Just got my GTX 480

Exactly.. overvolted, and overclocked more than 100 Mhz to 810 Core clock and running Vantage on EXTREME with highest settings and my highest temp was 85c. thats nothing.. and very normal for high end graphics card. Not to mention in SLI on my 750i the cards are very close together, so when I sell the Gigabyte the temps will drop on the top card.

Also, I'm now able to run my new eVGA GTX 480 Stable as can be overclocked to
860/1720/2000. Thats a pretty high overclock and makes this a blazing fast card

MadMaxData said:

smarteyeball said:

Honestly? Outside of benchmarking - it's an absolute waste of time.

And an absolute waste of money to boot. Most so-called "performance gains" are in the users head, or some frivilous benchmark that means squat to any actual visual improvement. I can't believe the amount of teenagers who get sucked into the GFX card hype. It's a riot though....LMAO

Dual cards do show a definite advantage on a lot of titles, whether it's a single PCB with dual GPU's (5970, GTX 295 etc) or two single GPUS in crossfire/SLI.

Dual GPU's are the current sweet spot for 'actual' performance advantages.

But after that, the scalability and utilisation for 98% of games is simply not there which does indeed equate to money wasted. Especially with 2x 5970's in quadfire.

As it stands, you can't even use tri/quadfire+eyefinity where it would actually be beneficial.

It can be enabled, but it's a slidehow. Some say it's driver based, others say the crossfire cable itself was not designed to handle a bandwidth higher than 2560x1600.

Even if it did function correctly, current highly clocked CPU's just don't have enough grunt to use the cards to their full potential. Either way, it's useless.

Ask anybody who has that setup just how useful 5970 quadfire actually is in games will tell you - not at all.

(that's if they admit the truth and don't BS to make up for what they know to be is a silly mistake )

BTW, it's not just teenagers

chev65 said:

Frame rates is another thing which is way over hyped for real world performance gains, a few more frames from a second card isn't something your going to notice.

It depends on the card. I certainly noticed the frame rate difference when one of my 4890's died and I went back to a single 4890

chev65 said:

Dual cards is about a big of waste of money as going to i7 when you already have a good overclocked Quad core. The advantage using i7 with a single card is next to nothing IMO. I've talked to very knowledgable overclockers who have done it and they insisted it was a huge waste of money. Only useful for benching with more than one card.

Frame rates is another thing which is way over hyped for real world performance gains, a few more frames from a second card isn't something your going to notice. Dual cards are for benching and will probably cause more problems for you in the end.

Now Dx11 and the new Crysis2 game, that may actually be worth upgrading for. The eye candy improvments can be dramatic, going from my old 8800GT to the GTX280 was night and day difference.

So if I'm forced to purchase the GTX480 it will be all your guys fault, especially you Xguntherc!

Getting a second 8800GTS 512 certainly kept my performance up and saved me the money from upgrading to something like a GTX260 or 280 when they were released, hence I missed out the GTX200 series and upgraded to a 470. I agree with the i7 though. Like I have seen it perform better in several games, though my 9550 is fine and won't probably do a CPU upgrade for another year or so.

I've seen many benchmarks in the last few days where i7's at 4.2 Ghz and GTX 480's running Vantage on Xtreme settings and then my Q9650 at 4.0 Ghz and the 480 I barely lost. I actually beat a few guys because I had my 480 higher than them. So in that situation i7 didn't help.

and what is and isn't a waste of money is different for everyone. So bashing people or calling them silly kids is just not needed.

I didn't spend all that. I actually only wanted and planned to get a single 480. I didn't get eVGA so I snagged a Gigabyte. then the eVGA came in stock and I got one. and I sold my Gigabyte tonight and I'm back to a single GTX 480. it's still sweet and I'm happy I got it. It's going under my water-block tuesday

UPDATE:

Ok guys, I finally got my loop drained, and I'm currently in the middle of re-doing my water-cooling loop. This will be a beast when I'm done.. I took a few quick nothing special shots of my DD Water-block, I figured I'd post em for everyone..

Here's a good one


Not sure why, but this is one of my favorite shots


I like the 2 different metals instead of just copper or just Nickel


K, so those were taken a few days ago and I was just messing around. Today I've been busy working on a few PC's and doing my water loop. I finally tore apart my GTX 480 and installed that block. I'm tired and it's 1 AM so I'm to lazy to go get the DSLR camera, so I took a few ghetto quick shots with my phone.. Check it out on the card.

Thoughts?