New System Soon: What GPU choice?

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Seaclam

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Aug 1, 2007
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I'm no more than a day or two away from either having Cyberpower build my system OR doing it myself with a friend like my current system. I have a small room that can get warm, although I keep the air conditioning on as needed and or the overhead ceiling fan. Currently I own am old quad-core 6600 running 4 gigs of old Corsair Dominator memory and actually fried my original 8800GTX by leaving the room too hot while playing long hours like two years back. I have been running on a 2gig GTX285 since then, which runs cooler. I only game on a 22" screen at 1680x1050, but when I game I do want all the goodies on in term of textures and effects. So a lot of memory on the card is paramount to me to get all the texures, even fan done revisions that push the memory limits. I always have FSAA/AA set on the low end like 4x, so I'm really not pushing things compared to others.

I have always gone airflow cooling and current have a Thermaltake Armor case which works pretty darn good. I will be getting a Coolermaster Haf-X and an asRock Z68 board so I can somewhat future proof(hopefully) the system lifespan, and my main questions deal with heat and performance. I don't want to get or need a 590 card (EVGA as I'm partial to them), but I'm currently looking at three options:

A. Get one 3gig 580 card

B. Get two 3gig 580 cards SLI

C. Get two 2.5gig 570 HD cards SLI

My thoughts are stay with one 580 for heat reason. I worry about any SLI option creating too much heat in my small 10x10 room and I don't trust liquid cooled options. But for those who have the experience, what would you choose. At my low resolution gaming, even if I kick it up to something like an LCD with something like 1900x1080, will I see anything from an SLI configuration? Will one 3gig 580 do the job for upcoming games like BF3, Skyrim, MW3, Rage, etc....?

Thanks
 
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First of all you only need 3gb cards if you are planning to use triple monitor Nvidia vision surround.

Second remeber to run some of these new games out with these extreme graphics (Metro 2033, Witcher 2, Crysis 2) you are going to need a lot of GPU power to run these at a smooth 60FPS.

Battlefield 3 rep just stated to run bf3 at ultra settings it will take 580 SLI. I assume he is taking about 2560x1600 res. http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/23/battlefield-3-will-need-monster-rig-to-run-on-ultra-settings/?mtc=comment-132093#comment-132093

Any reason whyu don't like EVGA? I have their factory overclocked GTX 590 Classified and I love it. It gives me max framerate on all current games, smooth as butter. Plus EVGA has a lifetime warranty on the 590 which even covers overclocking.

The 590 is a below in performance to 580 sli, but I believe in 1080p I should be good with ultra settings with BF3.

If you can afford 580 sli go for it, nothing else will touch it. If money a concern go with 570sli which provides similar performance but with a lot cheaper price tag. I myself went with the 590 because I got it really cheap, plus it will leave room for a good upgrade years down the road for 590 Quad SLI using only 2 PCIe slots.
 
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Actually I love EVGA. Absolutely!!! Sorry if I worded it wrong. I may step up to some 24 inch or perhaps 27 inch 1920x1080 with 2-3ms. It certainly sounds like that would be no issue for one 580?
 
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Gtx 570 sli is all you need, there isn't huge difference between 570 and 580, also, if you are doing sli, why not consider xfire 6950, although you can't flash these cards anymore, they do offer great multi card scaling than sli. If you are only running single monitor, you can get two of 6950 1 gig which is equal/slightly expensive than single 580, but out performs single 580 by significant margin.
 
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I've been looking at some nice 24-27" 1920x1080 LCD/LED screens. I may upgrade to one of those, but again, it sounds like one 580 would handle that from what I'm hearing. I certainly have no plans to multi-monitor game, but a larger single one could be a possibility. I guess the main reason I want the 3gig 580 version is due to an experience I had a while back when The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion came out and after a little while, fans started coming out with texture remaps that looked great, but at the time I had like dual 7600's in SLI. I later put in the 8800GTX with more memory to handle the increased textures that I wanted.
 
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I played around with 6950 2 gigs/ 570/580, from my experience, 69xx offers best multi video card scaling, if you consider single card, 570 plays no huge difference than 580, my previous evga 570 reference design oc'ed to sc specs, got 6056 ish in 3dmark 11, and my new pre-oc'ed zotac amp! 580 ONLY scored 6600 ish in 3dmark 11, but the price difference is like $200 bux, if you add another $100, you can get another 570 already.
 
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Nice, yea...see this is what I'm talking about and starting to lean towards. I've had a 22 inch now for a few years and now I think I'm getting the bigger monitor bug again! Considering there are major gamers here playing on monster 2-3 monitor systems at some amazing resolutions(2/3/4 way SLI), my 1920x1080 is pretty down there I guess. I just want to be sure a single 580 will handle it and it certainly sounds like a go. Of course, I'm getting a MB that will do 2 way SLI anyhow, so if I need more, I just get another card.....
 
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I'm sure the ATI solutions are great too, but I've been partial to Nvidia for many years. I don't have really anything against ATI, I just have been happy with Nvidia, especially EVGA cards. I'm not a demanding gamer in the sense that I push the envelope, I just like all the DX11 features, texture and FX bells and whistles that a game can use to be on. My resolutions, even if I go to a bigger single monitor that is like 1920x1080, are low and I historically don't push the FSAA/AA settings through the roof either.
 
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A few comments:
Single GTX580's will not run on 3 monitors, you will have to get 2 cards in SLI to run 3 monitors.
As for the 1.5g or 3g model of GTX580, the 3g is better for dual monitors.
If you run 1680x1050 then a single GTX580 1.5g is more than enough for any game out there.
 
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When you go to a bigger screen everything smaller you had before just looks tiny and unplayable. Ive been a console gamer that recently smartened up and moved to PC gaming, wow what a world of difference. But I still use my 1080p 55inch high end Panasonic flatscreen. It takes up almost my whole field of vision and gives me a more imersive lifelike feel, that plus high end PC graphics are absolutly stunning to look at, much less play.

580 will run everything maxed @1080p, but you might not get the smoothest framerate in GPU demanding games, like Metro 2033 u get only low 30s FPS while the 590 gets high 50s fps.
 
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So if I understand this correctly, going to a bigger single monitor, possible up to a 27" 1920x1080, I may need to think about SLI to keep the frame rate in the higher numbers? If that's true, the only thing I'm concerned with is air-cooling for 2 way SLI. Also, again, how much heat do 2 gtx570's put out vs 2 GTX580's? Again, sorry if I have misinterpreted what you are saying. I'm just a little concerned now about going up to a single 27" and possibly seeing some performance issues. Then, I read about adding an extra card for PhysX, but I get the feeling reading in these forums that it's not something worth it? That most don't even bother with that... that only a few games have that implimented and other games just use in house software solutions like Havok...
 
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Size has nothing to do with framerate, resolution does. Extra card for physX not worth it, only adds 3-5% additional framerate.
 
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Cool! Thanks guys for the info. I feel a lot more confident going into this. The upcoming games look to be fantastic. I started PC gaming back in 1988/89 when I had an 8088/8 mghz-11mghz(turbo mode) and played Starflight on a 4 color CGA monitor, so times have clearly changed over all these years. It's simply amazing what we have now. Thanks again and happy gaming!
 
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only low 30s FPS while the 590 gets high 50s fps.
that is incorrect.
my gtx 480 manages 40fps average with all eyecandy turned up at 1080p without antialiasing.
Click to expand...

the benchmarks dont lie, read above post link, here again if you missed it http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-590-review/16. And you cant say all eyecandy turned up and "no antialiasing" in same sentence.
 
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