Quote Originally Posted by Chickenfeed View Post
Regardless of how it is looked at the surrounding case temps tell the story. 480s bleed crap loads of heat into a case. Anyone considering SLI better have insane airflow or plan to go the watercooling route otherwise their overall system temps are surely going to suffer substantially. These appear to be at least as bad as the 4870x2s ( mine made a good 10-15C difference on my northbridge on my x48 board and a good 5C increase on other components at full load )
If what we are ultimately looking at how much heat is given off, regardless of the reasons, then why does nobody have a problem with the HD4000 cards?

And if we just want to see how how it actually gets for longevity sake, then yes it does make a difference on the HD5000 cards as to whether or not the backplate is on.