Nvidia GTX295

[TheDoc9]

Originally posted by: finbarqs
my biggest thing is that I'm running 2 monitors... I know the ATI will allow me to run my games at "SLI" speed when I'm using dual monitors. Nvidia was notorious for only letting you harness the power of one card (GX2 series) when you have a dual monitor setup. Will this still be the case with this GTX 295? Did they fix that in a driver? If not, I'm still looking at ATI being my next card... I'm still running on my old trust worthy 8800GTX!

Surely this isn't still an issue, or at the least just an isolated incident. Hopefully someone will test it in a review, if it is an issue it would make my next purchase decision easy.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: TheDoc9

Originally posted by: finbarqs
my biggest thing is that I'm running 2 monitors... I know the ATI will allow me to run my games at "SLI" speed when I'm using dual monitors. Nvidia was notorious for only letting you harness the power of one card (GX2 series) when you have a dual monitor setup. Will this still be the case with this GTX 295? Did they fix that in a driver? If not, I'm still looking at ATI being my next card... I'm still running on my old trust worthy 8800GTX!

Surely this isn't still an issue, or at the least just an isolated incident. Hopefully someone will test it in a review, if it is an issue it would make my next purchase decision easy.

This was reportedly fixed with the 180 drivers. I don't run multi-GPU so I can't confirm for sure but it was certainly on the list of improvements with Big Bang 2. But ya I agree, multi-monitor support should've come long ago and was definitely one of the negative marks against SLI in the past.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: Ylurien
What does a guy do if he wants this card but he only has 2 6-pin and some extra molex connectors?

6-pin to 8-pin adapters? edit: nevermind, chizow already has your answer.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Ylurien
What does a guy do if he wants this card but he only has 2 6-pin and some extra molex connectors?

If you have a quality PSU, you can use one of these on one of your 6-pin molex connectors: http://www.performance-pcs.com...=186&products_id=21721

I used one of those with my PCP&C 750W Silencer and a 9800GX2 with no problems.

 

[TheDoc9]

Thanks Chizow, now to find a review of the 295 using an 'old' intel quad core such as the q9450. The reviews so far seem to all be using way overclocked i7's but I'm wondering about the cpu limitations from systems built in the dark ages - 6 months ago.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: TheDoc9
Thanks Chizow, now to find a review of the 295 using an 'old' intel quad core such as the q9450. The reviews so far seem to all be using way overclocked i7's but I'm wondering about the cpu limitations from systems built in the dark ages - 6 months ago.

Q9450 = Q9550, Q9650 with a lower multi. There are no E0 Q9450s, but I had mine up to 3.6ghz stable. It is still a great chip, it was just EOL'd.

 

[TheDoc9]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: TheDoc9
Thanks Chizow, now to find a review of the 295 using an 'old' intel quad core such as the q9450. The reviews so far seem to all be using way overclocked i7's but I'm wondering about the cpu limitations from systems built in the dark ages - 6 months ago.

Q9450 = Q9550, Q9650 with a lower multi. There are no E0 Q9450s, but I had mine up to 3.6ghz stable. It is still a great chip, it was just EOL'd.

any issues at that range (3.6 ghz)? I'm afraid to push mine past 3.2 on air as I want to keep it completely stable.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: TheDoc9

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: TheDoc9
Thanks Chizow, now to find a review of the 295 using an 'old' intel quad core such as the q9450. The reviews so far seem to all be using way overclocked i7's but I'm wondering about the cpu limitations from systems built in the dark ages - 6 months ago.

Q9450 = Q9550, Q9650 with a lower multi. There are no E0 Q9450s, but I had mine up to 3.6ghz stable. It is still a great chip, it was just EOL'd.

any issues at that range (3.6 ghz)? I'm afraid to push mine past 3.2 on air as I want to keep it completely stable.

I didnt have any issues. It really isnt as much about frequency as it is about voltage and temps. If your board/chip will do 3.4-3.6ghz stable with 1.3625-1.4V max, 1.4V NB max, and temps never peaking above 70C, you will be fine.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: TheDoc9

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: TheDoc9
Thanks Chizow, now to find a review of the 295 using an 'old' intel quad core such as the q9450. The reviews so far seem to all be using way overclocked i7's but I'm wondering about the cpu limitations from systems built in the dark ages - 6 months ago.

Q9450 = Q9550, Q9650 with a lower multi. There are no E0 Q9450s, but I had mine up to 3.6ghz stable. It is still a great chip, it was just EOL'd.

any issues at that range (3.6 ghz)? I'm afraid to push mine past 3.2 on air as I want to keep it completely stable.

The current multi-GPU solutions based on the fastest single-GPUs will certainly benefit from as many CPU cycles as you throw at them. There were certainly hints of CPU bottlenecking on older Core 2 systems with multi-GPU and those suspicions have been confirmed with all of the recent i7 benches, especially with many of the test benches being updated to 3.6-3.8GHz rigs.

Depending on resolution and AA setting, you should still see a healthy FPS gain from a multi-GPU set-up with a Q9450 at 3.2GHz, although that difference will be smaller with slower CPUs and lower resolutons/AA settings as the CPU bottleneck is more of an issue. You can see the extent of CPU bottlenecking with current multi-GPU solutions in most of the recent reviews with i7:

Multi-GPU with OC'd i7

That's more of an extreme example where all of the faster multi-GPU solutions are more or less indistinguishable from one another even at different resolutions up to 2560 with AA as the CPU is still the bottleneck. You'll also see that the difference between the fastest single GPU solutions (GTX 280 and 4870 1GB) aren't that great until you start hitting 1920 with AA.