5870 Trifire vs 5970 Xfire vs GTX480 SLI Performance Heat and Noise?

Hello,
i am kind of sick of the heat and noise being produced by my 4870x2's crossfired (i was so so wrong when i said heat and noise were not issues), so i think it's time to finally upgrade to the latest generation of cards.

Now i am considering the setups in the title, but i am also open to some other alternatives such as 5970 Crossfire or 5970+5870 Trifire.

I could actually purchase 2x5970's for about the same cost as 3x 5870's and 2x480's (yes i am still buying used cards).

The 5970's are very energy efficient cards:



But are they that energy efficent(on stock clocks) that they could be as quiet as 3x5870's (also on stock clocks) at max load?

I am also consering the GTX480 cards, but they would need to be quieter and perform better than the 5870's trifire in order for me to choose them, does anyone have any experience with these cards?

I have struggled to find an reviews which compare the GTX 480 and HD 5970 as 1920x1080 resolution, the majority seem to focus on 2560x1600 which is not helpful seeing as vey few people are going toi game at that resolution and that the GTX480 has an obvious advantage in having almost twice the amount of memory per gpu to the 5970.

Why these reviews didn't use the XFX black or Sapphire Toxic versions of the 5970 is anyone's guess.

So it seems that i've kind of ruled out the GTX 480's, but i am really interested to know how the Heat Noise and Performance compare between the 5870 Trifire and the 5970 Crossfire.

I wouldn't go for 2 x 5970's because quadfire doesn't scale well. And two GTX480's are gonna run hot and therefore loud. 3 x 5870'would be loud and hot aswell because the 3 cards would be so close together and therefore would heat up quickly.

Doesn't seem like your short on money so have you considered watercooling? It would take care of the noise and heat issues.

I am also wondering what would happen when overclocking the different ATI combination's.

The the 5870's fell short of the 5970's performance wise could this be remedied by overclocking the 5870's?

Then who would stand on the best ground in noise and heat?

Generally speaking the 5970's are more energy for performance efficient, but is the cooler that much better than the one on the 5870's that it would not be any louder?

I would not be interesting in overclocking the 5970's at all, they would put out enough performance and minimising noise and heat would be a primary concern with that kind of GPU power under the hood of my computer.

Again, even if the 5870's perform worse the the 5970 crossfire, i would purchase them on the strength of their quietness alone, if they are in fact significantly quieter under max load.

I actually have and in fact am aware that the GTX 400 series cards run quite hot, however, the temperature of the cards are not of concern to me as much as the heat to performance ratio.

All energy used by a graphics card is going to be converted into heat, what is important is that for the heat it's producing it is producing adequate performance.

Having a 200 watt graphics card is like having a 200watt heater regardless of how hot or cool the graphics card runs.

When talking about heat you really need to talk about performance per watt and this is admittedely poor on the GTX 400 series with a single card, but i was and am still curious about how this card compares to the 5970 and 5870 in cross and trifire configurations, as i have not been able to find many benchmarks for them for 1980x1200, fi you are aware of any i'd be very grateful for your sharing them.

However, i am more interested in these benchmarks for the 5870 vs 5970 in trifire and crossfire configuration.

You say that the 5870's will run cooler and use less energy, but isn't performance for energy usage markedly lower?

I am more concerned about how much noise the 5870's trifire vs 5970 crossfire would produce, if there is little to no difference than the more energy vs performance efficient card would be the obvious choice.

Just to clarify here fermi is not loud at all. It's quieter than most hard drives and quieter than ati stock coolers.

Benchmarks, please?

I really need some comparing the GTX 400 Series SLIed with the HD 5000 Crossfired and Trifired series at 1920x1200 resolution.

Power consumption (thus heat) and noise are my two primary concerns, overclocking comes secondarily.

As far as noise goes... the cards can get "noisey" at 75% and above fan speed, but I've only ever seen them go that high in furmark, and the noise isn't an annoying whine like some previous cards, and most of the ATI cards I've heard at extremely high RPMs, its just the sound of a fan moving a lot of air. You can't really hear the fan at all, just a louder whoosh of more air moving.

Here I was bored.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item. [...] 132&page=1
http://www.hardocp.com/article/201 [...] i_review/8
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,2622.html

http://www.guru3d.com/article/gefo [...] -review/13

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 74-15.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/for [...] ew-29.html

The benchmarks are kind of contradicting but you can definately conclude that fermi is quieter than a 5970.

Why? Maybe because ati can't make decent coolers, maybe fermi doesn't run hot and their coolers are simply underwhelming.

And about the scaling here are some dutch benchmarks but you should be able to understand

http://www.hardware.info/nl-NL/art [...] 80_test/13

As you can see 480gtx's scale far better. And this is with beta drivers once you get the new drivers there will be a pretty significant improvement.

While these reviews don't have the 5870 Trifire or 5970 Crossfire, it makes it more clear that the 5870 is a contender to the GTX 480 even when compared Crossfire and SLIed, so i should think that whether running a Trifire or Quadfire solution it would be better on all front of energy for performance, noise for performance and performance for cost.

LOL, do you know anything about the mechanics of how sound sound is produced? Just the basic stuff about the movement of particles and so on?

Where do you suppose the noise generated by a fan comes from? Could it be, the movement of air? LOL

Okay, it would be best if you could compare the noise to another graphics card you've heard, i've personally heard GTX 275's, 280's, 295's 585o's and 4870x2's, have heard and can you compare to any of these?

@Somebody what hard drives are louder than a GTX470/480?

Well since all the benchmarks are contradicting I can't really say for sure. But according to guru3D 480s top out a 45decibels at 0.75m and according to toms a caviar black is 46decibells at 1m(I think that's their standard distance). And then I also have my own experience where I can always here my HDD seeking over my GPU(470) fan.

Hey hey, before this gets out of hand, i just don't take well to being called lazy, because i am anything but, that's probably the greatest insult anyone could deliver to my persona and my responce barring the use of profanity made that clear without crossing any kind of major anger threshhold.

Thankyou and i am appreciative of your and everyone elses help, but i do prefer to use google and forums are a last resort for me.

One question, if you can afford to run dual 5970, or tri 5870 or sli 480, then why oh why would you run it on anything other than 2560 or greater resolution.

Anything less and all you need is a single 5870 for perfectly playable framerates in all games ever made, or a 480gtx for metro in DX11 if you want all the eye candy,

What a waste 1920x1080, NOOB!!!

Okay, the guru 3d had no comparison to any other cards and the canucks review had this to say:

"We know the chip is supposedly built to run at these temperatures throughout its life without impacting upon its expected longevity but seeing these temperatures for any length of time on a processor is shocking to say the least. Interestingly enough, the fan stays relatively quiet (subjectively approaching that of the HD 5970) throughout this massive increase in temperatures."

I could read this sentence two ways, either the 5970 is quieter or louder, but regardless they are somewhat similar.

Now, i under the dutch benchmarks alright, but do you, this shows that the 5870's scale far better than the GTX480 and the 5970 scales just as well.

3 vs 1 5870 = 151% (quite alot more than the 480)

2 vs 1 5870 = 70.9% (not that much less than 2x480)

2 vs 1 5970 = 65% (this is 4 GPU's remember)

3 vs 1 480 = 128.2 (this is about the same as the 5970, as if we could add another GPU, we would hypothetically get 130%)

2 vs 1 480 = 78.7% (not that much more than 2x 5870)

Thankyou, those benchmarks were pretty great.

Maybe you should calm down, no one here is flaming, someone suggested that i was lazy and i corrected them as well as showed my offence, balence is restored life goes on.

Beta drivers are critical here. Most effort was put into single card performance in those drivers a less in sli and even in 3-way. 4-way was even completely left out. You cannot compare further than 2-way because the new drivers change it completely. And 10percent is a big difference though.

oh thats funny because I have an F3 and I can't here it over my 21DB fans. I looked through 4 pages of Storage articles and reviews here at Tom's and can't find it.

See what i mean about trolls lol, i'm kidding, he's been helpful, but completely wrong about most things at the same time.

Yeah have to agree, Somebody, you seem deluded and biased.

It isn't really an article or a review It's a stats comparison between drives I got the link from someone else so I don't know how to get there.

And F3s are quite a bit quieter so it could be that you don't hear them. Also my drives aren't seated on any rubber feet or anything it's just metal on metal this could also contribute to the noise. And also to clarify It's not constantly that they make this noise it's just when booting or starting an app or something likewise they make this irritating noise. In decibels it may not be higher(although I think it is) than my fermi but It's far more annoying.

I can understand the other people flaming me but your simply annoying. I have benchmarks from respected sites showing that fermi isn't loud. They may not be correct or they may be factors making the numbers faulty but I sure as hell have better info than you.

Actually now that you people mention it I've done some closer examination and that cause is the lack of rubber dampening the vibrations. So yeah In a better case the HDD wouldn't be this noisy.

As I recall though, there's no dampening in my Thermaltake Armor case either. All my drives are mounted metal to metal (I've always done it that way). *shrugs* I still only hear the drives if they power up (if my storage drive shuts down). Other than that, which is usually done at desktop at idle, I really don't hear them.

Same here, No hard drive rubber gromets for me either in my obsidian, still can't here it.

It's too much hassle...

Online lag is most likely caused due to the network and not the hardware. Single player is normally just as intensie on the gpu as online.