GTX 480: To SLI Or Not To SLI, That Is The Question?

[TheGregster76]

I am looking to upgrade my videocard in the next few weeks. I currently have a BFG GTX 295 and I am looking at upgrading to a GTX 480 and possibly looking to get a second GTX480 down the road to put into SLI. I have a few questions:

1. Is there a decent performance boost with running 2 GTX 480's? Or would one be enough in my computer?
2. My computer is air cooled and I have a Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 case. Would there be enough airflow in my case to keep 2 GTX 480's cool?

Note: I am not looking to get a third GTX 480 to run 3-way SLI. I am not interested in 3-way SLI. I will have none of the 3-way SLI talk here.

[_dangtx_]

if you really have to buy into the fermi now, limit yourself to one...

1-what resolution/games:answer :)
2-should be ok,as far as ok goes with them. best performance,but as you have probably read, hot hot hot

(3)-if i were you id keep the card you got already, or even better , sell it till it still holds some value, and wait for next refresh

[Silvgearx]

Two vs One, what do you think?

[Zero82z]

What exactly are you playing that a single GTX480 is not good enough for you? I don't see any reason to go SLI unless your gameplay experience will be impeded by only having one of them, and with the games that are currently out there, I don't see that really happening.

[Technokat]

fermi stacks better than previous generations, giving better performance by going to two, than say the 2xx series. 2 definately better than one. That being said, do you need it? What resolution are you playing at? are you planning to play multi screen? Are you planning to go 3d? if you are only running like 22" screens, and no to the rest, then sli is probably a waste.

[0o0]

One would be more than enough, unless you must have all your games maxed out with AA/AF and silky smooth at high resolutions, in which case you'd need LOTS of money to blow out the door... One would be more than enough for me at 1080p, even 1920x1200 which is probably what your samsung 24" is running at. Even with a single 480, I'd be on my knees drooling. If you want to get 2, could you give me one please? lol jk

[rjbarker]

1920 x 1200 games like Metro all eye candy turned on DX11 Full Tess will bring a single 480 to its knees!!! If you can afford 2...go for it :) Why not.....!?

[Squeetard]

That's a poorly coded engine. The eye candy does not match the framerate in Metro 2033.

[rjbarker]

Just Cause is another......and I'm sure thier are more..lets face it..as more DX11 Titles emerge they'll be more of a requirement for badass GPU's (and multi GPU's), especially with 24" to 30" Native Res and multi monitors.....

[Ryoohki]

Originally Posted by Squeetard

That's a poorly coded engine. The eye candy does not match the framerate in Metro 2033.

Well it's the most advanced DX11 game right now. Not only does it do TESS on characters but on environnement close to player. If i look at Uniengine Bench Demo (with no gameplay, AI, not a lot of physic etc), game with that kind of Tesselation and features will be completly unplayable at 1920x1080 with these Generation of Hardware (Nvidia and ATI alike), and i'am not talking about the Extreme mode. Everytime a game come out and doesn't run a 100FPS like a crappy console port that use 6 years old technology converted to PC in 2 months. They complain, but imho Crysis and Warhead are still the most beautiful game released on PC even if they are 2007-08 and they runned at 12FPS with they where release just because the technology inside the graphics card did not provide enought power to back them off..