Triple SLI or 3-Way SLI GeForce GTX 480 Video Cards

[Apoptosis]

Chris Morley over at MainGear has spent several days playing around with some GeForce GTX 480 video cards and has been focusing on triple SLI or 3-Way SLI performance numbers since pretty much no reviewer got three GeForce GTX 480 for last weeks launch. The guys over at MainGear obviously got at least three of them and they benchmarked them in the high-end Shift gaming PC that they would love to sell to anyone than can afford the $2500+ enthusiast system.

How sexy is this Maingear Shift System:

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Regardless of brand preference, any time AMD and NVIDIA release a new generation of architecture, we technologists and consumers of technology should get excited. These companies bring to the table hardware that truly changes the way we look at computing. More now than ever, the GPU is playing an increasingly important role in our day-to-day computing experiences. No longer a product reserved for gamers, the GPU has expanded its role to take on more and more everyday computing tasks.
In today’s Windows 7 environment, technologies like DirectX 11 with DirectCompute, and most notably NVIDIA’s CUDA architecture, the GPU is being used for everything from the mundane 3D acceleration of the Windows 7 Aero interface, to transcoding videos for use on portable media players, increasing the quality of standard definition video, 3D high definition movies, and yes, even gaming with eye-candy only imaginable just a few years ago.

So you can imagine that today’s release of the GTX 480 and 470, while a long time coming, is a very important event. We have our GeForce GTX 400-series landing page here - please check it out!

We’re lucky enough to share with you some internal impressions and numbers we’ve seen from NVIDIA’s latest and greatest. While we’ll show you the performance numbers you crave, we’re going to approach this from the standpoint of a system builder. There are plenty of great tech websites out there that will give you a comprehensive review, and we’ll be sharing some of the same data with you, and we know what everyone wants to see: SLI results. So we’ve quickly prepared some benchmarks with 1, 2, and 3-way Fermi.

Source

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[hark]

The performance seems pretty good, especially in the Unigine Heaven 2.0 demo, but the thought of how much heat it generates and how much power it draws makes me shudder. Awesome system, though!

[InspectahACE]

[DMB2000uk]

Interesting to see the little tweaks to the air intake of the cards.

Even with the vertical system format, the inner most two cards are surely going to suffocate.

Dan

[thehybridfrog]

Even if he ducts the air intakes, aren't the metal fins on top of the cards going to roast the backside of the next card over? I thought nVidia strongly suggested spacing these cards.

[FZ1]

Looks like a Silverstone PSU...It must be the 1200w or 1500w model because that rig will draw more power than a village in Haiti

[jnanster]

Does the PC have to be inside a refrigerator to operate.
I recall the old mainframe days, freezing to death in the computer lab with my stack of punch cards.
Are we returning to these day?

[vbironchef]

There is no way those cards are going to last with that spacing. Not to mention the cpu cooler won't be able to handle the heat that comes from those cards. I give the rig 3 months to live if used for F@H bigadv points and folding 3 GPU Clients. No way, no how. Just ain't going to work.