460sli vs 480sli

[Knytestorme]

Am about to pull the trigger this weekend on my new build and I only have this choice left to make but I haven't seen any benchmarks comparing the two, only 460sli vs a single 480.

I'll be running an i7-930 with 3 24" monitors at 1920x1080, using the system for development work, playing fps's, SC2 and 5-boxing WoW mostly so I'm not sure I really need the extra power of the 480's but the increased bus width and memory on them may help with running 5 WoW clients.

I am currently leaning towards the 460's based on a price/performance basis but if the 480's run significantly higher they are still within budget....I'm just not sure that even on everything maxed that the 460's will really be stressed at the res I'll be running.

 

[Grooveriding]

With the 480s you could utilize all 3 screens at once in surround mode, if that is your thing, the 460s won't be playable at that resolution.

If you are just playing on a single screen though at 1920x1080 and playing wow and sc2 you'll be fine with 460sli.

480 SLI is really an image quality thing, if you care about stuff like supersampling, high AA levels and high resolutions, it's good for that. If you ran all three monitors in surround that would be 5760x1080 and would need the horsepower of the 480s. You might enjoy the experience, WoW is nicely suited to multi-monitor setups.

How long do you go between upgrades and how much do you care about the extra cost of sli 480 ? Two 480s is a little more than twice the cost of two 460s

 

[Knytestorme]

From my understanding the 460's will do nvSurround as well but yeah it is a concern on if they have the horsepower to play something like Black Ops across 3 screens or if I'll have to only use one for something like that compared to the 480's.

I usually go about 2-3 years between new systems since I use them for work and take tax write-offs that are usually 3 years of depreciation but the cost difference isn't that big an issue.

And I agree, we're now at a point that it's more about IQ with cards so I'd like to be able to run a lot of AA and AF etc but I'm not sure about multi-monitor gaming overall (which is what's causing my main questioning) as even with WoW I'll be running one client full-screen on 1 monitor and then 4 clients rendering at full-res but displaying in 1/4 screen res on a second monitor with the 3rd monitor then being used for web/msn useage.