Gaming Across Three Screens: GTX 460, GTX 480, And Quad-SLI

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Display spanning is quickly becoming the high-mark for serious gaming machines of all budgets, with more powerful cards allowing higher resolutions. Yet, as panel resolutions higher than 1080p become harder to find, do we really need more than two cards?

Benchmark Results: Crysis (DX10)

Crysis has been known, since the day of its release, as an frame rate demolisher, and we’ve kept it around just to see if anything is ever capable of pushing its limits.

With results like these, we really had to look to the game’s minimum FPS to get a clear idea of which resolutions are supported by what hardware.

The good news for mid-budget gamers is that spanning across three 720p displays is possible with a pair of GeForce GTX 460 cards, with the higher 4x AA test reading a minimum 26 FPS. The cheaper cards even pull a playable 21 FPS minimum across three 1600x900 monitors with AA disabled.

Two GeForce GTX 480 units span three 1080p displays at a minimum of 22 FPS with AA disabled, but enabling AA at that resolution requires quad-SLI.

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Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
127 Comments Comment from the forums
  • amk09
    sweet jesus, quad sli uses enough watts to power a small town
    Reply
  • Bluescreendeath
    GTX480 Quad SLI - Yes, it can play Crysis. Maxed out at 5760x1080 too! :D
    Reply
  • duk3
    Sapphire’s 700 MHz cards
    They look like sparkle cards to me.
    EDIT: Now fixed, I thought it was funny that sapphire made gtx460s
    Reply
  • damasvara
    BluescreendeathGTX480 Quad SLI - Yes, it can play Crysis. Maxed out at 5760x1080 too!It's so hot, it can also make steak BBQ for you! Watch out for anti-terrorist bust over the Fermi thermal suspicion though... :lol:
    Reply
  • Now i am curious to see a performance difference between tri and quad sli in triple 30" 2500x1600 monitors (7500x1600 resolution).
    Reply
  • hurt74
    @duk3

    Isnt it nice to know that sappire tech now makes NVIDIA cards because the last time i know they are an ATI exclusive. Good job toms
    Reply
  • vicskyline96
    cool, so the drivers support quad 480s now? i wonder if they support tri SLI 200 series cards, i'm sure theres still people out there who want to try this on their older generation cards
    Reply
  • joytech22
    Wow, that power usage is insane! it's hard to believe that these 480's use so much power.. you'd need like a thermaltake toughpower 1500w or something, or maybe 2 PSU's!
    Reply
  • andrern2000
    4 GTX 480s are a gig. But how much price is it is totally another matter. I prefer to 2-way SLI GTX 480.
    Reply
  • vicskyline96
    cool, so the drivers support quad 480s now? i wonder if they support tri SLI 200 series cards, i'm sure theres still people out there who want to try this on their older generation cards
    Reply