Fight!
Hardware.Info managed to snag not one, but three Nvidia GTX 480 cards and mashed them together (translated) in a 3-way SLI shootout against three ATI Radeon HD 5870 in triple-CrossFire. A dual-CrossFire 5970 was thrown in for good measure too.
For a large number of tests, even the dual-CrossFire 5970 configuration held its own, as well as the triple-CrossFire. As of this writing, GTX 480's are available in very low quantities and many gamers will find it difficult to snag one until Nvidia ramps up production.
After looking through the benchmarks, it's still very clear that the best bang for the buck title remains squarely in ATI's corner of the ring. While both ATI and Nvidia count on high yields to bring prices down, it's still unclear when consumers can see the results.
Hardware.Info ran its test with Intel's latest Core i7 980X 6-core processor. What they found was that ATI's triple-CrossFire scales far better than Nvidia's solution. According to the tests, adding a fourth GTX 480 will only give gamers roughly a 12.7% performance increase, which doesn't justify the cost as well as increased power consumption.
In fact, during load, the triple-CrossFire 5870 setup was running at 641 watts while the GTX 480 setup was consuming a whopping 937 watts--just shy of one kilowatt.
It's actually a rare duranium-base alloy they borrowed from the Star Trek set... ;-)
So, for my money, I don't care if my dual 480's are getting me 153fps in HAWX instead of 193fps I'd get from 2 radeons. I'm laughing there anyway! What I do care about is that I'm getting 40/53fps in CoP, rather than 35/46fps. Or 46/61fps in Metro 2033, rather than 34/51fps. (Forget the 5970 for that last - it's nowhere.)
Basically, the GTX480 makes those higher resolutions and details on those really power-hungry titles 20-30% more playable than the equivalent Radeon setup. You can play the rest with anything half-decent. If you're not chasing those, why bother to spend your money on all those GPU's anyway?
Sorry, might not have been clear there. x/yfps is showing rates for 2-GPU/3-GPU setups, respectively. So, by 35/46fps I meant 35fps for 2-way CrossfireX and 46fps for 3-way CrossfireX.
Bet they didn't run their rig for very long!
this aint a gaming rig, this is latest cooking stew for households
How about the performance? Come on, more details!
Surprisingly, a quick read of the temp section of the article shows:
(Excuse the google translation from the dutch.)
Perhaps the GTX 480 isn't as volcanic as feared?
Actually, the referenced article doesn't mention a 4th card anywhere, while a 3rd card adds around 27%. Where did this 12% 4-way SLI scaling figure of Tuan's come from?
98 degrees??? I do hope that's in degrees F! I start thinking about opening the window if my 5870 gets to 65C!
Wow! I bought a 1.2kW PSU for when I had a triple 9800GX2 SLI setup. They chucked out some heat too, but never got anywhere near 98C.
Can you triple xfire a 5970? I've never looked into xfire so if thats a dull question be forgiving.
CorssfireX only works up to 4 GPU's. 3 5970's would be 6 GPU's, so that wouldn't work.
@tstebbens
The 9800GX2 was a duel chip card hence you could only run them in Quad-SLI meaning two cards not three!