EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked+

[jmmathe1988]

Im saving up for a "bragging rights" gaming machine, money is not an issue but I would like to get 2 maybe 3 of these in sli. But im worried about heat, im getting an amazing case "Haf 942 x" so I will have great air cooling but still I hear the stock cards run hot, and these are superclocked so im a tad bit worried...anybody have the info I need? I just dont want to fork out 6000$ if they will burn out soon after purchase, I plain on playing games like dirt, starcraft 2, crisis, and world of warcraft which I usually play that for about 6hrs or so straight, but im not worried about that cause wow is more cpu which is why im going 980x OC to 4.4ghz with digital storms frostchill liquid cooling from swiftech.

 

[wa1]

So, what about the other specs?
we need that info...

 

[Mousemonkey]

The GTX480's have been around for a few months now and there are still no reports of them burning out, bearing in mind that they run about the same temps that the HD4870's run at.

 

[ares1214]

The 480's sure would give you bragging rights, however it might be short lived with 6xxx coming around. In any event, if you want 1 480, 2 460's or 2 5850's would be better.

 

[jmmathe1988]

So, what about the other specs?
we need that info...

Here is a link to the build > http://www.digitalstormonline.com/comploadsaved.asp?id=448600

Ive done ALOT of research over the last few weeks, checked out reviews on ibuypower/cryberpower/alienware and a few others. And from what I gathered Digital Storm is the best place, they have pages after pages of positive reviews. I was origionally going to get one from ibuypower but after a few videos of people unboxing theirs my opinion quickly changed. With DS they have 5 year parts and labor, so if something goes bad as long as I ship to them they will fix free of charge as long as I didnt do anything out of the ordinary to cause it. And with my lack of knowledge in building one myself, I figure its best to have it built. Exspecially since im going OC and liquid cooled.

 

[jmmathe1988]

The 480's sure would give you bragging rights, however it might be short lived with 6xxx coming around.

Yea I read new cards are coming soon with up to 3 to 4x the power of the 480 BUT I play wow, and current system makes me run everything on low even resolution when raiding. Im sick of it, its a major hassle to try and tank or heal at those settings. And with catacalysm coming Dec 7th I just cant wait, otherwise I would. Its mainly what im going to be playing, but I plain on getting alot more games once I get a beast that can run them lol

As of right now, I can have the 6000$ by mid febuary which is a bit of a wait, but I figure take a month or 2 before I will have the gear to even raid again, so if they come out by then or very close to it I might just consider waiting a tad bit longer. But from what I saw it still under works, and unperfected and not exspected till 2nd half of 2011.

 

[notty22]

You might just want to start with one gtx 480. Its very powerful, if you don't have any kind of gaming power now, its hard to 'grasp'.
When you start adding complexity, like the highest performing cards, more than one, things can run fussy like having a exotic Ferrari. When they don't run right, sputter they run worse than an average car. The same reason your not building your own, turns in to a frustrated owner when you have tune or find why the rig is not performing to expectations.
You could buy a 2000 dollar rig every 2 years instead of dumping 6 thousand in to a gaming machine, that devalues fairly fast.
Unless you really mean money is no object, then ignore the above.

 

[ares1214]

Yea I read new cards are coming soon with up to 3 to 4x the power of the 480 BUT I play wow, and current system makes me run everything on low even resolution when raiding. Im sick of it, its a major hassle to try and tank or heal at those settings. And with catacalysm coming Dec 7th I just cant wait, otherwise I would. Its mainly what im going to be playing, but I plain on getting alot more games once I get a beast that can run them lol

As of right now, I can have the 6000$ by mid febuary which is a bit of a wait, but I figure take a month or 2 before I will have the gear to even raid again, so if they come out by then or very close to it I might just consider waiting a tad bit longer. But from what I saw it still under works, and unperfected and not exspected till 2nd half of 2011.

6xxx is coming before december, with the exception of the 6990, the dual card. So id say its worth the wait :lol:

 

[jmmathe1988]

6xxx is coming before december, with the exception of the 6990, the dual card. So id say its worth the wait :lol:

Really! I searched and searched and couldnt find a release deadline for the new line...you got a link to this info! Well either way I wont have the cash like I said till febuary so yea if they are out and DS offers them on theirs list I will totally get the newer version.

 

[ares1214]

Really! I searched and searched and couldnt find a release deadline for the new line...you got a link to this info! Well either way I wont have the cash like I said till febuary so yea if they are out and DS offers them on theirs list I will totally get the newer version.

I have like 20 links if you need them, heres 1:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3976/amd-quietly-reveals-next-radeon-series-launches-next-week

The naming system got changed up, so when they say 6870, they mean 6770. But it launches in like a few days actually...

 

[jmmathe1988]

I have like 20 links if you need them, heres 1:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3976/amd-quietly-reveals-next-radeon-series-launches-next-week

The naming system got changed up, so when they say 6870, they mean 6770. But it launches in like a few days actually...

oh, these are ati...I was talking about nvidia's latest project...not sure what they are called exactlly but it was going to replace their current fermi architechure. And was said to be able to deliever 3 to 4x the power of the gtx 480. Ive never been a fan of ati, a guy from work said he has replaced his 5970 3 times allready. And ive allways heard nvidia has the better drivers.

Read farther down that site you linked, someone actually mentions what I am talking about "28nm Kepler"

 

[ares1214]

oh, these are ati...I was talking about nvidia's latest project...not sure what they are called exactlly but it was going to replace their current fermi architechure. And was said to be able to deliever 3 to 4x the power of the gtx 480. Ive never been a fan of ati, a guy from work said he has replaced his 5970 3 times allready. And ive allways heard nvidia has the better drivers.

Read farther down that site you linked, someone actually mentions what I am talking about "28nm Kepler"

Yeah 28nm Kepler comes next year, past when you plan on buying. I wouldnt limit yourself to one company or another. If you get better performance and less heat/power/price, id say buy that card no matter what company. Fermi wasnt exactly a success, and Nvidia is behind with their launching of new products, so AMD very well might give better bang for your buck.

 

[ares1214]

BTW, it said "CUDA Performance Per Watt", so that isnt really 3-4x performance. Probably closer to doubling performance.

 

[jmmathe1988]

Yeah 28nm Kepler comes next year, past when you plan on buying. I wouldnt limit yourself to one company or another. If you get better performance and less heat/power/price, id say buy that card no matter what company. Fermi wasnt exactly a success, and Nvidia is behind with their launching of new products, so AMD very well might give better bang for your buck.

Well, since they are coming very soon I will just keep my eye on the headlines and benchmarks, see how users review them and whatnot. Then make my decision, I know a few people on DS forums told me to stay away from their 5970 cause its 2 gpus, and in crossfire thats 4 gpus and they wouldnt scale as well in performance or something like that as 480's in sli. Wish I could find it again, but cant seem to locate it in the forums again lol

 

[ares1214]

Well, since they are coming very soon I will just keep my eye on the headlines and benchmarks, see how users review them and whatnot. Then make my decision, I know a few people on DS forums told me to stay away from their 5970 cause its 2 gpus, and in crossfire thats 4 gpus and they wouldnt scale as well in performance or something like that as 480's in sli. Wish I could find it again, but cant seem to locate it in the forums again lol

I generally say stay away from all dual cards. GTX 295, 4870x2, 5970, they are all a lot more prone to problems, and just generally not a good deal. I would recommend a 6990 (dual card) id recommend a 6970 (single card) when it comes out and if its a success.

 

[jmmathe1988]

I generally say stay away from all dual cards. GTX 295, 4870x2, 5970, they are all a lot more prone to problems, and just generally not a good deal. I would recommend a 6990 (dual card) id recommend a 6970 (single card) when it comes out and if its a success.

Finally found that forum topic I was talking about.


5970 is in internal sli, so one card is actually giving you cf, 2 of them is giving you quad fire.

Right now Crossfire is scaling about 10% better than SLI, so 2 5870's are very close to 2 GTX 480's, on average. 3 5870's seem to be a bit better than 3 GTX 480's, but I imagine SLI scaling will improve with new drivers, changing this whole argument. The GTX 480 is a great card despite running a tad bit hot, but the next revision will really let this new architecture shine...6 months from now. so it is a tough call.. I went through this decision a while back, and was on both sides of the fence many times. So bottom line, 2 5870's = good system, 2 GTX 480's will be a bit more powerful, but about $200.00 more with 2 5970's.. less powerful, lots more money, lots of problems...always skip on multi gpus my friend, unless they manage to fix all the problems that come with it.

 

[ares1214]

Whoever said that is wrong, besides the very begininning and the very first drivers, fermi has better scaling than 5xxx. For the most part, the lower end less so, and AMD has caught up a little with better drivers.

 

[manz214]

to the OP,

i saw the specs of your planned gamming rig. If your worried bout the heat, i would suggest getting the evga gtx480 ftw edition. Its water-cooled and seeing as budget is not an issue for you, try it. temps are aroud 50+ under full load. So much room for OC w/o having any problems. But then again, i dont own one, so i can't really say what problems are encountered when using it.

 

[17seconds]

Back to your original question. The EVGA SC+ is only overclocked a relatively small amount, so the temps will still be about the same as most regular versions. The cooler vents the heat outside the case, so there's minimal worry about your other system components.

As a happy owner of a GTX480, I say go for it. With two in SLI, you will still be beating the latest single cards whenever they finally get released months from now, and for a lot less money per card. The heat and noise were problems with the first cards released over 6 months ago, but the new bios and the latest drivers really keep things well within the comfort range. If you had other GTX480 owners responding to your question, I'm sure they would tell you the same thing.
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=607&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=15
"...the early engineering samples NVIDIA sent to the media for evaluation testing earned the GeForce GTX 480 product line a bad reputation. These samples used immature BIOS firmware that differs significantly from the full retail version sold on store shelves. After six months of additional refinements, the ASUS ENGTX480 retail kit produced much lower temperatures... and did so with a lot less fan noise."

 

[jmmathe1988]

to the OP,

i saw the specs of your planned gamming rig. If your worried bout the heat, i would suggest getting the evga gtx480 ftw edition. Its water-cooled and seeing as budget is not an issue for you, try it. temps are aroud 50+ under full load. So much room for OC w/o having any problems. But then again, i dont own one, so i can't really say what problems are encountered when using it.

Well, with their stage 6 cooling which is dual loop with 2 rads its a very expensive setup, so we talking about 8000$+ now. I was trying to stay as close to 6000$ as possible, so I guess I do have a budget just a large 1 so to speak.

 

[jmmathe1988]

Back to your original question. The EVGA SC+ is only overclocked a relatively small amount, so the temps will still be about the same as most regular versions. The cooler vents the heat outside the case, so there's minimal worry about your other system components.

As a happy owner of a GTX480, I say go for it. With two in SLI, you will still be beating the latest single cards whenever they finally get released months from now, and for a lot less money per card. The heat and noise were problems with the first cards released over 6 months ago, but the new bios and the latest drivers really keep things well within the comfort range. If you had other GTX480 owners responding to your question, I'm sure they would tell you the same thing.
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=607&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=15
"...the early engineering samples NVIDIA sent to the media for evaluation testing earned the GeForce GTX 480 product line a bad reputation. These samples used immature BIOS firmware that differs significantly from the full retail version sold on store shelves. After six months of additional refinements, the ASUS ENGTX480 retail kit produced much lower temperatures... and did so with a lot less fan noise."

Ty, this helped alot...I will probally get 2 of them then, I was just worried about getting an expensive system and the cards burn so hot they go out within a few months. I mean either way would get free replacement with as long as I paid to ship it, or have them ship the cards to me. And I guess DS does 72hr stress test before they ship anything out, so if there is a problem they should catch it. I went thru the 1st batch of xbox 360's red ring 3 times, its a real pain in the ass to pay for something and constantlly ship it away to be fixed. Thats what I was trying to avoid, and why I was so curious about the temps.

 

[jmmathe1988]

Best answer selected by jmmathe1988.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey