Altermatives to installing two 6990's?

[johnstac]

For $1400 there has to be a better alternative! I want to set up a high end eyefinity rig using 3 monitors at 27" or 30". (Haven't decided yet which monitors). I would just like to know if there is a better alternative for the money. What would be second best?

 

[ilysaml]

if you did focus on my previous post you'll find out that i said " Unless" and the i5-2500K and the i7-2600K is stronger than those, it will handle them just fine.
read the rest of posts

 

[purple stain]

You can use an 2600 or a 2500 but they will need to be O.C.'d to at least 4ghz to avoid any bottlenecks.

And technically x2 6990's is x4 GPU's.A 4 way crossfire is the most cards you can have at one time working together.I can't imagine how hot those are going to get in crossfire though.

I still think x2 GTX580 3GB version is what you need.They will run a lot cooler and they have the ability to be O.C.'d.Just to let you know if you didn't already the 6990 only has a total of 2GB of VRAM,2GB for each GPU.They say 4GB for marketing.

But if you do decide to get the 6990's then you might want to get into watercooling.They do actually make waterblocks for the 6990.Quite a few infact.

http://www.frozencpu.com/search.html?mv_profile=keyword_search&mv_session_id=R3CSGZ88&searchspec=6990&go.x=0&go.y=0

 

[bystander]

For the most part, the only time graphics cards are bottlenecked by the CPU, is when you have excess GPU power, or a CPU not capable of handling the game no matter the GPU.

What that means is that if you have a high res eyefinity or 2d/3d surround setup, 2 6990's will not be bottlenecked by any i5/i7. However, if you just have 1 high res monitor, then having a slow CPU will hold back your 2 6990's from excessive FPS (beyond what you can see a difference) and probably should not get 2 6990's.

 

[johnstac]

I would have seriously considered the Nvidia setup but I have been reading that eyefinity is the way to go with 3 monitors or more. People complaining that the 3d surround was not as smooth, a little more choppy. I have ALWAYS used nvidia but they eyefinity is a big deal to me. Nevertheless, I am going to do some more reading tonight to get more views and see what more I can find out.

 

[ilysaml]

I would have seriously considered the Nvidia setup but I have been reading that eyefinity is the way to go with 3 monitors or more. People complaining that the 3d surround was not as smooth, a little more choppy. I have ALWAYS used nvidia but they eyefinity is a big deal to me. Nevertheless, I am going to do some more reading tonight to get more views and see what more I can find out.

do whatever, but just take off the idea of CPU bottlenecking from your head, and know that you'll need a 1200W PSU for that setup.

 

[johnstac]

You can use an 2600 or a 2500 but they will need to be O.C.'d to at least 4ghz to avoid any bottlenecks.

And technically x2 6990's is x4 GPU's.A 4 way crossfire is the most cards you can have at one time working together.I can't imagine how hot those are going to get in crossfire though.

I still think x2 GTX580 3GB version is what you need.They will run a lot cooler and they have the ability to be O.C.'d.Just to let you know if you didn't already the 6990 only has a total of 2GB of VRAM,2GB for each GPU.They say 4GB for marketing.

But if you do decide to get the 6990's then you might want to get into watercooling.They do actually make waterblocks for the 6990.Quite a few infact.

http://www.frozencpu.com/search.html?mv_profile=keyword_search&mv_session_id=R3CSGZ88&searchspec=6990&go.x=0&go.y=0

Out of curiosity, what size PSU for two of these 580's in sli? I have a Seasonic 850 that I am kind of bummed about having to replace if I go with 6990's. The EVGA site states a minimum of 600W but I wonder about with two?

 

[ilysaml]

For the most part, the only time graphics cards are bottlenecked by the CPU, is when you have excess GPU power, or a CPU not capable of handling the game no matter the GPU.

What that means is that if you have a high res eyefinity or 2d/3d surround setup, 2 6990's will not be bottlenecked by any i5/i7. However, if you just have 1 high res monitor, then having a slow CPU will hold back your 2 6990's from excessive FPS (beyond what you can see a difference) and probably should not get 2 6990's.

Modern games are very GPU intensive because of HDR, AA and other effects that put a lot of stress on the GPU, when the CPU is rendering the images and depending on the kind of scene being rendered in the game there is a distribution of work between the CPU and GPU and the slower of the two becomes the bottleneck.

let's assume OP is doing some rendering on 3D Max and the CPU 4 cores are utilized and at the same time is running a game that is a GPU intensive, wouldn't the CPU bottleneck the GPU ? that's why most of people are going with dual Xeon when they doing 3-way/4-way GPU setups

 

[bystander]

Modern games are very GPU intensive because of HDR, AA and other effects that put a lot of stress on the GPU, when the CPU is rendering the images and depending on the kind of scene being rendered in the game there is a distribution of work between the CPU and GPU and the slower of the two becomes the bottleneck.

let's assume OP is doing some rendering on 3D Max and the CPU 4 cores are utilized and at the same time is running a game that is a GPU intensive, wouldn't the CPU bottleneck the GPU ? that's why most of people are going with dual Xeon when they doing 3-way/4-way GPU setups

Well, I've seen plenty of these extreme systems being benchmarked, and they seem to run just fine on i7's and i5's.

From my understanding, the GPU renders, not the CPU, and the CPU usually runs the physics as well as kind of oversee everything. When increasing the size of the rendering area, it's almost exclusively the GPU that has an increased workload. Although I do know there are exceptions, which is why I said, "for the most part".

Example: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/04/11/amd_radeon_69906970_crossfirex_trifire_review/2

The reason the CPU often becomes the bottleneck in these extreme setups, is they don't push the GPU's by using high resolutions or multiple monitors. At which point the CPU holds the GPU's back from a possible 300 FPS or what not, because the CPU can't keep up with everything it needs to do. That's not the case of you have 3 1200p monitors to render on.

 

[purple stain]

Out of curiosity, what size PSU for two of these 580's in sli? I have a Seasonic 850 that I am kind of bummed about having to replace if I go with 6990's. The EVGA site states a minimum of 600W but I wonder about with two?

If you go with the GTX580 SLI option then you can still use your current PSU.A GTX580 SLI on it's own consumes about 520watts.The total system power draw of a "test system" is around 720 watts.Seasonic is a very good PSU manufacturer and your PSU will have no problem at all powering a GTX580 SLI.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-580-sli-review/14

Of course as you stated you will have to get a new PSU if you decide to go with a 6990 Crossfire.A unlocked 6990 crossfire consumes about 730 watts on it's own and the total system power draw of a "test system" is around 900 watts.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/his-radeon-hd-6990-crossfire-review/9

 

[ilysaml]

Well, I've seen plenty of these extreme systems being benchmarked, and they seem to run just fine on i7's and i5's.

From my understanding, the GPU renders, not the CPU, and the CPU usually runs the physics as well as kind of oversee everything. When increasing the size of the rendering area, it's almost exclusively the GPU that has an increased workload. Although I do know there are exceptions, which is why I said, "for the most part".

Example: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/04/11/amd_radeon_69906970_crossfirex_trifire_review/2

The reason the CPU often becomes the bottleneck in these extreme setups, is they don't push the GPU's by using high resolutions or multiple monitors. At which point the CPU holds the GPU's back from a possible 300 FPS or what not, because the CPU can't keep up with everything it needs to do. That's not the case of you have 3 1200p monitors to render on.

if you saw my post above, a guy had 4-way GTX 580 on the 990x OCed @ 5.0 GHz but he gets 43 FPS (Metro 2033) on 2d surround which i believe he could get more somehow.
The CPU renders images it's like drawing black and white and the GPU is painting it, t i saw here and somewhere CPUs classified for their rendering efficiency not the GPUs so i can say it's mainly depending on the CPU not the GPU. I could be wrong (i don't work in graphics)
http://techreport.com/r.x/k-series/cine-render-oc.gif
also the CPU do the (Phsyics) ... from wikipedia " The CPU is also running calculations that are determining how objects interact in the game known as Physics "

The reason the CPU often becomes the bottleneck in these extreme setups, is they don't push the GPU's by using high resolutions or multiple monitors. At which point the CPU holds the GPU's back from a possible 300 FPS or what not, because the CPU can't keep up with everything it needs to do. That's not the case of you have 3 1200p monitors to render on.

that's what i have read over and over from a lot of posts, if one holds back the other the bottlneck occurs, specially for CPU when "lots of Physics,poor threading,low resolution"

 

[ilysaml]

If you go with the GTX580 SLI option then you can still use your current PSU.A GTX580 SLI on it's own consumes about 520watts.The total system power draw of a "test system" is around 720 watts.Seasonic is a very good PSU manufacturer and your PSU will have no problem at all powering a GTX580 SLI.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-580-sli-review/14

850W should work, but most would recommend 950 to 1000 if you overclock anything and/or everything. and i can't let my I7 (OCed), Ram, HDDs, Fans, additional PCI cards run at 130W when the GPUs are in full load

 

[purple stain]

This isn't just your normal everyday 850 watt PSU though.
This is a Seasonic PSU.

 

[bystander]

if you saw my post above, a guy had 4-way GTX 580 on the 990x OCed @ 5.0 GHz but he gets 43 FPS (Metro 2033) on 2d surround which i believe he could get more somehow.
The CPU renders images it's like drawing black and white and the GPU is painting it, t i saw here and somewhere CPUs classified for their rendering efficiency not the GPUs so i can say it's mainly depending on the CPU not the GPU. I could be wrong (i don't work in graphics)
http://techreport.com/r.x/k-series/cine-render-oc.gif

Yes, there are some tests out there to see how well your CPU can render. They did this in some of the 3Dmark benchmarks, but this is not how the games run. This is a test to see how fast the CPU can go. The times I've seen this done, they did the same scene twice, once rendered on the CPU and once on the GPU. The CPU version is usually done at 320x200 or some other absurdly low res while the GPU version is as 1280x1024.

also the CPU do the (Phsyics) ... from wikipedia " The CPU is also running calculations that are determining how objects interact in the game known as Physics "


that's what i have read over and over from a lot of posts, if one holds back the other the bottlneck occurs, specially for CPU when "lots of Physics,poor threading,low resolution"

Now this part is accurate.

Lots of Physics - this doesn't change with high or low res or more Graphics power.

poor threading - this is means that the game doesn't use all the cores of a CPU and relies on it's clock speed. This does not change with faster GPU's

low resolution - Now this is the heart of what I was talking about. If you have a lower resolution that means your GPU can render many more frames than it would at a high resolution, but if your CPU can only go fast enough to handle physics and all the overhead, up to 60 FPS, it'll be held back to 60 FPS. However, if you increase the resolution to a point where the GPU's are only able go to 55 FPS, then the CPU will not hold back the GPU's and the system runs at 55 FPS.

 

[ilysaml]

Yes, there are some tests out there to see how well your CPU can render. They did this in some of the 3Dmark benchmarks, but this is not how the games run. This is a test to see how fast the CPU can go. The times I've seen this done, they did the same scene twice, once rendered on the CPU and once on the GPU. The CPU version is usually done at 320x200 or some other absurdly low res while the GPU version is as 1280x1024.



Now this part is accurate.

Lots of Physics - this doesn't change with high or low res or more Graphics power.

poor threading - this is means that the game doesn't use all the cores of a CPU and relies on it's clock speed. This does not change with faster GPU's

low resolution - Now this is the heart of what I was talking about. If you have a lower resolution that means your GPU can render many more frames than it would at a high resolution, but if your CPU can only go fast enough to handle physics and all the overhead, up to 60 FPS, it'll be held back to 60 FPS. However, if you increase the resolution to a point where the GPU's are only able go to 55 FPS, then the CPU will not hold back the GPU's and the system runs at 55 FPS.

and i totally agree with that, but does the normal eye differentiate between 30 FPS and more ? i notice it in the shadows of the game and how smooth the game is running above 40 FPS.
and why does the V.Sync limits the FPS in terms of refresh rate of the monitor ?

 

[nforce4max]

I wouldn't spend the money when these cards are nearing end of life with the next generation cards already in production. I wouldn't pay retail let alone full price for something that will soon be yesterday's news. If you are going to get something obsolete then get something cheaper.

 

[bystander]

and i totally agree with that, but does the normal eye differentiate between 30 FPS and more ?

The eye doesn't see in FPS. Read this: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
I personally feel sick at FPS below 40 or rather. Even at 40 I can feel a little motion sickness, but it's far less. And if you read the above article, you can clearly see a difference between 60 and 120 FPS with a 120hz monitor when you spin around.

i notice it in the shadows of the game and how smooth the game is running above 40 FPS.
and why does the V.Sync limits the FPS in terms of refresh rate of the monitor ?

Vertical sync means that the system cannot update the monitors images except during vertical refresh, which happens to be what the hz rating on a monitor is referring to. If you have a 60 hz monitor and you have vsync on, the system is only allowed to update the image on the monitor 60 times per second, because there are only 60 vertical refreshes per second.

EDIT: btw, vertical refresh is a period where the monitor does not update the image on the screen. I also should point out that my general feed back on bottlenecks is only a general rule. I know that the CPU does play a part on some of the higher end graphical settings, but mostly in a way that is the same regardless of resolution.

 

[ilysaml]

I know that the eye doesn't see in FPS, i meant could the normal eye differentiate between different FPS (every detail translated on the image) ? and the link answered that. but does the Size of the monitor affect FPS ? for eg. 42 " monitor 1920×1200 and 23 " that has the same resolution, is their a real impact on FPS ? or just the pixels spread much bigger and stretched ? i've always thought the game has to calculate what those extra points look like, so the FPS of the game will drop.

 

[bystander]

I know that the eye doesn't see in FPS, i meant could the normal eye differentiate between different FPS (every detail translated on the image) ? and the link answered that. but does the Size of the monitor affect FPS ? for eg. 42 " monitor 1920×1200 and 23 " that has the same resolution, is their a real impact on FPS ? or just the pixels spread much bigger and stretched ? i've always thought the game has to calculate what those extra points look like, so the FPS of the game will drop.

I do believe that the CPU plays a part of mostly calculating out those points of the polygons, although tessellation helps there. However, the number of points is the same regardless of resolution, although with an extra wide view, like eyefinity brings, there may be a few extra points to work with.

 

[Mousemonkey]

well, technically Deus Ex Human Revolution is the first games in series to have the "AMD Gaming Evolved Logo" so technically i was correct.
but i won't lie and say that i meant it... as i didn't get the chance to play those 2

and i just saw the intro of both on youtube, no "AMD Gaming Evolved" Logo is included

The old logo used to be "Get In The Game" IIRC, so what's changed other than the logo?

 

[ilysaml]

I do believe that the CPU plays a part of mostly calculating out those points of the polygons, although tessellation helps there. However, the number of points is the same regardless of resolution, although with an extra wide view, like eyefinity brings, there may be a few extra points to work with.

anyway thanks for clarifications, you explained a lot to me

 

[ilysaml]

The old logo used to be "Get In The Game" IIRC, so what's changed other than the logo?

i only saw the new AMD logo in "Deus Ex" but it sounds like it's in "Show gun 2" as well
i don't care who bribes who, i care only about the overall performance

 

[Mousemonkey]

i only saw the new AMD logo in "Deus Ex" but it sounds like it's in "Show gun 2" as well
i don't care who bribes who, i care only about the overall performance

:lol: Fair enough! I think you mean "Shogun 2" by the way. 😉

 

[ilysaml]

:lol: Fair enough! I think you mean "Shogun 2" by the way. 😉

yes exactly