Feature Articles

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 SLI Performance Analysis

By Kenny Yeo - 10 Dec 2010

Temperature, Power Consumption & Conclusion

Temperature

 

Power Consumption

 

 

Conclusion

Unsurprisingly, two GeForce GTX 570 cards in an SLI configuration is a fearsome combination and it blows away any dual-GPU solution ATI/AMD has. Furthermore, scaling performance is very respectable, especially on higher resolutions and more intensive settings. For example, running Crysis Warhead at 1920 x 1200 with 4x anti-aliasing enabled saw a decent 82% boost in performance over a single GeForce GTX 570.

If dual GeForce GTX 570 cards in a 2-way SLI configuration is an option you’d like to explore, you best have a beefy enough system to accommodate it because on certain games such as Dawn of War 2 and Far Cry 2, we noticed that our CPU just could not make use of the tremendous graphics crunching power that was at its disposal.

Two GeForce GTX 570 cards have power in abundance, a pity then that they are also extremely power hungry and pretty hot to run.

However, such graphics crunching power comes at a cost. For one, power draw figures go up considerably when you add an additional GeForce GTX 570 card into the mix. In our test, the highest sustained reading we got was a whopping 492W, hence a solid PSU with a rating of at least 700W would be needed to safely power the system.

And then there’s the heat involved. As the graphs show, a single GeForce GTX 570 will run at about 74 degrees Celsius. Add another card though, and because of the more cramped environment, running temperatures can shoot up to 85 degrees Celsius, which was a bit too high for our liking. So, as is the case with any multi-GPU configuration, we urge that you make sure your system has adequate ventilation.

As of now, NVIDIA has a very potent line-up of high-end graphics solution, but with AMD set to release Cayman soon, the balance of power could still shift yet. For gamers and graphics enthusiasts, this looks set to be an exciting Christmas season.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.