a fyi, watch your power numbers when running the scanner or furmark, it really sends the power use through the roof.  With an 850w power supply you don't want to stress it too close to max.

The TX850W never broke a sweat. While the 3 200mm case fans were at max and the 480 fans were somewhere in the 90% range -- I never once heard the 140mm PSU fan ramp up -- which it would be noticeably loud within 100W of max. So all I all, the reality is these cards at 250W are pretty reasonable on consumption. I suspect they're really drawing no more than 500W for 2x 480s or 42A.

In my case, my PSU's +12v rail is 840W/70A. If anything, it appears a good quality PSU with these cards at 850W is the minimum -- but just because it's minimum doesn't mean it's insufficient by any means.

This was after roughly 5-6 hours of testing/usage.

mwparrish


I haven't tried fans @ 100% constant -- just left them at auto initially. I need more time to get familiar with their temperature profiles under different conditions before I try fiddling with that...

I can say this: the ambient temperature in my office is 70-72*F or about 22*C. Under the EVGA OC Scanner they reached 99*C on Auto and 100*C on 70%.

I haven't tried to OC them to see what happens. The noise really doesn't bother me either if it's steady -- the ramping up and down is annoying.  I use G35s so steady noise is just extraneous with the cans on my ears. I'll work on it some tonight.

did you replace the TIM on your cards?

If not , if your planning on doing so , please let us know if there is a temperature change as it will be greatly appreciated !

Via Sin Dios

did you replace the TIM on your cards?

If not , if your planning on doing so , please let us know if there is a temperature change as it will be greatly appreciated !

I have not replaced the TIM yet -- not sure if I will.

I forget if that voids the warranty -- which I'd definitely want to preserve.

mwparrish

Via Sin Dios

did you replace the TIM on your cards?

If not , if your planning on doing so , please let us know if there is a temperature change as it will be greatly appreciated !

I have not replaced the TIM yet -- not sure if I will.

I forget if that voids the warranty -- which I'd definitely want to preserve.

Replacing the TIM doesn't void the warranty, just be careful that you don't damage the hardware in the process.  The only thing that voids your warranty is physical damage, physically altering the product, or flashing the bios.

mwparrish


Okay, when I clock my CPU up to 4.0Ghz... here's the new Vantage score.

Mem clocks timings were 2000Mhz 9-9-9-24-1T vs. my 3.3 OC which has them set to 1800 Mhz 8-8-8-24-1T.

The GTX 480s were left at stock clocks.

I sure hope this gpu score goes up with an overclock because I sold my two 295's to eventually get a couple 480's, and it's not looking very appealing to me right now. Tessellation aside, will it take three 480's to actually beat two 295's??

time to rebench.  new drivers r out. 

chump7431


time to rebench.  new drivers r out. 

LOL, yeah! Rebench everything hahaha

Crysis Benches please. :-)

jcroes

chump7431


time to rebench.  new drivers r out. 

LOL, yeah! Rebench everything hahaha

no release notes other than... hey 480/470 drivers! so we'll see if there's more detail/improvements, etc.

carlo34


Crysis Benches please. :-)

i'll see what i can do tonight.

sorry =)

[link=http://downloads.guru3d.com/Forceware-197.41-Win-7-%7C-Vista-(64-bit)-WHQL-download-2517.html]http://downloads.guru3d.c...HQL-download-2517.html[/link]

chump7431


sorry =)

[link=http://downloads.guru3d.com/Forceware-197.41-Win-7-%7C-Vista-(64-bit)-WHQL-download-2517.html]http://downloads.guru3d.c...HQL-download-2517.html[/link]

haha no not you, i was referring to nvidia's release notes... pretty fail. lol.

doesn't give me any info to upgrade from 197.17 to these... but i guess i'll do it anyway!

Ok, I'm sorry to poopoo on this glorious thread like this, but I have to make the OP aware of something.

Please stop posting unaltered pics from your iPhone on the internet. No, not just because its an apple product and you should be ashamed... there's a legitimate reason. You see, Apple sucks. They like to do things without your permission, and give you no options. One such thing they do involves pictures taken with an iphone. Data is inserted to these pictures, and anybody with the knowledge to read your EXIF can access this information at will. GPS data is one of the things inserted into your pictures, the exact latitude and longitude.


[REMOVED]
[edit] Just read this, and I want to further emphasize that I am not trying to be creepy, lol


Edit by nordicjedi:  Do not post personal information about yourself or anyone else.

  
  If I helped you in some way, or you just think I'm awesome.. please use my affiliate code! 

Celeras


Ok, I'm sorry to poopoo on this glorious thread like this, but I have to make the OP aware of something.

Please stop posting unaltered pics from your iPhone on the internet. No, not just because its an apple product and you should be ashamed... there's a legitimate reason. You see, Apple sucks. They like to do things without your permission, and give you no options. One such thing they do involves pictures taken with an iphone. Data is inserted to these pictures, and anybody with the knowledge to read your EXIF can access this information at will. GPS data is one of the things inserted into your pictures, the exact latitude and longitude.

[REMOVED] 

Your post would make sense if you sent it in PM. The way you did it is kind a silly especially what you said in it...


Edit by nordicjedi:  Removed quoted portion that is in violation of the TOS.

jdookie

mwparrish


Okay, when I clock my CPU up to 4.0Ghz... here's the new Vantage score.

Mem clocks timings were 2000Mhz 9-9-9-24-1T vs. my 3.3 OC which has them set to 1800 Mhz 8-8-8-24-1T.

The GTX 480s were left at stock clocks.

I sure hope this gpu score goes up with an overclock because I sold my two 295's to eventually get a couple 480's, and it's not looking very appealing to me right now. Tessellation aside, will it take three 480's to actually beat two 295's??

I think Vantage is just not a good indication of performance for the 400-series.  If one wants to really compare 295s for 480s, I would rely on real-world game benchmarks for comparisons.  My 280 SSCs got a better GPU score than the single 480, but I bet it beats my 280s in some DX10 game benches.

Celeras


Ok, I'm sorry to poopoo on this glorious thread like this, but I have to make the OP aware of something.

Please stop posting unaltered pics from your iPhone on the internet. No, not just because its an apple product and you should be ashamed... there's a legitimate reason. You see, Apple sucks. They like to do things without your permission, and give you no options. One such thing they do involves pictures taken with an iphone. Data is inserted to these pictures, and anybody with the knowledge to read your EXIF can access this information at will. GPS data is one of the things inserted into your pictures, the exact latitude and longitude.

[Removed] 

damn..........


Edit by nordicjedi:  See above.