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which set up

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keimigca

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Joined
Jan 20, 2005
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Getting ready to start a new build and was wonderiing what you all thought. I am thinking about either a dual sli with GTX580's. Or tri sli with 3 gtx480's. Price wise they come out about the same.

Any thoughts?

Chris
 
i7 2600k sandy bridge,
msi mobo-not sure which one. Depends on how many x16slots i need.
16gig ram

Havent bought anything yet, just priciing right now.
 
Dual 580s as I expect them to perform very similar to 3 480s the scaling in tri SLi for 480s is not out of this world, it is good but I believe the 3rd card adds maybe another 25% over dual GTX 480. Being that GTX 580 SLi is about 25% faster than dual 480 it's about a draw, however the tri 480 will kill your power bill, might require a psu upgrade, run hotter and be waaaaay noisier unless they use aftermarket coolers. I'd get the 2 GTX 580s

Also the 580s seem to overclock better.

If these were my only options I would go 580s hopefully your not planning on going nv surround with only 2 GTX 580 1.5GB and not considering AMD 6900 series but either way, hopefully whatever you pick makes you happy.
 
Nv Surround---Not immediately, but it was something that I was going to possibly work up to.
 
2 x 580s should run much cooler than 3 x 480s. Also, probably not a big factor, but 1155 only supports 16 lanes off the CPU, so you'll take some kind of performance hit running tri-SLI on it.
 
I was worried about that. But I dont want to go with a x58 board and the gulftown chipset. More money, and will be outdated by the end of the year.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Dual 580s as I expect them to perform very similar to 3 480s the scaling in tri SLi for 480s is not out of this world, it is good but I believe the 3rd card adds maybe another 25% over dual GTX 480. Being that GTX 580 SLi is about 25% faster than dual 480 it's about a draw, however the tri 480 will kill your power bill, might require a psu upgrade, run hotter and be waaaaay noisier unless they use aftermarket coolers. I'd get the 2 GTX 580s
Click to expand...

Depends on resolution and game. At 5760x1200 on games like BC2, I get nearly linear scaling. Many of the reviews which showed poor scaling with the 480 were done at single monitor resolutions. Even at 2560x1600, the 480 tri sli with original drivers had damned good scaling on BC2. Older games, not so much, until you hit multi-mon res... Too much horsepower.

But like you pointed out, using SB and only having 16 lanes makes tri-sli kinda iffy. I'm sure it will still scale pretty good, but I'd want an X58 or to wait for Ivy for tri-sli.
 
Naieve said:
Depends on resolution and game. At 5760x1200 on games like BC2, I get nearly linear scaling. Many of the reviews which showed poor scaling with the 480 were done at single monitor resolutions. Even at 2560x1600, the 480 tri sli with original drivers had damned good scaling on BC2. Older games, not so much, until you hit multi-mon res... Too much horsepower.
Click to expand...

TBH I haven't seen a situation including surround scenarios where adding a 3rd GTX 480 gives more than a 25% boost over GTX 480 SLi including surround resolutions. I've seen a few reviews where they included surround numbers and it was actually even less impressive and I believe it's because at that resolution lack of vram could have been a factor in some games and the reviewer tried cranking the IQ settings higher with the 3x setup. TBH for somebody buying now choosing between 2x GTX 580 1.5GB or 2 6950 2GB (reference) I'd recommend the 2x 6950 and them for them to unlock shaders and overclock as that would be a just as good or slightly better setup especially in games that use alot of vram. In the cases where GTX 580 Sli 1.5gb actually beats a 6970 crossfire setup the difference isn't worth the price difference and when the 6970 crossfire setup beats the GTX 580 1.5GB setup it's all the more rewarding knowing that you did that with the price of 1 GTX 580 or slightly more e.g. $20 more


Naieve said:
But like you pointed out, using SB and only having 16 lanes makes tri-sli kinda iffy. I'm sure it will still scale pretty good, but I'd want an X58 or to wait for Ivy for tri-sli.
Click to expand...

Someone else pointed this out and TBH, I do not believe that will make a difference worth mentioning. If the op is going tri sli he will have to buy a special 1155 motherboard because they don't support tri sli as a norm. My board supports sli on 2 slots so I could do double or quad or with amd double tri or quad using only 2 slots. The pcie bandwidth issue is blown way out of proportion with you losing maybe 1 - 2 fps at 8x vs 16x pcie 2 speed. The only boards that I have seen that support tri sli are the boards that add a nvidia NF200 chipset to add pcie lanes for 16x 16x bus speeds that work with the intel controller to allow 3 card sli or crossfire x.
 
I guess that it is also coming down to the question of do I upgrade now or do I wait about 6 months and do it then. My current desktop is 4 years old and I am gaming on my Asus w90p laptop right now. I really want to start a new build, but if tech is changing soon, I might as well wait. But tech is always changing and there will always be newer better. If the output isnt that much of a difference, I might as well only do 2 cards. And as some have pointed out, I should at least give the ATI cards a look. I normally rotate between Nvidia and ATI (this one should be a Nvidia build) but I need something that will last a while.

I would love to have 3 580's but thats not going to happen. Too much money. So 2 cards it is.

So, do I wait for the 2011 boards or go with a Sandy 1155 board?
 
keimigca said:
I guess that it is also coming down to the question of do I upgrade now or do I wait about 6 months and do it then. My current desktop is 4 years old and I am gaming on my Asus w90p laptop right now. I really want to start a new build, but if tech is changing soon, I might as well wait. But tech is always changing and there will always be newer better. If the output isnt that much of a difference, I might as well only do 2 cards. And as some have pointed out, I should at least give the ATI cards a look. I normally rotate between Nvidia and ATI (this one should be a Nvidia build) but I need something that will last a while.

I would love to have 3 580's but thats not going to happen. Too much money. So 2 cards it is.

So, do I wait for the 2011 boards or go with a Sandy 1155 board?
Click to expand...

I'd wait for 2011 and bulldozer as they are VERY close. I would however suggest you don't fall into the waiting game becuase there is always something 6 months away. I bet a good 2011 or bulldozer platform will last you quite a while. I'd suggest once those come out pic the most powerful of the 2 for gaming and then get yourself the best cards possible for your budget. Rumors are saying amd's 7000 series is coming soon, and I don't believe that for a second. I don't think we'll see anything from either nvidia or amd until years end if not a month or 2 into 2012.
 
I would give 3x 6950 a try. Unlock them, and with the excellent Crossfire scaling, you've got a setup for less than 2x580 that is significantly faster and won't have the VRAM bottleneck. ( I figured that you're already considering 3x480, so you wouldn't be opposed to 3 cards ;-)
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I'd wait for 2011 and bulldozer as they are VERY close.
Click to expand...

We must have different definitions of VERY. LGA 2011 is a Q4 part, and does Bulldozer even have a date yet? I know everyone thinks summer, but I don't recall seeing anything official.
 
Forceman said:
We must have different definitions of VERY. LGA 2011 is a Q4 part, and does Bulldozer even have a date yet? I know everyone thinks summer, but I don't recall seeing anything official.
Click to expand...

I believe its supposed to be June 7th if I recall correctly.
 
keimigca said:
I would love to have 3 580's but thats not going to happen. Too much money. So 2 cards it is.

So, do I wait for the 2011 boards or go with a Sandy 1155 board?
Click to expand...



Uh, you should decide which motherboard/cpu first then think about videocards.

Have you read Anands latest piece on Sandy Bridge-E? If you just want the platform, it would be somewhat comparable to 1155/2600K (around $300 for the quad core cpu) and hex cores will start around $550~600 (his speculation but he has a good track record).

Makes no sense to think about the videocards now if you are buying then. It would be silly to buy the videocards now if you want S2011
 
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