GTX 470 Sli

[G-Man]

sell me your tri-sli 280's muppet

[brunner]

Do Nvidia drivers now let the user allocate 2 GPUs to rendering graphics and 1 to PhysX? The main reason why I never went with triple-sli is that the NV drivers wouldn't let the user dedicate one of the 3 cards to Physx. It's why I went with 2x280GTX or 2x295 + 1 9800GT for Physx instead. In Physx games, 2 GPUs in SLI plus one for PhysX is always faster than 3 GPUs in SLI (assuming they're from the same class).

I think that's why Just Cause 2's performance is somewhat disappointing even on a 480GTX. The developer's choice to use CUDA instead of Physx meant that the water effects can't be offloaded to a GPU that was just dedicated to physics calculations.

[fasedww]

Originally Posted by brunner

Do Nvidia drivers now let the user allocate 2 GPUs to rendering graphics and 1 to PhysX? The main reason why I never went with triple-sli is that the NV drivers wouldn't let the user dedicate one of the 3 cards to Physx. It's why I went with 2x280GTX or 2x295 + 1 9800GT for Physx instead. In Physx games, 2 GPUs in SLI plus one for PhysX is always faster than 3 GPUs in SLI (assuming they're from the same class).

I think that's why Just Cause 2's performance is somewhat disappointing even on a 480GTX. The developer's choice to use CUDA instead of Physx meant that the water effects can't be offloaded to a GPU that was just dedicated to physics calculations.

Not if your at higher resoultions with alot of everything on higher settings, three is better than two.

[MrSavoy]

I'm still looking around for reliable tri sli 470 vs regular sli 480 benchs/reviews and there are none. I'm so on the fence trying to decide between 3 470's or 2 480's. I'm leaning toward 3 470's but still not sure. Anyone know of any tri 470 benches?

[alanon]

Here's the first 470SLI review I've seen. Not as good as I hoped...

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...-review-2.html

[fasedww]

Here's 3d mark vantage and Heaven 2.0 stock gpu clocks

[brunner]

Thanks for sharing. Tessellation seems slower on that setup than I had hoped for but I guess it won't matter since we're still long ways from seeing that kinda geometry in a real game.

[Kaguya]

Originally Posted by alanon

Here's the first 470SLI review I've seen. Not as good as I hoped...

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...-review-2.html

Seems the 470 SLI setup is about the same as a 5970, and almost the same price-wise. I sure don't feel like jumping to ATi this round and lose my tweaking abilities... but I certainly don't want to make my rig much louder or hotter.

I hear ATI has a refresh coming... maybe I'll watch that and see what happens. I'll probably just be disappointed and go with a pair of 470s, but sure would be nice to have a cooler running 460 or 475 or something to choose from.

[brunner]

There doesn't seem to be much more room for ATI to improve unless they come out with a new architecture. There's almost no benefit to overclocking a 5000 GPU beyond the stock speeds of a 5870.

[MrSavoy]

Thanks for posting those benches fasedww. I'm waiting for ups to deliver my 3gtx470sc's. I'll probably install em tomorrow since I'm tired as hell today anyway.

[fasedww]

Originally Posted by MrSavoy

Thanks for posting those benches fasedww. I'm waiting for ups to deliver my 3gtx470sc's. I'll probably install em tomorrow since I'm tired as hell today anyway.

Cool I've been playing just cause 2 everything maxed except I got like x16csaa for aa haven't tried any higher, runs 71+ frames a second, badcompany 2 maxed, these cards work good in tri sli, everything smoooooth'

[brunner]

Originally Posted by fasedww

Cool I've been playing just cause 2 everything maxed except I got like x16csaa for aa haven't tried any higher, runs 71+ frames a second, badcompany 2 maxed, these cards work good in tri sli, everything smoooooth'

Are they faster in general than 2x480? Can you please run the Concrete Jungle benchmark at 1920x1200, max, 4xAA? That's the benchmark I"m most interested in because 2 480s can't seem to reach 60fps in it.