GeForce GTX 480 3-way SLI review

GeForce GTX 480 3-way SLI with a sharp Point of View

You know, typically after spring, closing in on summer, time things start to slow down on the hardware scene. And good gawd my man, it's still busier than ever. Each and every month there are new NDA releases.. there's just lots of good new gear out there and that's just excellent! Now I still had a GeForce GTX 480 SLI article planned (and GTX 470 SLI as well actually) but as a result of how busy it has been and still is, and on top of that finding out that the NVIDIA board partners would rather see their boards selling in the stores insteaad of being tortured by the press, this SLI article got delayed.

None the less, have no fear .. ze Guru is here! Today we'll start up the first in a series of SLI articles based on the GeForce GTX 480 series graphics cards. GeForce GTX 400 series might have had a rough start but if we filter out the mighty thorn of this release, the noise levels, then for a minute everybody can wholeheartedly admit that they are beautiful performing graphics cards. Back in January I already heard that SLI performance would be outstanding with this new series and well, that definitely tickled my senses and taste buds.

As a results today we'll 'finally' have a look at SLI scaling of that GeForce GTX 480. We look at single card performance, dual-card performance and also triple (3-way) SLI performance to see how well these puppies will scale.

The article will first cover SLI performance among the new GTX 480's in several configurations and games, and then we'll check a little 2-way Multi-GPU gaming in a handsome multi-GPU slaughter-fest article in the ATI versus NVIDIA kind of way to see who and what scales the best.

Over the next few pages we'll tell you a bit about multi-GPU gaming, the challenges, the requirements and of course a nice tasty benchmark session. Have a browse to the next page please, where we'll startup like lightning and thunder --- jeehaw !

Explain that Multi-GPU mode you talk about...

Okay I tend to get a little repetitive with this question, but honestly... is there anyone on this website who doesn't know what SLI & Crossfire is? Well surely the regulars know the idea and principles. But it never hurts to explain what we are dealing with today.

Okay so, both NVIDIA's SLI and AMD ATI Crossfire allow you to combine/add a second or even third similar generation graphics card (or in more GPUs) to the one you already have in your PC. This way you effectively try to double, triple or even quadruple your raw rendering gaming performance (in theory).

Think of a farmer with a plough and one horse. One horse will get the job done yet by adding a second or third horse, you'll plough through that farmland much quicker and (hopefully) more efficiently. That's roughly the same idea for graphics cards. One card can do the job sufficiently, but two or more you can achieve much more.

So along these lines, you could for example place two or more ATI graphics cards into a Crossfire compatible mainboard, or two or more NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards in SLI mode on a compatible motherboard.

• A Crossfire compatible mainboard is pretty much ANY mainboard with multiple PCIe x16 slots that is not an nForce motherboard.
• A SLI certified motherboard is an nForce motherboard with more than two PCIe xc16 slots or a certified P55 or X58 motherboard. If your motherboard does not have the SLI certification mentioned on the box, it's liekly not SLI compatible. Keep that in mind.

Once we seat the similar graphics cards on the carefully selected motherboard we just bridge them together, with a supplied Crossfire connector or in NVIDIA's case, a SLI connector. Then install/update drivers, after which most games can take advantage of the extra horsepower we just added into the system.

Multi GPU rendering -- the idea is not new at all... if you are familiar with the hardware developments over the past couple of years you'll remember that 3dfx had a very familiar concept with the Voodoo 2 graphics cards series. There are multiple ways to manage two cards rendering one frame; think of Supertiling, it's a popular form of rendering. Alternate Frame Rendering, each card will render a frame (even/uneven) or Split Frame Rendering, simply one GPU renders the upper or the lower part of the frame.

So you see there are many methods where two or more GPUs can be utilized to bring you a substantial gain in performance.

The mysterious looks of GeForce GTX 480 setup in w-way SLI in our VGA test rig.

Alright, we've covered most of the hardware. We'll now have a peek at the configuration used, the hardware and software suite and then fire off the benchmarks in which we'll demonstrate performance.

Examining the dark matter

To be able to understand what we are doing today we need to briefly take you through some of the key components used for Lucifer. So I explained that we'll be using our DIY (Do It Yourself) built X58 based system

So before we start, some custom parts we will be using I want to show to you first:

• Core i7 965 @ 3750 MHz (3.6 + Turbo mode)
• Motherboard -- Intel X58
• Memory -- Corsair Dominator 6144 MB (3x 2048 MB) DDR3 Corsair @ 1600 MHz CAS 7
• 1200 Watt BFG Power Supply
• Chassis Corsair Obsidian 800D

These are some pretty nifty parts and bare in mind, when you opt multi-GPU gaming, always have your gear right. You'll need that quality power power supply, you'll need that beefy motherboard and processor and then, you'll need a chassis with some very decent airflow keeping the graphics cards nicely chilled down.

Product Gallery

The cards we'll be using today originate from the Dutch based Point of View, well at least two of them, plus one reference card from NVIDIA.

Above a mockup of the cards in SLI. You'll of course need a SLI compatible motherboard with at least three physical x16 slots each with dual slot spacing.

You top off the setup with the 3-way SLI connector, your motherboard manufacturer will (should) supply these with the motherboard. Right now the cards are position on an ASUS motherboard, but a bit later on we'll move them into a closed system with an eVGA X58 classified motherboard.

You will need some serious power supply juice as the requirements are sick. On a high-end system with these three cards you will top 1000 Watt of power consumption, needed are thee 8-pin PEG and three 6-pin PEG connectors.

Last photo. Let's head on over to the Guru testing zone ...

Test Environment & equipment

Here is where we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboard

eVGA X58 Classified

Processor

Core i7 965 @ 3750 MHz (25x150 @ 1.35v)

Graphics Cards

GeForce GTX 480 (x3)

Diverse

Memory

Corsair Dominator 6144 MB (3x 2048 MB) DDR3 @ 1600 MHz CAS7 1T

Power Supply Unit

1200 Watt

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up to 2560x1600

OS related software

Windows 7 RTM 64-bit
DirectX 9/10 End User Runtime
NVIDIA GeForce 197.41 WHQL

Software benchmark suite

• Battlefield: Bad Company 2
• Metro 2033
• Just Cause 2
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
• Colin McRae DiRT2
• Resident Evil 5
• Far Cry 2
• Crysis WARHEAD
• Anno 1404
• 3DMark Vantage

A word about 'FPS'

What are we looking for in gaming performance wise? First off, obviously Guru3D tends to think that all games should be played at the best image quality (IQ) possible. There's a dilemma though, IQ often interferes with the performance of a graphics card. We measure this in FPS, the number of frames a graphics card can render per second, the higher it is the more fluently your game will display itself.

A game's frames per second (FPS) is a measured average of a series of tests. That test is often a time demo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game and its gameplay experience. After forcing the same image quality settings; this time-demo is then used for all graphics cards so that the actual measuring is as objective as can be.

Frames per second	Gameplay
<30 FPS	very limited gameplay
30-40 FPS	average yet very playable
40-60 FPS	good gameplay
>60 FPS	best possible gameplay

• So if a graphics card barely manages less than 30 FPS, then the game is not very playable, we want to avoid that at all cost.
• With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain graphically intensive parts. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Match the best possible resolution to this result and you'll have the best possible rendering quality versus resolution, hey you want both of them to be as high as possible.
• When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS on average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smoothly at every point in the game, turn on every possible in-game IQ setting.
• Over 100 FPS? You have either a MONSTER graphics card or a very old game.

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