Home / Tech News / Featured Tech Reviews / GTX460 SLi overclocked, mated and put in context

GTX460 SLi overclocked, mated and put in context

Tri-SLi ?  nVidia was smart not to try

It seems that our introduction was correct.

The market for 2 cards in SLi/CrossFire formation is already small, so the market for 3 or more cards must be absolutely tiny.

nVidia has made the wise choice of not bothering to include multiple SLi connection ports, as this rather explicit close up reveals.

Under the bridge sometimes, is where I drew some blood (Sugar, Sex and Magic?)
What's more surprising? Single SLi bridge connector or dual molex sockets?

One port means you can double your graphics potential, but adding a 3rd of 4th card would put the consumer in the price space for a much more powerful single card.

With a launch price of around £195 inc vat for the 768MB EVGA GTX460 OC card, buying 2 of them costs almost the same as a GTX480 and 3 would cost you way more:-

GTX460 £195, 2nd GTX460 £390, GTX480 £399, 3rd GTX460 £537

One last question remains.

With such a variety of coolers available on the GTX460 at launch, are there any issues that you need to be aware of ?

MSI SLi ?  It fits, but it's really, really close.

Very strange that our good friends at MSI have gone to market with this rather bizarre ‘flower’ cooler.

Everyone around me is a total stranger, everyone around me is a Cyclone Ranger.
If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

While MSI's solution may have good heat dissipation properties (we’ll be checking into that claim shortly), it could make SLi difficult to implement on the board we used.

We’re not saying you can't have SLi, we’re just saying that you might want to pop into a store like YOYOTech first. Somewhere that let's you look at product before you buy it and consider the technical challenges.  For example, with the MSI GTX460 you can decide if there's enough clearance between the PCI Express slots to allow a second card to fit comfortably onto your mainboard. You won't have an issue with the EVGA SR2 or MSI Big Bang, but you need to check clearances carefully with smaller boards.

KitGuru GTX460 SLi Conclusion?

It works. It most definitely works.

The cards are powerful, affordable and play nice with each other. Also, they are not big (see the size compared to a Blackberry). Which means you can use shorter chassis and still have fun.

EVGA's 768MB GTX460 solution for SLi works. It's also economical and small enough for most chassis.

KitGuru says: Buying one overclocked 768MB EVGA GTX460 now and adding a second in 6-12 months time is the most sensible Fermi buying advice KitGuru can give anyone who desires nVidia DX11 graphics. As nVidia would put it, GTX460 is Fermi done right.

Read our single card analysis over here and discuss in our forums.

Become a Patron!

Rating: 0.0.

Check Also

Lian Li Lancool 207 Case Review

With a unique power supply position for optimal cooling, is the Lancool 207 worth buying?

7 comments

  1. SLi seems to scale well indeed and I see no need for SLix3 either.

  2. Yeah SLI x3 or higher was always an epenis thing, the drivers never really scaled well in the past either. SLIx2 seems the way to go.

  3. Cant see anyone ever needing SLI for these, unless they move to a 30 inch screen.

  4. Well it seems scaling is good, look forward to seeing a full SLI review on the site soon.

  5. SCaling is normally good with SLI and these cards, glad to see it seems to be solid performer in dual card mode. more tests coming?

  6. P1n3apqlExpr3ss

    so… who won the thermaltake cooler?? (page6)

  7. @flo – I use a 55 inch screen so yum yum to SLI for these for me!