SLI power supply

[100586112]

So for the past year I've been using a Galaxy MDT gtx 580 which runs pretty nicely and I have yet seen any issues with. I started to have this crazy idea (....derp) of wanting SLI. Now the individual card itself has a min req of 600W which my TX750 Corsair can handle. Now here are some of my questions:

Does that mean if I SLI another it would use 1200W?

What would I be able to compare the MDT gtx 580 to if I were to choose a different path for SLI?

Since the card has 3 fans, will having 2 gtx 580 help with lowering noise level since it would even out the stress between 2 cards?

Is it even worth it to SLI this card?

Sorry if any of these questions have been answered previously. I'm kind of a noob when it comes to all this.

 

[cjl]

Don't SLI 580. Get one of the newer GTX's, like a 670.

A single 580 is nearly as fast as a 670, so that would be a complete waste of money. Not only that, 580 SLI is MUCH, MUCH faster than a 670 (or even a 680), and it isn't far behind a 690. In addition, SLI works substantially better than it used to - scaling is very good on nearly all games. Finally, as far as SLI profiles are concerned, the 580 is only 1 generation old. Nvidia is in no danger of stopping support anytime soon. Nvidia tends to be very good at keeping drivers and SLI profiles up to date for the high end cards (and I don't know why you keep talking about mid range cards - the 580 was the top GPU of the 500 series). The latest driver still supports the 8800 Ultra, for example, even though that card is closing in on 6 years old. By the time they stop supporting the 580 SLI, they won't be far from stopping support on the 600 series either, and both the 580 and 670/680 will be thoroughly obsolete.

Basically, if you can find a 580 for a good price, SLI would be a great idea if you want a bit of extra performance. It would bring your system to near-690 levels of performance, for substantially less money than a 690. As for the PSU, a good 750 (such as your Corsair) should be fine, so long as the rest of your system isn't extremely power hungry (as long as you don't have a heavily overclocked 120W processor and 6 hard drives, you should be fine). 580 SLI is a wonderful setup, and I'm sure you'll be extremely happy with it if you end up going for it (I say that as the very happy owner of a 580 SLI setup, which will run pretty much anything at full settings on my 30 inch monitor).

 

[EzioAs]

@cjl

I'm not saying a single or dual 580 isn't powerful but at the current time, what I think is best is for OP to stay with single card (considering that it's still very powerful) and get the next gen highest end offering especially taken power efficiency into account.

 

[Mousemonkey]

That's an odd way for a moderator to act. Rather silly.

You'll find most industry professionals won't tell you to delve into SLI or Crossfire with anything but the higher end cards for the obvious reasons: noise, heat and electricity. SLI and Crossfire are designed for maximum performance, not to buff lower cards up a notch.

Why would I or any one else who likes to build their own rigs give a stuff about these so called "industry professionals"?
Who are these people? Can you identify them for us?

 

[MatildaPersson]

http://static.rcgroups.net/forums/a...-217-DOUBLE-FACEPALM-600x480.jpg?d=1306873439

A single 580 is nearly as fast as a 670, so that would be a complete waste of money. Not only that, 580 SLI is MUCH, MUCH faster than a 670 (or even a 680), and it isn't far behind a 690. In addition, SLI works substantially better than it used to - scaling is very good on nearly all games. Finally, as far as SLI profiles are concerned, the 580 is only 1 generation old. Nvidia is in no danger of stopping support anytime soon. Nvidia tends to be very good at keeping drivers and SLI profiles up to date for the high end cards (and I don't know why you keep talking about mid range cards - the 580 was the top GPU of the 500 series). The latest driver still supports the 8800 Ultra, for example, even though that card is closing in on 6 years old. By the time they stop supporting the 580 SLI, they won't be far from stopping support on the 600 series either, and both the 580 and 670/680 will be thoroughly obsolete.

Basically, if you can find a 580 for a good price, SLI would be a great idea if you want a bit of extra performance. It would bring your system to near-690 levels of performance, for substantially less money than a 690. As for the PSU, a good 750 (such as your Corsair) should be fine, so long as the rest of your system isn't extremely power hungry (as long as you don't have a heavily overclocked 120W processor and 6 hard drives, you should be fine). 580 SLI is a wonderful setup, and I'm sure you'll be extremely happy with it if you end up going for it (I say that as the very happy owner of a 580 SLI setup, which will run pretty much anything at full settings on my 30 inch monitor).

It's under 60fps here.

As I've been saying, the card is fine. It's not top of the line, but it's certainly a fine card to have. But don't buy a second older generation card for SLI.

 

[MatildaPersson]

Why would I or any one else who likes to build their own rigs give a stuff about these so called "industry professionals"?
Who are these people? Can you identify them for us?

Why should you care what intelligent people that make a living knowing about the topic ("industry professionals") think on the details of your interest? I'd have thought that question would answer itself. Or do you not read articles and do research written by said people, such as those posted here, on this website you represent? If you do, then your comment is moot.

I'm not going to converse with you if your only mode of dialog is to be as sharp and arrogant as possible.

 

[cjl]

It's under 60fps here.

http://static.techspot.com/articles-info/577/bench/2560.png

As I've been saying, the card is fine. It's not top of the line, but it's certainly a fine card to have. But don't buy a second older generation card for SLI.

A single 580 is at 55 FPS at the highest quality setting at 2560x1600, which is only 14FPS behind the fastest current gen card. It's also plenty fast as long as there are no significant dips in framerate (which is impossible to judge based on that chart alone). I'd say that's not bad at all, and it would certainly be a waste of money to buy a 680 for that modest of a gain (especially when I would bet that a 580 SLI setup would be WAY above 60FPS at those same settings).

 

[MatildaPersson]

A single 580 is at 55 FPS at the highest quality setting at 2560x1600, which is only 14FPS behind the fastest current gen card. It's also plenty fast as long as there are no significant dips in framerate (which is impossible to judge based on that chart alone). I'd say that's not bad at all, and it would certainly be a waste of money to buy a 680 for that modest of a gain (especially when I would bet a pretty substantial amount of money that a 580 SLI setup would be WAY above 60FPS at those same settings).

Why would you be using SLI in medium resolutions? It's assumed you're going to be using large monitors if you want to run an SLI setup.

Again, there's no reason to run two 580's if you don't already. Either keep your one, perfectly fine card and enjoy it for a while to come yet. Or upgrade to the current top-tier and SLI there.

 

[cjl]

Oh, and to answer a question in the OP that appears to be unanswered to this point, no, SLI will not reduce noise level. It will increase it. It won't even out the workload - instead, you will now have 2 cards working at full speed, so the heat level will be substantially higher. Performance will be significantly improved though.

 

[cjl]

Why would you be using SLI in medium resolutions? It's assumed you're going to be using large monitors if you want to run an SLI setup.

Again, there's no reason to run two 580's if you don't already. Either keep your one, perfectly fine card and enjoy it for a while to come yet. Or upgrade to the current top-tier and SLI there.

Since when is 2560x1600 a medium resolution?

As for your later statement, a pair of 580s ranges from about 60% as fast as a pair of 680s worst case up to about even with them best case (see here). On average, they're about 20% slower. A single 580 (to upgrade the existing system) can be had for $400 (possibly even less, depending on where you get it), while a GTX 680 costs around $470. So, for less than the cost of a single 680, you can have substantially more performance (or, alternatively, for around 40% the cost of 680 SLI, you can have 80% of the performance). It would make no sense at all to upgrade to 680 SLI.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Why should you care what intelligent people that make a living knowing about the topic ("industry professionals") think on the details of your interest? I'd have thought that question would answer itself. Or do you not read articles and do research written by said people, such as those posted here, on this website you represent? If you do, then your comment is moot.

I'm not going to converse with you if your only mode of dialog is to be as sharp and arrogant as possible.

My personal experience far outweighs what you (some random person on the internet) says that what other people say matters. Other people that you can't even identify.

 

[MatildaPersson]

Since when is 2560x1600 a medium resolution?

As for your later statement, a pair of 580s ranges from about 60% as fast as a pair of 680s worst case up to about even with them best case (see here). On average, they're about 20% slower. A single 580 (to upgrade the existing system) can be had for $400 (possibly even less, depending on where you get it), while a GTX 680 costs around $470. So, for less than the cost of a single 680, you can have 80% of the performance of a pair of them (or, alternatively, for around 40% the cost of 680 SLI, you can have 80% of the performance). It would make no sense at all to upgrade to 680 SLI.

I didn't say it was a medium resolution. I said why would you use anything less than high resolution with SLI, as you seemed to be implying the resolution was exceptional in the context of your last comment.

I guess we are coming at this from different angles. I don't see the point in spending money to improve a perfectly fine card, when you can spend money and get a fantastic set of cards. In or out. All or nothing. Improving on the 580 at this point just seems odd to me. My husband and I just stick with what we have, or spend the money and get the performance.

 

[cjl]

My personal experience far outweighs what you (some random person on the internet) says that what other people say matters. Other people that you can't even identify.

Nope. Your personal experience is worth nothing. Similarly, my personal experience is also worth nothing. Even though we've both built computers with SLI (and mine actually has the exact config being discussed here - a pair of 580s), our experience means nothing compared to a reference to a nameless expert computer industry professional.

 

[MatildaPersson]

My personal experience far outweighs what you (some random person on the internet) says that what other people say matters. Other people that you can't even identify.

If you aren't concerned with what others have to say, namely professionals, why are you here, on this site dedicated to professionals reviewing hardware and delivering to you news on the latest and greatest and their features? Can we assume you don't read reviews or anything published on the internet, here or elsewhere? An odd thing for a moderator to admit to.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Nope. Your personal experience is worth nothing. Similarly, my personal experience is also worth nothing. Even though we've both built computers with SLI (and mine actually has the exact config being discussed here - a pair of 580s), our experience means nothing compared to a reference to a nameless expert computer industry professional.

Meh, you're only a rocket scientist. What do you know? :lol:

 

[cjl]

My husband and I just stick with what we have, or spend the money and get the performance.

Why spend more than twice as much for a 20% gain though? It isn't like the 580 is suddenly worthless - it's still one of the fastest single GPUs in existence, and it makes no sense to me to throw away a perfectly good 580 just because the 680 is now available.

 

[cjl]

Meh, you're only a rocket scientist. What do you know? :lol:

Nothing at all, actually.

(I'm just really good at hiding that fact )

 

[Mousemonkey]

If you aren't concerned with what others have to say, namely professionals, why are you here, on this site dedicated to professionals reviewing hardware and delivering to you news on the latest and greatest and their features? Can we assume you don't read reviews or anything published on the internet, here or elsewhere? An odd thing for a moderator to admit to.

I admitted to that? :lol:

Do you have an Apple phone by any chance?

 

[MatildaPersson]

Why spend more than twice as much for a 20% gain though? It isn't like the 580 is suddenly worthless - it's still one of the fastest single GPUs in existence, and it makes no sense to me to throw away a perfectly good 580 just because the 680 is now available.

I would ask the opposite; if you are going to upgrade, why not upgrade more? I don't like to stop half way down the road if I'm going to walk down it.

 

[EzioAs]

I admitted to that? :lol:

Do you have an Apple phone by any chance?

Don't you think this has gotten a little bit off topic? Maybe you guys could just PM each other

 

[cjl]

If you aren't concerned with what others have to say, namely professionals, why are you here, on this site dedicated to professionals reviewing hardware and delivering to you news on the latest and greatest and their features? Can we assume you don't read reviews or anything published on the internet, here or elsewhere? An odd thing for a moderator to admit to.

I would be very curious to see a recent quote from an industry professional stating that SLI is only worthwhile with the latest generation, top-of-the-line cards. I haven't seen anything like that in any reviews, product recommendations, or build guides in the past several years (and in fact, I can recall having read the opposite several times - I've seen lower end SLI recommended over a single top end card, since it frequently gives a better bang for the buck).

 

[MatildaPersson]

I admitted to that? :lol:

Do you have an Apple phone by any chance?

You've repeatedly stated that you've no reason to care what others have to say regarding hardware. Don't be glib -- it's unbecoming.

No, I don't own any Apple products. They're a terrible company that bleeds consumers and tries to monopolize innovation, while stealing their way to the top. /rant

 

[cjl]

I would ask the opposite; if you are going to upgrade, why not upgrade more? I don't like to stop half way down the road if I'm going to walk down it.

By that logic, shouldn't everyone just get a Cray?

 

[MatildaPersson]

By that logic, shouldn't everyone just get a Cray?

I guess we simply draw the line of acceptable performance upgrade at different places. I'm sure there's someone, somewhere, that'd tell us all to not bother unless we have quad 680's, all selectively overclocked lol.

 

[EzioAs]

(and in fact, I can recall having read the opposite several times - I've seen lower end SLI recommended over a single top end card, since it frequently gives a better bang for the buck).

SLI lower end cards do usually tend to have better performance per dollar ratio. However, it'll also uses more power, produce more heat and even more noise. There's also the issue of poor scaling or micro-stuttering. This things apply to current and older gen cards.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Don't you think this has gotten a little bit off topic? Maybe you guys could just PM each other

No.

You've repeatedly stated that you've no reason to care what others have to say regarding hardware. Don't be glib -- it's unbecoming.

No, I don't own any Apple products. They're a terrible company that bleeds consumers and tries to monopolize innovation, while stealing their way to the top. /rant

Who's being glib? Where is it written that my views are not my own? You have taken the stance that I must take notice of nameless persons rather than what I see with my own eyes, and somehow I'm in the wrong?