460 gtx SLI bad card?

C

c1001

Gawd
Joined
Oct 24, 2004
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I recently installed an Asus 460 gtx Direct Cu to upgrade my rig to SLI. My first card is an ECS 460 gtx black which completely spoiled me with low temps and silent fans. The card idles at 30 degrees. Under load, in Furmark, it reaches 74-75, and fan speed never rises above 50%. Unfortunately, it occupies three slots and I could only squeeze a two slot second card for SLI.

The Asus idles at 40. Under load (Furmark) it spikes up to 95-96, and breaks 100. The fan noise drives me crazy, especially when it spikes to max (self-protection?) outside of the Afterburner profile I setup. Gaming is annoying with that fan noise, esp when it repeatedly spikes to 100% every few seconds. Is my card defective?

I've tried reseating the heatsink, new thermal paste, using this card as the "slave" in order to reduce the load, ghetto rigged two 120mm fans under it to help push more cold air to it, and reduced the clock speed on both card to 675/1350 mhz. Afterburner hasn't helped.
 
The card isn't bad, it's just different.

That ECS sounds like it has a giant cooler if it's three slot capacity.

The 400 sreies is notoriously hot and loud.:eek:
 
magoo said:
The 400 sreies is notoriously hot and loud.:eek:
Click to expand...

The GTX460 isn't, but unlike the 470/480, the 460s are all non-reference. Which way round are the cards? Using non-reference cards in SLI always increases your temps by about 30-50C because the weaker design of non-reference coolers means there is no airflow to one of the cards.
 
samuelmorris said:
Using non-reference cards in SLI always increases your temps by about 30-50C because the weaker design of non-reference coolers means there is no airflow to one of the cards.
Click to expand...

Where do you get the 30-50c increase in temps?

So this would mean that when I run Crysis 2 on my rig, my top card is reading 74c at its peak at 94% gpu usage, but it should only be 22-44c if the bottom card wasn't there?

I don't think so.
 
I pulled the ECS card and ran the Asus card non-SLI. Furmark temps hold at 75, and fan is below 50%, so very tolerable. So, it looks like the card is good.

SLI doesn't seem to be worth it for me with the added noise and heat.
 
Providing a pic of your setup in SLI will be worth a thousand words.
 
samuelmorris said:
The GTX460 isn't, but unlike the 470/480, the 460s are all non-reference. Which way round are the cards? Using non-reference cards in SLI always increases your temps by about 30-50C because the weaker design of non-reference coolers means there is no airflow to one of the cards.
Click to expand...


That's just not right. I had three 6950s stacked in my computer.
There was literally millimeters of space between the cards.
The temp delta was maybe 20C from to bottom. The bottom card was the coolest.
 
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