2x GTX480SC's - What Now?

[Sean53221]

Hi -

I have the AMD 1090T BE CPU (currently at stock but beefier than stock cooler) on an MSI NF980-G65 mobo, 16GB @ 1T 9-9-9-24 (I think). The 2 EVGA 480SC's I've been running since almost the 480's debut have done fine, except now that I finally ponied up for a 120hz LCD (Planar 23" @ 1080p), and the 3d Vision Glasses.

Some games make me happy I spent the money. Others, there's not much depth to them. But all in all I enjoy the effect.

Issue at hand is, 3dVision seems to reduce framerates by 50% (as one might expect).

It seems that the nVidia drivers will lock VSync to a multiple (divisor?) of the 120hz, e.g. 10, 20, 30, 40, 60 (according to eVGA precision's OSD, or FRAPS) if the rig can't sustain the full framerate.

1st question (I did all the reading and searching I could, and I appologize if any of this has been answered before): The framerate displayed - is that "per eye", meaning a FR of 60FPS is actually the full expected 120hz/2=60 frames/second/eye? Or is it an overall 60FPS, meaning 30FPS/eye? I don't see either of the GPU's maxing out, but close at times (~ 80-85%). I skip AA since 1080p crammed onto a 23" doesn't seem to leave jaggies anyways.

2nd Question - mobo in question has (3) x16 slots, options for operation are (a) x16/x16/x0, (b) x16/x8/x8. Currently I have one 480 running @ x16 (all of these are obviously 2.0 speeds), and one 480 @ x8, because the third slot is populated with an x4 ESATA RAID card (allocated x8 lanes, due to option (b) above). Various reviews testing the 480 at x16 vs x8 vs x4 I've read that the performance hit at x8 is ~ 2%. And my experience tends to bear that out. Agreement here?

3rd Question - where to from here - I was thinking sell the 480's and buy a 590, and possibly a second for quad later on (save a slot or two), (very little is available on the matter of scaling on Quad SLI) but the combined scarcity of the 590's and the stories of issues with them (heat, smoke, etc.) make me now shy from this option. Would you guys say going for a third 480 in SLI would give me a good boost in single monitor 3d Vision? (I'd have to find another way to connect those ESATA Port Multiplier cages, as this would take my last slot away from the controller) - and even if I went 590, I would imagine adding a second later on at x8 may well be a bottleneck - so I'm thinking either stick with what I've got and wait for a non-reference 590 or the next generation GPU (skipping the 5xx series), or add another 480.

What do you guys think?

Sean

 

[toyota]

a 590 is really no better than what you have. also any faster gpu setup than what you have would be really held back by your cpu. heck even right now your X6 is not able to fully keep up with 480 sli.

 

[Grooveriding]

Your best bet is wait for new cards at 28nm late this year or buy a third 480 till then. A 590 is a little slower than 570 SLI which is equal to 480 SLI. So a 590 would be a downgrade along with the issues with the 590 and overclocking and burning up.

You could buy two 580s which would net you about 10–15% more performance. At a cost of $1000, but you could buy a third 480 for $200 or so and 480 tri–sli is a good 30–40% faster than 580 SLI.

The only upgrades out there in nvidia land that will net you any real gains would be a third 480, 3 580s or 2 590s.

If money is no concern spend the $1500 for 3 580s. If not buy another 480 for $200.

 

[MentalIlness]

Your running 2 x GTX480's @ 1080P and you believe you need more power ?

 

[3DVagabond]

I'd stick with 480SLI and wait for the next gen, if you can. I'm not sure what the gaming with them in 3D is like? I would assume they can handle 1080-3D OK?

I would stay away from the 590 until someone releases a sturdier design. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing much occurred anytime soon though. Just judging from lack of current availability.

The next gen shouldn't be too far away. 6mos. would be my guess before we might see something. This gen has 40nm maxed out plus a bit, IMO. Both companies, AMD and nVidia, planned on being at 32nm by now. I think this is why we're seeing the dual gpu cards pushed beyond reasonable power levels. With AMD you've got noise. With nVidia you've got components stressed to their max.

 

[3DVagabond]

Your best bet is wait for new cards at 28nm late this year or buy a third 480 till then. A 590 is a little slower than 570 SLI which is equal to 480 SLI. So a 590 would be a downgrade along with the issues with the 590 and overclocking and burning up.

You could buy two 580s which would net you about 10–15% more performance. At a cost of $1000, but you could buy a third 480 for $200 or so and 480 tri–sli is a good 30–40% faster than 580 SLI.

The only upgrades out there in nvidia land that will net you any real gains would be a third 480, 3 580s or 2 590s.

If money is no concern spend the $1500 for 3 580s. If not buy another 480 for $200.

Where are the 480's @ $200.00?

 

[Grooveriding]

Where are the 480's @ $200.00?

Ebay and in buy/sell forums. You can get a new one for $290 here as well http://ncix.com/products/?sku=54105&...ufacture=Zotac

 

[toyota]

he better have a 1200 watt supply for 480 tri sli setup if he plans on overclocking. and really a third 480 is not going to scale for crap at 1920x1080 in most cases with his cpu.

 

[3DVagabond]

Ebay and in buy/sell forums. You can get a new one for $290 here as well http://ncix.com/products/?sku=54105&...ufacture=Zotac

Ah, you mean used. That 480 amp is a real nice card, as 480's go. $100 rebate is a bit excessive, but if you can afford to give Zotac a short term no interest loan it's not a bad deal for the OP.

 

[Arkadrel]

Selling 2x 480 SC cards for 1 x 590 is going down in performance... not a great idea.

Your 480 SC cards are probably around 580 performance levels.... The best you could probably do is add in another 480 SC card.



your problem is this:
AMD 1090T BE CPU (currently at stock) 3.2ghz

Most people seem to be able to do 4.0ghz on them or more.
(haveing constant 800mhz more, which means instead of 3.2ghz -> 4.0ghz might help abit)

try doing: (should help you with FPS)
4GHz (220x18 @1.450v~1.475) or (200x20 = 4ghz)

1. Turn off C n'Q(cool and quiet), and make sure C1E is disabled.
2. Make sure your memory timings, and speed are correct in the bios.
3. Raise the CPU multiplier to 20X
4. Start at 1.4v V-core and see if your stable. If not raise it by .01 at a time till you are stable.

If your lucky, you ll have it stable around 1.4v or 1.41v... YMMV.
Run a hour or two of stability tests with Prime95.

 

[toyota]

overclocking that cpu to 4.0 will add way over 100 watts to the power usage. and even with the Phenom 2 at 4.0, the slowest Sandy Bridge quad will still blow it away pushing that level of graphics.

 

[3DVagabond]

overclocking that cpu to 4.0 will add way over 100 watts to the power usage. and even with the Phenom 2 at 4.0, the slowest Sandy Bridge quad will still blow it away pushing that level of graphics.

I haven't seen a ~4GHz Thuban compared to Sandybridge. Can you point me (link) to the comparison.

Don't take me wrong, I'm not doubting you and asking you to prove it. I know CPU bottlenecks are one of your interests. I'd just like to read the comparison, because I'm interested.

 

[toyota]

I haven't seen a ~4GHz Thuban compared to Sandybridge. Can you point me (link) to the comparison.

Don't take me wrong, I'm not doubting you and asking you to prove it. I know CPU bottlenecks are one of your interests. I'd just like to read the comparison, because I'm interested.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x.html

this is only at 1680x1050 instead of 1920x1080 but its also just a single 6970 instead of 480 sli. the Phenom is not really slow but it certainly would not fully keep up with his current 480 sli setup much less adding another 480 for tri sli at 1920x1080.

 

[Arkadrel]

overclocking that cpu to 4.0 will add way over 100 watts to the power usage. and even with the Phenom 2 at 4.0, the slowest Sandy Bridge quad will still blow it away pushing that level of graphics.

more like ~80watts, depending on how high your volt has to go for stablity (say around 1.475v =~ 80watts more pulled).

The point was just.... its free extra performance, *if* hes being held back by his CPU.


Impressive the 2600k has like 9watts lower idle, and ~50watts lower under full load, than the 1090t.



http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x_9.html#sect0
Craaazy to see the impact, the CPU can have.
He might just want to consider getting a i5 2500 and overclocking it to like 4.5~4.7ghz levels.

 

[toyota]

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image host
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[3DVagabond]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x.html

this is only at 1680x1050 instead of 1920x1080 but its also just a single 6970 instead of 480 sli. the Phenom is not really slow but it certainly would not fully keep up with his current 480 sli setup much less adding another 480 for tri sli at 1920x1080.

Wow! I knew at stock clocks the PhII was a lot slower than the current Intel chips (any of them). I was under the impression though that O/C'ing them helped a lot more than it does.

 

[Arkadrel]

@Toyota

' wow AMDs powerusage explodes with overclocking.

It seems like the best performance/watt comes from the i5 2500k, overclocked to around 4.7ghz.

Those i5 2500k@ 4.7ghz are pretty speedy buggers.



*edit:

Power friendly PC (green pc) has a Intel i5 2500k, and a AMD 6870-6950 in it
Both those are around top performance/watt ladders, and still provide exellent performance.

 

[Sean53221]

Selling 2x 480 SC cards for 1 x 590 is going down in performance... not a great idea.

Your 480 SC cards are probably around 580 performance levels.... The best you could probably do is add in another 480 SC card.



your problem is this:
AMD 1090T BE CPU (currently at stock) 3.2ghz

Most people seem to be able to do 4.0ghz on them or more.
(haveing constant 800mhz more, which means instead of 3.2ghz -> 4.0ghz might help abit)

try doing: (should help you with FPS)
4GHz (220x18 @1.450v~1.475) or (200x20 = 4ghz)

1. Turn off C n'Q(cool and quiet), and make sure C1E is disabled.
2. Make sure your memory timings, and speed are correct in the bios.
3. Raise the CPU multiplier to 20X
4. Start at 1.4v V-core and see if your stable. If not raise it by .01 at a time till you are stable.

If your lucky, you ll have it stable around 1.4v or 1.41v... YMMV.
Run a hour or two of stability tests with Prime95.

Right, the only reason I didn't dip right into overclocking, is when I started to do my research (specific to the Thubans), there seem to be overwhemling reports of MOSFETS smoking/blowing/burning on my particular MSI board. Just look at the first couple of pages on a simple google query of "NF980-G65 MOSFETS":

http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=NF980-g65+mosfet&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

The majority of these involve Thubans, and specifically my model. So you can see my hesitation in overclocking. (Which is not a bit like me, usually the first thing I do is start cranking up multipliers/busses to see what I can get at stock or near-stock volts.)

I haven't looked at CPU utilization, but will tonight, to see what's maxing out first. I get the feeling you may be right on the CPU bottlenecking - some newer games seem to utilize both GPU's harder - nearing 100% - probably because the CPU load is (more?) multithreaded.

I got horribly pissed at Intel for continuing their (usual) musical socket/chipset games with the release of Sandy Bridge. I had a really nice 1366 board, sitting on a nicely overclocked 920, until the power supply went suicidal and decided everything was going down with it. MSI replaced my $300 Big Bang XPower, but of course Intel... yeah, not so much. Last boxed proc I buy unless there is no savings going OEM.

Long story short, sold the Big Bang XPower, triple channel RAM, got pissed off, and fired off an order for an X6 at what I thought was a decent clock rate, along with one of the very few AMD CPU + SLi boards, and here we are.

I admit I may have done myself a disservice going AMD (I have a new top of the line 2011 17" Macbook Pro with the new SNB architecture, and it prompted me to finally part with my Mac Pro!), but as I always do, I bought expensive (1366) betting that surely Intel would keep this around another generation, after all, triple channels, boatloads of PCI-e lanes, and a decent variety of board manufacturers already equipped. (And of course if you're running 1366, you probably don't need the pin count for the integrated GPU -- which STILL falls well below par -- couldn't they have used that die area for something more useful? More cache? But then, I think that on-die GPU was a move to woo OEMs -- one less chip to buy per unit.

 

[Sean53221]

he better have a 1200 watt supply for 480 tri sli setup if he plans on overclocking. and really a third 480 is not going to scale for crap at 1920x1080 in most cases with his cpu.

I'm using a 1kW PSU for the system, and a stand alone 450W 12V-only (5.25" bay) PSU for each card. IF a third card were in order, I'd probably have plenty of headroom on the 1kW unit?

 

[Arkadrel]

Ahh.. yeah if MSI boards have a habbit of frying Mosfets...

Funny the only motherboard I ever had issues with was a MSI one too.... Havnt bought one since.
Asus and ASrock, never had issues with them... I tend to Like Asrock because their cheap(er)

I'm using a 1kW PSU for the system, and a stand alone 450W 12V-only (5.25" bay) PSU for each card. IF a third card were in order, I'd probably have plenty of headroom on the 1kW unit?

The 480 seem to use like ~220watts avg and upto ~335 (Gigabytes 480 OC) at maximum.
(from looking at TPUs site)

If 1 of the 480s has its own PSU to draw from, yeah that 1000watt should be able to handle 2 of them + cpu/mb/ram ect, with decent headroom left.

 

[Sean53221]

I'd stick with 480SLI and wait for the next gen, if you can. I'm not sure what the gaming with them in 3D is like? I would assume they can handle 1080-3D OK?

I would stay away from the 590 until someone releases a sturdier design. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing much occurred anytime soon though. Just judging from lack of current availability.

The next gen shouldn't be too far away. 6mos. would be my guess before we might see something. This gen has 40nm maxed out plus a bit, IMO. Both companies, AMD and nVidia, planned on being at 32nm by now. I think this is why we're seeing the dual gpu cards pushed beyond reasonable power levels. With AMD you've got noise. With nVidia you've got components stressed to their max.

The 3D seems to halve the perceived framerate - from what I've been able to gather by reading, and that seems to line up with what I am experiencing. Prior to going Stereo3d, I was close to or over 100FPS in a number of games, and at least 60fps in most. Scaling to a third card kinda seems unlikely - 2 frames to render (left eye, right eye), using alternate frame rendering still comes up with an even number of frames to render, with an odd # of GPUs to do the work.

That's just the thing - I don't know. It seems like framerates are artificially being capped to some even multiple of 120 (some stick at 30, some at 40, some at 60) - which is why I was asking the question about the FRAPS/Precision Framerate - is that XX / 2 frames per (eye per) second, or XX * 2 (so 60fps showing is 60fps total, or actually just 60FPS per eye, effectively 120FPS?) -- if any of that made any sense.

As for waiting, I'm thinking that's the name of the game. Die shrinks below 45nm don't seem to be going so swell these days, for anyone involved.

 

[Sean53221]

If 1 of the 480s has its own PSU to draw from, yeah that 1000watt should be able to handle 2 of them + cpu/mb/ram ect, with decent headroom left.

Both cards have their own separate supply. No GPU load on main PSU right now.

 

[Sean53221]

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, indeed. I have a black edition proc with unlocked multis, and a board that is probably liable to litter me with MOSFET Package/heatsink shrapnel if I crank on it much above stock. Kinda defeats the whole black edition thing. If the graph you show is accurrate, that would explain components beneath a heatsink labelled "140W CPU READY" exploding at 300W draw?

Pity, too - my last MSI board was excellent. This one, meh. What are my other options in AM3+SLi ? I think Asus makes one, I'm not sure I saw any others.

 

[Sean53221]

Also - if this belongs in Cases & cooling, please nuke or move it. I am going to go out on a limb here and ask you folks that've BTDT about water cooling.

I'm really not looking at it as a primary goal - suck heat out of active, hot, should-have-been-shrunk-n-respun, pieces on the board, but that's just the start. It's a nice side benefit.

I know the basics, loops, pumps, reservoirs, radiators, and the 1,001-piece 150,000RPM dremel tool that look - was that your case front that just hit the ceiling? Don't forget the distilled 'liquid', any colorants, barbs, clamps, and the 19 other misc $0.01 parts I will forget to order. I'll head over to the cooling section for all of that advice.

The question I have for you VC&G folks is, all these cards are two (or possibly THREE) slots high, only to accommodate the hunks of metal with all the surface area.

If I got a FULL waterblock for each of my 2 existing GTX's,would I not rescue and free up the slot normally covered by the often-cartoony plastic cooler cover? Would I then have complete access to the X1, and <gasp> PCI 33mhz slots that every card manufacturer can't contrive of one needing their board's entire I/O expansion, PCI Express, PCI, or just X1, "ehh they will have this thing so full of video cards they won't even know what they are missing.

 

[Petey!]

ya I'd seriously look at OC'ing your main CPU or getting some Sandybridge love.