Gtx460 sli

Are they close together on the motherboard? It is probably an airflow restriction on the second card.

My two machines that run SLI have motherboards that did not allow for extra space between the cards. This makes second run hotter. I run 260s and 560s in SLI, both show the same results due to the spacing on the motherboard.

Top card always runs hotter, not a lot you can do about it unless you are able to move the bottom card down further.

I have had the same problem with my old 460's as well as with amd cards. My current 6990 is a dual gpu and gpu number one always reports that it is 5-10 degrees hotter than gpu 2 and they are in the same card. The heat from the bottom card is definately making the top card a bit hotter. I am wondering if the problem is also that the top card is working a bit harder since it is the one with the display hooked up to it even though they both may show as having the same load. it is the only way to explain what happens to the 6990 in that same situation.

it cannot possibly be an airflow issue, I have a silverstone raven 3 with 6 fans, and my mainboard is asrock extreme4 gen3 which has a ton of space between them.
its the first time i use sli and i have no clue how this is possible. i run the stresstests on each card individually. they are identical cards!
is it because the top card is the renderer that this happens?

just to note, for the stresstests, i put the monitor cable in one, disable sli, run the test (one of the is idle) which makes sure temp of one does not affect the other. i the put the monitor cable in the other, run the test, again making sure the other one is idle.

Its because they are designed to have at least 2-3 inches of space between them, some motherboards account for this but the cheaper models do not. It honestly does not matter, if 82c is a hot as it gets that is safe for that card.

I've a gtx 460 sli too, running at the same core clock and under stress it doesn't even reach 70C , when I overclock them to 802 it get around 72C, but becauseI did two things.
I switched the cards (works if they are different brand)
I bought a noctua nh d 14 and I put it right in front of the cards

Although 80C is hot it's still ok, good luck!

reason why i am asking this is that i just bought the second card, and i wanna make sure theres nothing wrong with it. now i dont really know what to expect, but this seems pretty weird to me, unless other people also see this happen...

Switch cards and I bet you get the same results.

im not switching cards,im too lazy, thx for ur help though!

Ha! I feel the same way a lot of the time.

i have the same cards, gigabyte 1gb 460s sli
as others have said my motherboard does not allow space between the two cards.
my temps don't get nearly as hot as yours but my top card gets in the high 70s*C while my bottom card never gets hotter than 52*C

im sure this is because of airflow. the top card isnt getting as much cool air as the bottom, you must also realize that the top card is going to be sucking in the hot air from the card below it, even with space in between the cards.

try using msi after burner and setting your fan so that soon as your card hits 80*C your fan speed goes to 80, this drastically helped with my temps.
also use it to make sure your gpu and mem usage are the same, or close, on both cards.

again thx, but really im not worried about the temperature of one of them being too high. my concern was that one of them was running at a different temperature EVEN WHEN I DISABLE SLI AND RUN THE TEST ON THE SECOND ONE. that is to say gpu load on top card is 0% and 100% on second, and it still doesnt go above 66. the second one i notice is on a slightly slower PCI-E slot, that might be the reason but i still find it really really weird.