900 was simply too much for my card even with the maximum voltage at stock bios of 1.0870. The temperatures were well within acceptable levels to boot, don't think the fan even hit 60% come to think of it! It just black screened and the graphics card reset to stock levels whilst testing FurMark. Anyways been playing at 890 core now for a couple of hours and everything is rock solid. Let me know how far you manage to push yours.
Got the SLI setup installed today and it's running pretty sweet! Temperatures under stress are hitting 83 on the top card with a small overclock to 750 core and 1500 for the shaders. The card below hovers around 72, lower than a single card setup! I am curious if a couple of vented PCI back plates would help with temperatures on the top card? Not that 85 is a problem, considering this is a FurMark test and not real gaming which would never load the GPU that hard!
Interesting reading, I was still undecided which card to go for next from my "old" 8800gt, Seems the GTX 460 is a good bet.
Slightly off topic, but is anyone using the GTX460's in SLI with 3 monitors (In normal 2d not 3D)? If yes, at what resolution and what's the fps like? I'm kinda tempted to do my bi-yearly xmas upgrade early this year, but I've not come across a decent review for it yet. On the other hand, I'm hoping nVidia does a GTX475 so I can get 2 of those rather (Yeah, I know it's not likely to happen but still...)
Machine is now built, must say that I was pretty pleased. Didn't get to do much tinkering with OC's since it's not mine, but wow, they were quiet. Comparable to my 5870 Vapor-X, and actually the quietest fans in in his comp at idle. Only concern... exposed fan blades, not the best idea? Unlike with most cards a wire resting across the top of the card may foul one of the fans. Certainly something to be wary of when building a system.
Yeah I had one of those 5870 Vapor-X cards for a spell, fan can really ramp up can't it! I believe the slight exposure of the fans is the reason for its quiet operation. Just need to build the computer good. Think I've hit the limit of my boards SLI overclock at a core of 800 on stock voltage (0.9870) with shaders at 1600. Haven't touched the memory. Everything is good and also the temperatures are back in line. I removed a couple of PCI brackets between the two GTX 460 cards and now the difference is only 9 tops! Under extreme load the top card can hit 83 and the bottom around 74.
Nice one Shaftydude! Do you run the FurMark extreme burn test on this overclock to test stability? Hit a wall on my motherboard at the moment so doing a little clean and revamp. Funny thing is the graphics cards are not my limiter but the CPU/Northbridge was getting crazy hot ramping up the fan speeds! So doing a little MOD to the Northbridge as you can read here. Got a Gelid Tranquillo on order so I hope that will curve the temperature and keep things quiet! Also swapping the old case for a Coolermaster 690 II Advanced with lots of big quiet 120mm fans
Update. I got no artifacts running Kombustor and all the games I played except GTA4 so I pushed it down to 890 just like you and I no longer get any artifacts now. Looks like you and me have got the same card more or less. How much of a performance increase are you getting going SLI? with say 850 on the core clock on each card?
890 on a single card was no problem, however in SLI my system just gave up on 'that extent' of an overclock. Might need a little motherboard BIOS fiddling is all! In the mean time I decided to rebuild my system in a complete new case (Coolermaster 690 II Advance) with the same core components. Cleaned everything off and even took my 680i to pieces to improve the heat transfer between the South to North bridge. Anyway, it's all put back together and the entire system is stable at stock speeds on the graphics with my E8500 at 4GHz. Also I'm pleased to say that my top card has the exact same temperature as the bottom in SLI whilst they are stressed with FurMark (Multi GPU)! Hitting a very reasonable 70 at the moment. So the airflow in this case with the 120mm Akasa Apache fans is incredible! Also worth noting is that Kombuster nowhere near compares to the stress FurMark can put your card through. From my experience I could get 10 degrees more from using FurMark, so it really pushes things. I have another Akasa Apache on order and space to mount it right between my two GTX 460's on the side panel. Now here's the question, would it be more effective as an exhaust or intake fan? I'm going to try both but it'd be interesting to learn where opinion is on that one!
Quick update for the Gigabyte GTX 460 SLI setup on my 680i motherboard. Initially I couldn't push past 800 trying an overclock of 810, system would blue screen. Anyway I applied an overclock to 800 then incrementally overclocked by 1MHz at a time to 810. That way I avoided the blue screen and the overclock is stable! Little bizarre but this method works for me. At the time of writing I'm up to 820 on the core 1640 shaders at stock voltage (0.987) and hitting temperatures of 76 on the top card and 81 on the bottom running the FurMark stability test (Multi-GPU). Which is a really intense little application! Also I cleaned the bottom card and applied Arctic Silver 5. Wouldn't normally use it on a GPU but since the entire setup is more in line with a CPU (complete with heatsink GPU shroud attached) it was more appropriate to use this over the OCZ Freezer I'd normally use. Even without much time to bed in at these overclocked speeds I'm impressed with the temperatures. Compared to the stock goop the Arctic Silver seal can only improve over time... at least I hope! Anyway a SLI difference of 5 degrees between cards ain't bad (consider the bottom is a couple of centimetres away from the PSU!). Next up is the installation of a side fan to suck out all that hot air! Reckon exhaust would be wiser since the side window is not protected with dust covers. Like the other intakes for this case are.
I went for the bog standard (non-cyclone) MSI one that has solid components (Military Grade lol) so that it doesn't whine. Some teething trouble with it but (hopefully) it was down to drivers and some fubared savegame files. Going to see what it's like clocking it back up again now.
It's an EVGA 680i SLI, the full fat version! How are the temperatures going mkb? I've been looking at a few different X58 motherbaords and they all seem to have nil gap between the two slots used for SLI. On the 680i I have a clearance of just under 7cm. Can't for the life of me understand why motherboards are designed any other way with hot graphics cards in operation. From a design perspective it seems a no brainer to maintain some clearance for air intake!
Yeah same problem with my mobo so I used number 1 and 3 slots, Ok I only get X16 and X8 but I doubt I would notice any difference in real world use. Really helps with the temps though.
has any one seen the nvidia forum? 460 is having problems with certian chipset its giving them a high DPC latency (eg) blue screens. sound and Audio problems. poor performence. see link http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=177053 and this link http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=177385 you can download this program and see if you have a high DPC http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml
Thanks for the links techhead. Just tried that program myself and everything is in the red! However I've not noticed any problems in real applications. No graphical slow downs or sound problems to speak of. Only just played the Kane and Lynch 2 demo with everything maxed out whilst downloading a large file with my browser open. Not even a stutter! Just for good measure I played a movie with all the above still running and it was silk smooth. Can't see it as a problem at least not for my setup.
