590 v 580sli

[Tinker]

About to grab 2 nvidia 580 cards for sli mode. Upgrade from the 480.

I think I am seeing correct that the new 590 is actually 2 cards in 1? Will out-perform 2x580, and hits the bank a touch cheaper.

Check the video here: Tom Peterson's NVIDIAGeForce GTX 590 Demonstration

[Pave Low]

I think I am seeing correct that the new 590 is actually 2 cards in 1?

it's one physical "circuit card" board but with two modified 580 GPU's on it (a 580 card consists of one GPU)

Will out-perform 2x580

Not necessarily....

Because the two GF110 GPU's used on the 590 board have been factory modified to run at lower clock speeds than the GF110 GPUs used on 580 boards

The 772MHz cores have been reined in to 607MHz

the 1,544MHz shader clock to 1,224MHz

the combined 3GB of GDDR5 memory from 4,008MHz to 3,420MHz

looking at published real world tests, depending on the game, resolution & what settings 2x580's performance can be 3-17% "faster" than a 590

also something to be aware of with the 590 is because the fan is in the middle of the card but with a GPU "vapour chamber" on either side of it will blow air in each direction

what this means is that 50% of the hot/warm air from the card will be vented out of the inner end of the card into the case increasing case heat and the work CPU and other fans have to do (& it can be particularly important if your HDD bays/cradle are located near the end of the card slot as it can raise HDD temps)

*whereas on a traditional card the air path is for the fan to suck air from inside the case, then blow it over the GPU and then vent it out of the case through the card grills

[Tinker]

Thnx for the detailed info.

Looking at a new PC over Xmas period, already keen to go for the 2 580 cards now. Thnx again.

[CR6]

Hey Tinker, did you upgrade to your 580 SLI setup yet?

I decided that over Christmas I would splurge a bit and upgrade a 4+ year old GeForce 8800 GTX card in an older gaming system (Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz),since the 8800 is a DX10 card and starting to chug with even games like StarCraft 2, and newer games like BF3 apparently look better with DX11 cards

I bought a GF 570 GTX and was suprised the cooling thingy took up 3 slots, even though it is a single GPU. Also, the length of the card was so long I couldn't fit it without removing the HD enclosure. Fortunately in my Lian-Li case, the HD enclosure can be removed, and I could put the HD in the place where the floppy was supposed to go, but then I found out I didn't have a 8-pin PCIe power connector on my old PSU, so even though I could have got a 2 molex to PCIe adapter, I decided to buy a newer PSU since they were on sale this Boxing Day week. I picked up a Corsair 750TX V2 750W PSU today, so hopefully I can get everything up and running soon.

With your SLI setup, make sure you have a PSU with at least 4 PCIe power connectors

[Tinker]

After running 2x 460 Sli for several weeks, I had enough of the excessive noise the it was making, as 1 card was not drawing any air. Have been running 1 460 now for 3 weeks and my PC is silent even after playing BF3 for hours.

Sli only gave me an extra 10 Fps. Having no issues at all with the 1 card running all high settings, plus a few ultra.

This will probably make me go for a single card in a new PC.

[CR6]

Hey Tinker,

Great feedback about your experiences running SLI.

I think it's only worth it to go with SLI for high-end cards because you can usually get one high-end card for less than 2 mid-range cards. And then, some might say SLI is mostly for bragging rights LOL

I agree it's prob best to go with a single card with all the driver, heat, noise and space issues

With this ASUS GTX570 DirectCU2 cooling thing taking up 3 slots, I can't imagine trying to fit two of them in my case.

In any case, only tried StarCraft 2 so far and it does load/run faster, and I can run it with everything cranked to the max (ultra textures/extreme graphics settings) with a decent frame rate.

Prob limiting factor/bottleneck is the CPU now lol