3 x 480 GTX vs 3 x 580 GTX vs 2 x 590 GTX vs 6 series

[Hyperlite]

Ok, ive been browsing the forums and looking for benchmark comparisons between these set ups and most of what i have found was written on old driver sets where the 590's didnt scale well. Here is my current system:

CPU: i7 960 (stock at 3.2 right now, but pushed it to 4.1 on air before it became unstable)
RAM: 12GB of Corsair Domintaor (3 slots filled)
MOBO: Asus Rampage Extreme III
GPU: 2 x EVGA 480 GTX Superclocked
PSU: Corsair 1200
SSD: 3 x Vertex 2 in RAID 0 (for OS and programs)
HDD: 2 x Sata 3 Seagate 7200 in RAID 0 (for frapsing)
Monitors: 3 x 27" 1ms refresh Samsungs
Cooling: my case is a wind tunnel

I have been playing BF3 in surround vision and the FPS is hanging at the 30 mark in 5760 x 1080 all on high settings. Not sure if its a video card bottle neck or a CPU bottle neck, as i just got surround vision working last night (which btw there needs to be a driver update or game update as surround vision forces the player names onto the side screens and not over enemies or friendlies heads, quite annoying). on a single montior SLI enabled i pull up in the 80s to 90s.

my question is, which is the better solution and are there any current driver benchmarks for the following setups?

3 x 480 GTX Superclocked (i would have to find an additional 480 gtx sc from evga, which even used ones are in the $300 range, and im not wild about used GPU's from ebay)
3 x 580 GTX (i would sell my 2 480's on ebay for hopefully 250ish, so would only be paying a grand or so)
2 x 590 GTX (to my knowledge you can only put 2 of these together? also, i wasnt sure if this is overkill. sellign the 480's would also happen here)
wait for 600 series which i heard was coming out in a few months, but i know little to nothing about what is expected from the 600 series.

the main prupose for the upgrade is to allow surround vision to work better, and push everything to ultra (not jsut on bf3, but other games as well). i am also tossing around the idea of getting 3 3d enabled monitors but still see 3d gaming as somewhat of a gimick, much like the movies. the main goal is to maximize the 5760 x 1080 resolution for non 3d, next gen games.

anyone have some input or links to benchmarks?

 

[dearbeloved]

im running 30+ fps with a single evga 470 on ultra so if you even get a single 580 it would definitely do it justice. if you get a 3x 580s youre most unfortunately going to need to upgrade your psu because the 580s need 600 watts per card. i got the phone with nvidia (Talking to a guy named gus at their office) and discussing a potential upgrade to 2x 580s and hes telling me ill need at least 1200-1500w psu just for the two cards so if youre up for paying extra on your power bill and another 300-500 on a new psu id just get the 2x 580s and even that would be a killer rig.

bf3 is still new so their working out the kinks on getting everything to play smoothly. ive been noticing it progressing in the little time its been when i started playing it (midnight release).

hope this link can give you a little further insight.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/188

 

[dejo]

you can check hwbot.org and input whatever number of video cards and make of video cards for several benches.
I can tell you that in synthetic benches that 2 cards for nvidia scale well in some and not so well in some, but 3 cards generally wont scale very well. I had 2 480's and tried a third and wasnt impressed at all (also killed a 1000watt bfg power supply in the process).
You will see a decent increase from a pair of gtx580's as they do generally spank the 480's

 

[PanteraGSTK]

im running 30+ fps with a single evga 470 on ultra so if you even get a single 580 it would definitely do it justice. if you get a 3x 580s youre most unfortunately going to need to upgrade your psu because the 580s need 600 watts per card. i got the phone with nvidia (Talking to a guy named gus at their office) and discussing a potential upgrade to 2x 580s and hes telling me ill need at least 1200-1500w psu just for the two cards so if youre up for paying extra on your power bill and another 300-500 on a new psu id just get the 2x 580s and even that would be a killer rig.

bf3 is still new so their working out the kinks on getting everything to play smoothly. ive been noticing it progressing in the little time its been when i started playing it (midnight release).

hope this link can give you a little further insight.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/188

Your power numbers are way off. Dual 580's in the link you provided only consume 850w at full load with furmark (which will load a system more than any game).

The 1200w psu (as long as it is a good one) will work just fine for tri-sli. 600 series will be better, but we won't know until they come out.

 

[Yojo]

im running 30+ fps with a single evga 470 on ultra so if you even get a single 580 it would definitely do it justice.

One minor note - he won't be able run all 3 monitors on a single 580; he'll have to at least go SLI with the 580s to support all 3 monitors...

 

[Hyperlite]

the main purpose of the upgrade is to support 5760 x 1080, as i can play in regular 1920 x 1080 now in SLI with 90-100 fps on ultra and no problems.

i wasnt sure how 2 cards vs 3 cards scaled when surround vision is enabled. i thought about selling these and going with 2 580's, but if 2 580's in surround on 5760 x 1080 only gives 5-10 more fps than the 2 480's, then its a waste of money for the upgrade.

also, i thought the 1200 watt corsair would be enough to run tri sli if needed, especially on 580's but maybe i am wrong. corsair is in my opinion one of the top end psu makers, so pulling the full 1200 watts clean shouldnt be an issue.



edit: going the route of 580's vs 590's, would 3 580's perform better or worse than 2 590's in 5760 x 1080? price wise theyre about the same, and im guessing the power requirements on 2 590's is less than 3 580's.

edit 2: anyone have any info on the 600 series that will be coming out?

 

[dejo]

the 1200 watt corsair would be enough for powering 3 480's or 580's, but 1000watts wasnt enough for me. Sadly, I have no input on those huge resolutions as I never attempted to run more than 1080p. I would take a guess and say that the amount of ram would come into play at resolutions as that though.

 

[Hyperlite]

the 1200 watt corsair would be enough for powering 3 480's or 580's, but 1000watts wasnt enough for me. Sadly, I have no input on those huge resolutions as I never attempted to run more than 1080p. I would take a guess and say that the amount of ram would come into play at resolutions as that though.

good call, the ram matters for higher than 1080p resolutions so it should be the same for 5760 x 1080. maybe the dual 590's would outperform the 3 580's in my situation then, just due to having 1.5 GB more of ram.

this is based off nothing more than my own intuition and assumptions, and ive never delt with a dual GPU card before.

 

[Hyperlite]

i did find a little info on the 600 series from nvidia that hasnt come out yet. I read it was pushed back to Q1/Q2 of 2012 and that the new Kepler would only provide roughly a 10-20% increase over high end 500 series cards (kind of like 400 series vs 500 series now). just figured i would post this incase someone was looking for that.

my sources were multiple other forums via toms hardware and other sources with post dates ranging from september to october 2011.

 

[MattNo5ss]

The GTX590 states 3GB vRAM because it's 1.5GB per GPU. So, it's like SLI GTX580, each GPU has access to 1.5GB of vRAM. You would have to go with 3GB GTX580s, 2.5GB GTX570s, or 2GB HD6xxx series cards for more vRAM.

 

[PanteraGSTK]

These should do a good job of answering your questions.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu-performance-benchmark-test/1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/triple-monitor-gaming-on-geforce-gtx-590-and-radeon-6990/1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-590-sli-review/1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-580-3-way-sli-review/1

 

[Hyperlite]

The GTX590 states 3GB vRAM because it's 1.5GB per GPU. So, it's like SLI GTX580, each GPU has access to 1.5GB of vRAM. You would have to go with 3GB GTX580s, 2.5GB GTX570s, or 2GB HD6xxx series cards for more vRAM.

i spoke with evga tech support over my lunch and they said you have to look at the vRAM as well as the memory bandwith when looking at super large resolutions.

the 590 GTX's Classified have a Memory Bandwith of 331.7 GB/s
the 580 GTX's SC have a Memory Bandwith of 202.1 GB/s

throwing another wrench into the mix, there is the 580 GTX Classified which comes in a 3gig single GPU platform and can also be tri SLI'd. Each card required 2 x 8 pin power connectors and a single 6 pin connector. these have a memory bandwith of 202.1 GB/s as well.

im not sure if my Single PSU could handle 3 of the 3 gig 580 GTX classified cards or not.


when looking at Memory Bandwith, the dual 590's have around 664 GB/s of combined bandwith through 2 connection ports, the 580's have 606 GB/s through 3 connection ports. im not really sure how to try and understand the memory bandwith comparison since its not really apples to apples.




edit: the power consumption for 3 x 1.5 gig 580's in sli is right under 800 watts on full load, so my corsair 1200 is fine there.



edit 2: talked with corsair about how to get around the 6 PCIe connectors for the 1200ax, and the tech brought up a good point about the limitations on the actual PCIe ports the motherboard has. the number of slots being taken up really doesnt affect the over performance due to all PCIe slots using the same bus which has a total limitation. So in reality, looking at total additive bandwith ratings should be sufficient and taking into account the number of slots being used isnt super important. the total bandwith will be limited by what the PCIe bus on the mobo can handle as a whole, but finding out what that is on the asus isnt really easy.

the asus rampage extreme iii has x16, x16/x16, x16/x8/x8, and x8/x8/x8/x8.




edit 3: talked with nvidia tech support and according to them, the number of cores is really what helps define how well surround vision works with a resolution like 5760 x 1080. the 590's have 512 x 2 (1024) cores per card. the 580's have 512 per card, even when compared to the 3 gig classified 580. so ive basically been told numerous different things from different reputable sources and am somewhat back to square one as to wtf to buy.

nVidia basically said dual 590's is always better than tri-sli 580's regardless of vRAM rating and clock speeds just based on core count.




im going to try and look at some more benchmarks to see actual performance numbers. however for some reason, when guru3d looked at the 580 classified it seems like the looked at the 1.5 gig card version rather than the 3 gig version which is a waste imo. they also dont provide any numbers of them sli'd and in surround vision resolutions.

if only there was a benchmark of 3 regular 580's, 3 classified 3 gig 580's, and 2 590's in sli and in surround vision at 5760 x 1080 or 1200. i mean honestly, who runs 3 videocards to put them all towards 1 monitor? the surround vision benchmark that PanteraGSTK posted is of 1 590 by itself (i think, still reading through the review)(nevermind they do sli 590's and single 590)

 

[Hyperlite]

These should do a good job of answering your questions.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu-performance-benchmark-test/1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/triple-monitor-gaming-on-geforce-gtx-590-and-radeon-6990/1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-590-sli-review/1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-580-3-way-sli-review/1

thank you for the links. the review on surround vision with SLI'd 590's was quite helpful as they did tests in 5760 x 1200.

however, im still curious about surround vision benchmarks on tri-sli 580's which the tri sli 580 review didnt touch on resolutions that big.

 

[zitnik]

Ok, ive been browsing the forums and looking for benchmark comparisons between these set ups and most of what i have found was written on old driver sets where the 590's didnt scale well. Here is my current system:

CPU: i7 960 (stock at 3.2 right now, but pushed it to 4.1 on air before it became unstable)
RAM: 12GB of Corsair Domintaor (3 slots filled)
MOBO: Asus Rampage Extreme III
GPU: 2 x EVGA 480 GTX Superclocked
PSU: Corsair 1200
SSD: 3 x Vertex 2 in RAID 0 (for OS and programs)
HDD: 2 x Sata 3 Seagate 7200 in RAID 0 (for frapsing)
Monitors: 3 x 27" 1ms refresh Samsungs
Cooling: my case is a wind tunnel

I have been playing BF3 in surround vision and the FPS is hanging at the 30 mark in 5760 x 1080 all on high settings. Not sure if its a video card bottle neck or a CPU bottle neck, as i just got surround vision working last night (which btw there needs to be a driver update or game update as surround vision forces the player names onto the side screens and not over enemies or friendlies heads, quite annoying). on a single montior SLI enabled i pull up in the 80s to 90s.

my question is, which is the better solution and are there any current driver benchmarks for the following setups?

3 x 480 GTX Superclocked (i would have to find an additional 480 gtx sc from evga, which even used ones are in the $300 range, and im not wild about used GPU's from ebay)
3 x 580 GTX (i would sell my 2 480's on ebay for hopefully 250ish, so would only be paying a grand or so)
2 x 590 GTX (to my knowledge you can only put 2 of these together? also, i wasnt sure if this is overkill. sellign the 480's would also happen here)
wait for 600 series which i heard was coming out in a few months, but i know little to nothing about what is expected from the 600 series.

the main prupose for the upgrade is to allow surround vision to work better, and push everything to ultra (not jsut on bf3, but other games as well). i am also tossing around the idea of getting 3 3d enabled monitors but still see 3d gaming as somewhat of a gimick, much like the movies. the main goal is to maximize the 5760 x 1080 resolution for non 3d, next gen games.

anyone have some input or links to benchmarks?

Are you trying to run a power plant with that system?

 

[Hyperlite]

Are you trying to run a power plant with that system?

well the raid 0 ssd setup was just to see what kind of benchmarks they would get (650 MB/s read on clean install of OS right after reformat).

other than that its main purpose is a gaming rig. i just also like to play around with OC'ing stuff too.

 

[Mr. Smiley]

About the EVGA Classiafied's they do have 2 8pin, and a 6pin connectors, but you dont need all of them to run the card, they are just there for when you are heavily overclocking, so you should be fine on your power supply issue

 

[MasterNater]

About the EVGA Classiafied's they do have 2 8pin, and a 6pin connectors, but you dont need all of them to run the card, they are just there for when you are heavily overclocking, so you should be fine on your power supply issue

Actually, all three power connectors DO need to be connected for the card to work.