If you thought that a single Nvidia GTX 480 was a ticket to energy bill related bankruptcy, how about running four in a single system? While you're churning through the kilowatts, at least you'll have a world record to keep you company.

At least, that's what happened with EVGA, which has just set a new record for 3DMark Vantage using a quartet of its EVGA GTX 480 graphics cards configured for quad-SLI in an EVGA Classified SR-2 motherboard.

The chart-topping scores posted by the rig were the work of veteran overclockers Peter "Shamino" Tan - who had a hand in the design of the motherboard - and Vince "k|ngp|n" Lucido, who teamed up in Detroit with a bunch of EVGA hardware and some liquid nitrogen to see what the company's hardware could really do.

Looking at the figures posted during the tests, the results are pretty impressive: in Performance mode, the EVGA rig blew past the competition to romp to the top of the leaderboards with a massive 60,758 3DMarks - more than 4,000 3DMarks higher than the previous leader. The speed gains from quad-SLI and a bit of overclocking are reflected throughout the figures, with the team scoring 114,668 3DMarks using Entry mode, 49,811 3DMarks using the High mode, and 38,691 3DMarks using the Extreme mode.

It's an eye-opening achievement, but with each card drawing up to 341 watts according to our figures it's not something that will win the company any eco-points - not to mention the impressive heat output we recorded during our testing. Perhaps that liquid nitrogen wasn't just there for show.

Are you impressed at the scores that EVGA have been able to post on the 3DMark Vantage tests, or are you disappointed that it has taken four of Nvidia's latest and greatest cards to make it to the top of the leaderboards? Share your thoughts over in the forums.