SLI GTX 460 768mb owners - raise your hands, all five of ya!

[ragejg]

Preface: This thread isn't for 1gb 460 owners, or other similar GPUs. It's hard to find consistent info on the 768mb 460 SLI combo, so THAT's what I'm interested in, not other GPUs that bear a passing resemblance or people stopping in just to talk crap about the 768mb frame buffer.


A couple weeks ago an opportunity came up. My friend had bought two EVGA GTX 460 SC 768mb cards, he had them in SLI in his first new rig build in a few years. I chided him for his purchase, as it seems to be kinda well-known that this isn't all that great of an SLI combo for a lot of reasons.

But he's selling a bunch of hardware, as am I... and he told me that $130 (friend's discount) would get me both of his 460s.

Hm.

I promptly sold a PSU and my HD 5830 and picked them up.

Why? I had to sell all the GPUs I had laying around (and downgrade to my 920/5000-capable HD 5830) as well as my CPU (4.0-capable x6 1055t, downgraded to unlockable x3 720BE) and my LCD (24" 19x10, downgraded to my 26" 720p/1080i TV)... so to me this appears to be a decent re-upgrade, especially after using a 580, 570 and a 570 SLI setup for a while.

Now, I get the fact that this SLI setup is a bit gimped, almost completely due to the 768mb frame buffer... but there's a lot of raw performance there, and as long as I max out at 19x10, and don't use the craziest of AA modes I should be fine.

These two EVGA SC cards are stock right now... no extra heatsinks on the VRMs, and for now I'm running them at 810/4000 @ 1.050v... after improving the cooling setups I'd like to up the voltage and clocks some more.

GTX 460 768mb SLI reviews:

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=25665&page=1

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/34...ked/index.html

http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles...ALYSIS/P1.html



Overall it seems that two of these cards really doesn't perform all that bad, quite often entering into GTX 580 territory. My experiences thus far have been fairly consistent with the reviews, but my OS install is old and has been through a few reviews of its own... so I need to do a clean re-install ASAP. For $130, I don't think the performance can be beat.


I know this isn't a common SLI setup, but this is XS and there's a lot of diversity here... so I'd like to get some feedback from the few other SLI 460 768 owners around here. So please check in here, raise your hand, and tell me what you've done to your cards, how they're running, and how much you like/don't like them.

Thanks!

[PatRaceTin]

hmmmmm i have 1gb version on SLi

[David-Duc]

If you play games with the res around (and higher?) 1680*1050/1920*1080, you'll know that all 768MB cards are junks , Dragon Age 2, The Witcher 2, even COD MW2 eat around 900-1.1GB of vmem. Lack of vmem = unplayable.

/Just did some quick test on GTX 470:

Setting: 1920*1080, 4x AA + 8x AF, all others are maxed out (Vsync off).

D.Age 2: max 1020MB
T.Witcher 2: max 1130MB (Uber Sampling off) - GTX 560 Ti really sucks in this game, although the avg fps is fine, min fps drop to ZERO many times which is unbearable to me.
CoD MW2: max 913MB

[ragejg]

If you play games with the res around (and higher?) 1680*1050/1920*1080, you'll know that all 768MB cards are junks , Dragon Age 2, The Witcher 2, even COD MW2 eat around 900-1.1GB of vmem. Lack of vmem = unplayable.

/Just did some quick test on GTX 470:

Setting: 1920*1080, 4x AA + 8x AF, all others are maxed out (Vsync off).

Um, I've reviewed the EVGA 768mb 460 previously, against EVGA's GTX 465 and AMD's HD 5830. At 1280x720, 1280x1024, 1600x900 and 1920x1080 I never even found the single card to be... as you say "junks".

That and I guess it's worth noting that I steer completely clear of MMOs and RPGs. Not at all my cup of tea. And I have no qualms about not using the super-crazy AA modes. 4x Multisample is fine for me.

I do like to do some benchmarking for fun though (for example I started the multi-community "tessellation hero challenge" a few months ago, a Heaven @ extreme tessellation challenge which had quite a bit of participation)... and I'd like to get some good air-based clocks and voltages out of these two.

[David-Duc]

Um, I've reviewed the EVGA 768mb 460 previously, against EVGA's GTX 465 and AMD's HD 5830. At 1280x720, 1280x1024, 1600x900 and 1920x1080 I never even found the single card to be... as you say "junks".

That and I guess it's worth noting that I steer completely clear of MMOs and RPGs. Not at all my cup of tea. And I have no qualms about not using the super-crazy AA modes. 4x Multisample is fine for me.

I do like to do some benchmarking for fun though (for example I started the multi-community "tessellation hero challenge" a few months ago, a Heaven @ extreme tessellation challenge which had quite a bit of participation)... and I'd like to get some good air-based clocks and voltages out of these two.

Get your GTX 460 768MB and play The Witcher 2@1080p, with everything maxed out (just disable Uber Sampling), you'll know why I call 768MB cards are junks , fps dropped to 0-1 MANY TIMES.

[ragejg]

Found this on Youtube, a video review of two 460 768s in SLI.

[ragejg]

Some tests I ran earlier (CPU @ x4 3.2ghz, GPUs @ Superclock speed):

Heaven 2.1, 19x10, 4xAA/16xAF, tess normal:

Single GPU:
FPS: 26.5
Min: 14.3
Max: 52.0

SLI:
FPS: 48.1
Min: 18.6
Max: 91.1


Stone Giant 19x10, 4x/16x, tess high:

Single GPU:
Min: 27
Max: 60
Avg: 45.2

SLI:
Min: 51
Max: 106
Avg: 82.3

For what it's worth, in this same rig albeit with a more powerful CPU (x6 @ 4.0ghz) and 262.99 & 263.06 drivers, the avg FPS for the Stone Giant test was 71.5 for a reference 570, 77.5 for a Superclock 570, and 81.7 for a reference 580.

[Eldonko]

Ive been running 460 768mb in SLI for a long time now. Performance gain over single card is 84-92% depending on the board and benchmark/game tested.

[ragejg]

3DMark 11:

With the 570 Reference, 570 Superclocked and 580 Reference using same rig but a faster CPU (x6 @ 4.0 vs x4 @ 3.2) and fresher install, I got a P Score of 5022, 5312, and 5618 respectively.

The 460 768mb SLI combo: 5951

Nice.

[ragejg]

I think my x3 720BE hits a max of 3.4 with the fourth core unlocked, even with a LOT of voltage help. Oh well, 4 cores @ 3.4 isn't too shabby, I really do miss that x6 @ 4.0 though.

Anyway, I got my CPU clockspeed where it's gonna stay while this CPU is in here: 3.4, up from 3.2 which I used previously for my first break-in tests.

I ran 3DMark 11's Xtreme test.

With the 570 Reference, 570 Superclocked and 580 Reference using same rig but a faster CPU (x6 @ 4.0 vs x4 @ 3.4) and fresher install, I got an X Score of 1655, 1782, and 1922 respectively.

The two 460s got X2297. Sweet!

[Ket]

Some people still in denile I see Before the 768MB 460s were even released it was well documented how they were kinda gimped. The lack of frame buffer cripples the cards by a good 5-6FPS when looking at minimum FPS in a lot of scenarios vs a 1GB 460. Thats a pretty big hit. For games up to 1680 res though, the 768MB 460s aren't all that horrible.