Upgrading to dual GTX 590s

[Grooveriding]

The 'hot and loud' aspect is completely mitigated by Zotac and MSI Lightning aftermarket designs which can be had for $310 and $330, respectively. On top of that both cards are overclocked to 750mhz, which means they'll be 10% slower than a GTX580 for $150+ less, and have more VRAM than a 570.

Wow that is a smoking deal on those 480s, especially the lightning. You buy one of those and manage a 75Mhz overclock on its current clocks and you have a stock 580 for $300. Same amount of VRAM, same performance and same robust PCB.

The OC seems doable as well from these two reviews

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/N480GTX_GTX_480_Lightning/31.html
http://www.guru3d.com/article/msi-geforce-gtx-480-lightning-review/18

Overall it seems not high enough though. I would expect more. I can get 900 out of one of mine, 950 out of another and the third can do 850. This is with extra voltage though and they get freaking hot! I just run them all at 825.

 

[OCGuy]

Go fot it, and enjoy the horsepower!

 

[omber]

Okay I think I am going to settle for this upgrade:

ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME (REV 3.0)
Intel Core i7-2600K
2x MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC

 

[Chinoman]

Okay I think I am going to settle for this upgrade:

ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME (REV 3.0)
Intel Core i7-2600K
2x MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC

Looks great! Have fun!

 

[RussianSensation]

Okay I think I am going to settle for this upgrade:

ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME (REV 3.0)
Intel Core i7-2600K
2x MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC

Looks great. You can even save another $100 by going with 2500k and a cheaper mobo.

The 2500k isn't any slower in games when overclocked vs. 2600k. Benches. Remember that with multiplier overclocking, even a $180 board isn't going to perform any worse than that IV Extreme. With those 2 savings, you now have $200+ leftover for an SSD like Intel 510 or Vertex 3.

 

[Matrices]

Someone on Overclock.net who already tried this is reporting disappointing results: performance between 580 SLI and Tri-SLI.

Personally I have never trusted these dual-GPU cards; they always seem to be way too much hassle for the money.

 

[scooterlibby]

I got a kickass deal on my 580's, and I love them, but even in a very well cooled case, the EVGA one (without a custom cooler unlike it's Windforce brother) gets very hot. I couldn;t imagine dual 590's on air. Overkill too.

 

[Baasha]

OP, I have had dual air-cooled 590s so I feel I can give you some solid advice on this question of yours.

I bought the EVGA GTX-590 Classified Quad-SLI pack when it came out in March. I installed them in my system with one extra PCI-E slot between them in order to give them some breathing room.

My "regular" fan profile was set to 75% and for intensive applications, work, and gaming, my fan profile was at 95%.

The hottest any of the GPUs got was 85C during gaming, and that was at 8100x1600px (3 30" monitors in Surround mode).

The cards were rock solid and the EVGA Classified looked beautiful with the jet-black theme.

The only reason I sold them and got 3 EVGA GTX-580 3GB was for the VRAM (3GB per GPU) so that I can bump up the AA while gaming at insane resolutions (8100x1600). I was able to game without any hiccups at that same ultra-high resolution with the GTX-590s but I had to turn down the AA to about 2X and in some games (like Bulletstorm) to 0X. As far as processing power, these were some of the best cards IMO. I've done a lot of photo and video editing and these GPUs really helped a lot.

I used to have a GTX-295 CO-OP until January of this year so I know where you're coming from.

The answer to your question really lies in the answers to the following questions that pertain to YOU:

1.) What monitor(s) are you going to be using?
2.) Are you going to be running NVidia Surround or AMD Eyefinity?
3.) What kind of applications will you be running mostly?
4.) Is this rig strictly for gaming?
5.) How important is overclocking the GPUs to you?

The answer to #5 is especially important as the GTX-590s, especially the EVGA ones which come factory OC'd to 630MHz from the stock 607MHz per GPU, do not overclock that well since the power circuitry (# of phases for the GPU/Memory) has been uniformly lambasted by reviewers and owners alike. In order to OC a card, the power circuitry, or VRM, needs to be robust. The GTX-590 has a 6-phase (?) VRM-design which is not ideal for OC'ing the card.

The greatest advantage of getting Quad-SLI GTX-590s is that it takes only 4 slots on the motherboard (2 per card), well, 5 if you count the slot inbetween, and you get 1024 CUDA cores and 4 FULL GF110 (580) GPUs. If you do number crunching, folding, or some sort of analytical work or research, the GTX-590 Quad-SLI is a great setup.

If you want the best GAMING performance and even future-proof it to a certain extent with regards to multi-monitor setups etc., go for the 3GB GTX-580s.

I'm assuming since you're considering the dual GTX-590s, money is not that big of an issue so decide after answering the questions above carefully.

Asus is supposed to come out with a beefed up GTX-590 with extra VRMs and OC'd from the factory. Wait for those to come out and make up your mind!

 

[Shmee]

I agree, that 590's will not be likely needed for that res. My advice: get a higher resolution monitor, like a 30", and wait for the upcoming graphics cards. or just get 2 6950 2GB like I have, their extra memory really helps at 2560x1600.

 

[omber]

I have edited the original post.

As pointed out since Im not playing at any epic resolutions (Baasha you are insane) I will settle for this:

Intel Core i5-2500K
ASUS SABERTOOTH P67
2x MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC

It will cost just under $1100 CAD with shipping included.

 

[SirPauly]

The GTX-590 has a 6-phase (?) VRM-design

The GTX 590 offers 5-phase VRM's per GPU - 10 for GPU's and 4 for memory -- 14 total.

 

[RussianSensation]

I have edited the original post.

As pointed out since Im not playing at any epic resolutions (Baasha you are insane) I will settle for this:

Intel Core i5-2500K
ASUS SABERTOOTH P67
2x MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC

It will cost just under $1100 CAD with shipping included.

Great setup. Are you going to be overclocking the 2500k? Don't forget to get an aftermarket cooler for it if you are. Also, with P67 chipset you won't be able to use QuickSync feature. But if you don't care to do video encoding, then this setup will fly

 

[omber]

Great setup. Are you going to be overclocking the 2500k? Don't forget to get an aftermarket cooler for it if you are. Also, with P67 chipset you won't be able to use QuickSync feature. But if you don't care to do video encoding, then this setup will fly

I have a 2 year old Zalman CNPS9700 NT - it has served me well over the years I do not want to hijack the thread to ask about motherboards but is there a good reason to go with something else than P67 chipset?

 

[RussianSensation]

I have a 2 year old Zalman CNPS9700 NT - it has served me well over the years I do not want to hijack the thread to ask about motherboards but is there a good reason to go with something else than P67 chipset?

Z68 supports QuickSync feature which allows the use of Sandy Bridge graphics to encode video. If you do any video work, that may or may not be useful for you (subject to how picky you are with video quality - i.e., it's fine for a smartphone or ipad/itouch but may not be good enough for a 50 inch screen playback).

The other advantages of Z68 may be features. You have SSD caching, mSATA ports (Gigabyte). However, if you just buy an SSD, then SSD caching is not an important feature, and then there isn't really a point to mSATA.

Overall, if the price is similar, I'd take the Z68 chipset.

For example Z68 Asus board costs similar to the Sabertooth. If you don't need the 5 year warranty, it's a good option. You may want to post in our Motherboard section for board advice.