Amazing SLI Scaling: Do Two GeForce GTX 460s Beat One GTX 480?

The GeForce GTX 460 has already proven itself an excellent value as a single card, but can two of them offer superior performance at similar cost to Nvidia’s flagship GTX 480? Let's just say that there's a good reason to buy an SLI-compatible motherboard.

Graphics giants Nvidia and AMD continuously run up against the limits of manufacturing technology in their effort to release revolutionary products every eighteen months.

Feeding the habits of performance enthusiasts isn't easy. For evidence, just look back at the state of delirium Nvidia's faithful were in following months of production delays for the GeForce GTX 480. The graphics card that eventually emerged was as hot and expensive as it was powerful (a combination of qualities that the brand-loyal seem to appreciate much more than us).

Those same qualities did not lend themselves to the embracing of lower-cost derivative models, so our disappointment in the GeForce GTX 465 probably didn’t surprise anyone. Some serious tweaks would be required before this technology was ready for the mid-priced masses.

That much-needed evolution came in the form of Nvidia’s GF104 GPU. At less than half of the price of the GeForce GTX 480, Nvidia’s 1 GB GeForce GTX 460 delivered class-leading performance and much lower heat, with such high value that it earned our coveted Recommended Buy award. We were in fact so impressed by the GeForce GTX 460’s performance that we had to wonder, would two of these overtake the flagship GTX 480 in benchmarks? Sparkle Computer was gracious enough to send over the cards we needed to find the answer.

Note to AMD enthusiasts: The focus of today’s article is on GeForce GTX 460 SLI performance relative to the GeForce GTX 480. For a detailed analysis of how the GeForce GTX 480 compares to multi-GPU Radeon configurations, including the Radeon HD 5970 and Radeon HD 5870 in CrossFire, please consider Don Woligroski’s Asus ARES review.