GeForce GTX 470 2 and 3-way SLI review - GPU Temperatures

GPU Temperatures

It is not exactly a secret that the GeForce GTX 480 is one hot puppy when it comes to temperatures. Cramming three cards close to each other of course means creating a challenge thermal wise. Luckily the cards do have an intake at the rear end to get their cold air from, but the heatsink and the fan side of the graphics card ditches a lot of heat, and does that close to the underlying SLI graphics card. As such we wanted to look at the temperatures on all cards measured during gaming and stressed 100% with a shader application. Remember, the reference card already maxes out at 90~95 Degrees C. The latest BIOS revisions however show lower temperatures and noise levels.

So there is one note we like to make, have a look at the following chart:

The latest revisions with new BIOS shaved the temperatures a little down to below 90 Degrees C. GPU1 is the reference card, which actually has the most cooling. then the middle card is GPU2, that's a Point of View card. Now normally that would be the hottest card, but do notice that it peaks at 92 Degrees C.

The lower card is GPU3 -- It has decent airflow, and that card has the very latest BIOS and ran to 87 Degrees C tops. We also retested the GPU temperature in the system with just one card installed and with a very proper airflow, 84C was the maximum. So the new BIOS definitely helps out. Currently all retail products already carry this BIOS by the way.

Regardless of that all, make sure your PC chassis is well ventilated or my man, just go for liquid cooling.