Questions about SLI?

gxavier38 · Mar 20, 2012

I have a few questions (pretty noob, so bear with me):
1: In extreme gaming builds, people usually go for 4x GTX 460s. Why not go for quad 580s?
2: Which would be better, 2x 590 or 4x 580 in quad? Would there be problems?

sosofm · Mar 20, 2012

To go with 4 x 580 in my opinion it's a non sense.
If you have one good video card who can play all the games at minimum 35+ fps it's more than enough. For the human eye 60fps and 100fps is the same.

gxavier38 · Mar 20, 2012

It should matter if you have 120Hz monitor would it?

sosofm · Mar 20, 2012

For that 580 SLI is enough. 120hz monitor is kind of pointless unless you are gaming in 3d .

gxavier38 · Mar 20, 2012

Ah, okay. Did this just for fun actually...

hellfire24 · Mar 20, 2012

^no problem mate 😉
i am happy with a single gtx 580.But technology changes so rapidly that nothing remains 'most powerful'.for example,me and my brother decided to get the best possible single card at that time.MSi lightning xtreme edition was best.we got one for $600!but now a cheaper card(7950)beats it easily.so nothing is all time most powerful.if you are asking about multi-gpu solution then a single 7970 or gtx 680(when it comes out)is enough to run any game at 1080p.for eyefinity i would go with 7970 CF.anything above two gfx is a waste IMO.scaling is poor and it does not gives the performance of 3x or 4x of your single card.for now,if somebody wanna gift me than i would ask for 7970 CF.
it was actually fun :lol:
if you are done than close the thread!

gxavier38 · Mar 20, 2012

I'm waiting for the 680, which is rumored to come on April 22nd. I'll do 2x SLI water-cooled. Worth it?

(SLI would need price consideration...)

bucknutty · Mar 20, 2012

I have been messing with SLI for years. My first rig had 2 8800gt. I currently have a system with 8800gtx and my main system with 2 gtx470. I use my SLI to run 3 1920x1080 monitors for a surrond resolution of 5760x1080. Its fun but not very practical and it is often a pain in the butt. Its hard to recomend SLI to anyone other than a hard core enthusiast.

4 gtx580s would be neat, but not practical. 4 cards would cost close to $2000 US. The PSU they would need would be like 1400watt and 120amp, or maybe a dual PSU. Liquid cooling would be the only real way to keep these cool other than a case that had a house style window fan for a side panel. While on the topic of cases 4 cards would need a fancy case with 8 expansion slots.

If you had all that in place what whould you be able to do with all that power. One 580 will give you acceptable frames in most any game, 2 would give you good frames.
I guess the common man could use all that power for brute force password breaking.
Or maybe folding at home.

bucknutty · Mar 20, 2012

I'm cool with the thread, thinking about QUAD SLi is cool with me...😀
http://i1130.photobucket.com/albums/m529/malmental/IMG-20120319-00022.jpg

sweet pic.
A few months ago i came across an 8800gt that was match for my 2 older ones. So i tried to 3 way SLI them to see what would happen. Unfortantily the driver will not let you enable 3 8800gt, intead it SLIs the first 2 and then sets the 3rd for physics. I found a crack and a registry tweak that let me enable it but it did not run very well. The 3 8800gt ran only 10% fast than 2 and the driver often crashed. I even tried to make a custom bridge by cutting a 3 way in half so that it only had 3 connectors rather than 6. That did not seem to help at all. It seemed to run the same with or with out a bridge.

bucknutty · Mar 20, 2012

I took some pics and documented the failure. I will make a thread about when I get a chance.

hellfire24 · Mar 20, 2012

I'm cool with the thread, thinking about QUAD SLi is cool with me...😀
http://i1130.photobucket.com/albums/m529/malmental/IMG-20120319-00022.jpg

gxavier38 · Mar 21, 2012

Thanks for the replies. Also, those are 4 what? Seems epic.

hellfire24 · Mar 21, 2012

they are MSI twinfrozer cards.two(on left) are twinfrozer III and on right are twinfrozer II.

graemevermeulen · Mar 21, 2012

dude, I would have loved to been there for that little experiment...
I do things like that all the time with some of the older hardware I come across.
I must have wrecked about 6 or 7 AM2 and AM2+ units (motherboards) doing crap like that...

FYI
motherboard chipsets hate to see me coming...

At least AMD motherboards are cheap :kaola:

graemevermeulen · Mar 21, 2012

gxavier38 :

Complete waste of money. In fact, if you added a third GTX 580 it would just be sitting there causing noise and heat and not really contributing to any rendering whatsoever, so for a fourth to be there... :heink:

In fact last night when I was busy gaming away with my two GTX 580s I'm pretty sure that I could have easily fried an egg on the back of my case it was so hot. Had to set the fans to run faster and temperatures came down by 15 degrees celcius or so.

Also, not many games will support anything more than 3-way SLI. It's honestly just an all-round waste of money. People that do it are just :pt1cable:

gxavier38 · Mar 21, 2012

graemevermeulen :

There's the swag and cash factor. 😀

gxavier38 · Mar 21, 2012

not anymore.. 🙁
the ones I like anyways.

Some arent... 100 dollars, used to be cheaper.

graemevermeulen · Mar 21, 2012

not anymore.. 🙁
the ones I like anyways.

Let's be honest... we never grow up, our toys just become more expensive 😀

graemevermeulen · Mar 21, 2012

gxavier38 :

Some people are willing to pay for bragging rights 😗

gxavier38 · Mar 21, 2012

graemevermeulen :

Well not me?

graemevermeulen · Mar 21, 2012

gxavier38 :

You tell me? What have you got running?

gxavier38 · Mar 21, 2012

graemevermeulen :

I have an ooold rig I'm gonna upgrade. It has 2x 5450

graemevermeulen · Mar 21, 2012

gxavier38 :

What do you plan on upgrading to?

And since this is an SLI thread... SLI? :sol:

graemevermeulen · Mar 21, 2012

I got a feeling that SLi GTX 660-Ti will be strong enough and equal to stronger than SLi GTX 580's.
I think I need to move up from these x8/x8 boards to some x16/x16 boards but reports say that if you already have x8/x8 then just keep it.
not worth the money to jump up to x16's..

The GTX 580 is the fastest single GPU card Nvidia has got to offer as it stands now. The GTX 590 being the fastest single DUAL GPU card.

Nvidia would never release a GTX 660Ti that performs at the same level as their current flagship card, the 660Ti will be aimed to be competing with the likes of the 7870 etc.

The GTX 680 will compete directly with the 7970 and will succeed the GTX 580 and the GTX 590.

An overclocked GTX 660Ti will perform as fast as or faster than a stock GTX 570 no doubt, that's if the past is anything to go by.

graemevermeulen · Mar 21, 2012

older article on SLI x8/x8 vs x16/x16 with GTX 480's..
http://hardocp.com/article/2010/08/23/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x8x8/

I read that article when wondering whether to go with P55 or X58.

The NF200 chip only really shines when 3 or more GPUs are used.

Questions about SLI?

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