Best Card for tri SLI?

[x42]

Hey everyone,

I was wondering what would be best Grpahic Card for tri SLI?
Price doesn't really bother me. Just want the best.
My mobo is Asus Rampage II Extreme and CPU is Intel i7-975.

thnx :

 

[jMerliN]

Hey everyone,

I was wondering what would be best Grpahic Card for tri SLI?
Price doesn't really bother me. Just want the best.
My mobo is Asus Rampage II Extreme and CPU is Intel i7-975.

thnx :

5970s. 5870s would be nice too.

But still, you're talking about putting a shitton of heat in your case. If you aren't putting water blocks on those things, I'd be afraid of the temps your cards would see, and as a result the ambient temp in the case would be high enough to limit OC'ing your CPU.

Since you have 3x PCI-E x16s, you could space out 2 5970s with a slot between them for optimal cooling, or 5870s if you wanna save a few $$. I hope you didn't opt to buy a striker just for tri-sli because it has 3 full x16 slots.

Tri-sli generally doesn't do so hot (pardon the pun). The driver support for it sucks in most cases, it scales worse than dual-sli, and it's really not useful unless you're at higher than 2560x1600 resolution (namely 2 or 3 monitors running together..) running max FQ.

 

[Rishwin]

5970s. 5870s would be nice too.

But still, you're talking about putting a shitton of heat in your case. If you aren't putting water blocks on those things, I'd be afraid of the temps your cards would see, and as a result the ambient temp in the case would be high enough to limit OC'ing your CPU.

Since you have 3x PCI-E x16s, you could space out 2 5970s with a slot between them for optimal cooling, or 5870s if you wanna save a few $$. I hope you didn't opt to buy a striker just for tri-sli because it has 3 full x16 slots.

Tri-sli generally doesn't do so hot (pardon the pun). The driver support for it sucks in most cases, it scales worse than dual-sli, and it's really not useful unless you're at higher than 2560x1600 resolution (namely 2 or 3 monitors running together..) running max FQ.

He asked for SLI, not Crossfire, so that knocks out all ATI cards. GTX295 woudl be the best.

 

[jMerliN]

He asked for SLI, not Crossfire, so that knocks out all ATI cards. GTX295 woudl be the best.

Modern boards run both SLI and CFX. 295s are rebranded dual core last-gen GPUs and they're overpriced at that. I wouldn't honestly recommend them to anyone.

5xxx series ATI cards for the time being are trashing the GPU scene with DX11 and triple-monitor (Eyefinity) support which is what this rig should probably be built for.

 

[NoPeace]

None, it's just a waist of money and power. A single 5970 is more then fast enough for everything. Even the massive 30" screens or a couple of them.

When you get over 2 GPUs then the performance will start to suffer. Sure it's faster but a 5% gain isn't worth the extra $500 and strain on your computer. Remember, more you add the more power it needs. This will put added stress on your capacitors on your motherboard and in your CPU. This will cause them to eventually explode and you will be required to replace them.

So if your goal is to push your system to the limit and you don't care if it dies then go for it. If you want it to be of use then think again.

NoPeace - out

 

[Liselotte]

Modern boards run both SLI and CFX. 295s are rebranded dual core last-gen GPUs and they're overpriced at that. I wouldn't honestly recommend them to anyone.

5xxx series ATI cards for the time being are trashing the GPU scene with DX11 and triple-monitor (Eyefinity) support which is what this rig should probably be built for.

SLI = Nvidia cards. Crossfire = ATI cards.

 

[Rishwin]

SLI = Nvidia cards. Crossfire = ATI cards.

I think he is aware of that... ?

 

[jMerliN]

None, it's just a waist of money and power. A single 5970 is more then fast enough for everything. Even the massive 30" screens or a couple of them.

When you get over 2 GPUs then the performance will start to suffer. Sure it's faster but a 5% gain isn't worth the extra $500 and strain on your computer. Remember, more you add the more power it needs. This will put added stress on your capacitors on your motherboard and in your CPU. This will cause them to eventually explode and you will be required to replace them.

So if your goal is to push your system to the limit and you don't care if it dies then go for it. If you want it to be of use then think again.

NoPeace - out

You should check the benches of dual 5870s, if you really honestly are stupid enough to think you only get a 5% gain, you don't know much at all about hardware.

Also, the cards don't get their power from the PCI slot, they get it from dedicated lines straight from your PSU. Your motherboard takes no extra stress, as the communication between the boards is heavily augmented by the bridge. Further, your CPU has nothing to do with any of this.

And a 5970 would be more accurately called a 5870x2, I wouldn't put two of them together in CFX for the same reason I wouldn't put 2 295s together or any other card which is dual already.

 

[Rishwin]

You should check the benches of dual 5870s, if you really honestly are stupid enough to think you only get a 5% gain, you don't know much at all about hardware.

Also, the cards don't get their power from the PCI slot, they get it from dedicated lines straight from your PSU. Your motherboard takes no extra stress, as the communication between the boards is heavily augmented by the bridge. Further, your CPU has nothing to do with any of this.

And a 5970 would be more accurately called a 5870x2, I wouldn't put two of them together in CFX for the same reason I wouldn't put 2 295s together or any other card which is dual already.

1. Absolutely nobody knows more than NoPeace about hardware.
2. PCI-e 2.0 slots DO power devices through them.
3. He was not being literal about 5% gain. He means that a single 5970 is already enough to run anything at max, you will only actually gain an extra 5% if you add a second one. Apart from that 5% FPS gain, nothing else will change.
4. Of course adding another GFX card will put extra strain on your system. The motherboard now has to stream data through a second PCI-e port, doesn't it? And any data which is streaming has to go through the CPU which also puts strain on that.

 

[jMerliN]

1. Absolutely nobody knows more than NoPeace about hardware.
2. PCI-e 2.0 slots DO power devices through them.
3. He was not being literal about 5% gain. He means that a single 5970 is already enough to run anything at max, you will only actually gain an extra 5% if you add a second one. Apart from that 5% FPS gain, nothing else will change.
4. Of course adding another GFX card will put extra strain on your system. The motherboard now has to stream data through a second PCI-e port, doesn't it? And any data which is streaming has to go through the CPU which also puts strain on that.

1. I highly doubt that.

2. Sure, they have power, but it's not enough for the cards. Older cards could pull near the max a PCI-E could provide (at 16x), and once they reached that, they had to move to pulling extra straight from the PSU. This is why the statement that it will overload your capacitors is stupid. They're rated for the maximum that's going to go through them without voltmodding etc, and cards which need more power get it from an external source.

3.

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5% is far from accurate. The gain is rarely that low, and when it is it's from extenuating circumstances or from either low resolution or FQ settings. Some games won't run a dual-dual-gpu solution (had this issue with dual 295s and dual 4870x2's as well), some games won't scale properly, and some games you're maxing even on 47xx cards so of course any upgrade beyond that is pointless. But for most of the high end games, the gain is significant even with the drivers being quite immature.

4. It doesn't stream data to the both cards. The two cards communicate through the bridge, the second card is only used as offloaded processing power (which is why its memory isn't considered). By splitting up the work, anything which is GPU bound in terms of processing will be sped up. Also, any data going to the GPU doesn't necessarily have to go through the CPU. In most cases, it's moved there straight from memory.

 

[Rishwin]

1. I highly doubt that.

2. Sure, they have power, but it's not enough for the cards. Older cards could pull near the max a PCI-E could provide (at 16x), and once they reached that, they had to move to pulling extra straight from the PSU. This is why the statement that it will overload your capacitors is stupid. They're rated for the maximum that's going to go through them without voltmodding etc, and cards which need more power get it from an external source.

3.

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5% is far from accurate. The gain is rarely that low, and when it is it's from extenuating circumstances or from either low resolution or FQ settings. Some games won't run a dual-dual-gpu solution (had this issue with dual 295s and dual 4870x2's as well), some games won't scale properly, and some games you're maxing even on 47xx cards so of course any upgrade beyond that is pointless. But for most of the high end games, the gain is significant even with the drivers being quite immature.

4. It doesn't stream data to the both cards. The two cards communicate through the bridge, the second card is only used as offloaded processing power (which is why its memory isn't considered). By splitting up the work, anything which is GPU bound in terms of processing will be sped up. Also, any data going to the GPU doesn't necessarily have to go through the CPU. In most cases, it's moved there straight from memory.

OK, i've read and re-read all of that, and your entire post is basically saying... "Contrary to my previous argument, you guys actually are correct, but let me point out some technical flaws in your statements which aren't actually relevant to this discussion.". What NoPeace said was spot-on, you are just exaggerating his statements so they seem stupid.

Secondly, I have been on this forum for a bit over 5 years and been active in hardware for a good majority of that. I can without batting an eyelid say that NoPeace knows more about PC's than anyone else here. I build PC's, i'm a techie, hell i'm even a network admin, but even i don't have any where near as much knowledge as he does.

Also have you actually seen that link you posted? for many games there is actually a drop in performance with 2 GPU's, while any gains are minimal at best. DEFINITELY not enough to justify the cost of a second GPU.

We get it, you deal wth PC's on a daily basis and i'm sure you know alot about the inner-workings of hardware. However exaggerating peoples statements (i'm saying this twice because it is not the first time you've done it) just so you can give some long-winded argument against something they never said in the first place... is just idiotic. I stand by what i said back when i was a mod here - you DO know your stuff. However, you can get VERY cocky, and when you do, you go way off topic and make yourself look clueless and naive. I can point this out because i can shamelessly say that i have done exactly the same thing. Which is why i said in the PC thread in the lounge, you need to learn how to turn off.

At the end of the day - Chris said that Running 2x high-end GPU's will a) give you MINIMAL performance gain IF ANY, b) put extra strain on your other components, and c) reduce the overall lifetime of your components.

Now if you, as an IT professional, can honestly tell me that those points are incorrect, then i think you REALLY need to to a catch-up course or something, because you are losing touch.

 

[jMerliN]

OK, i've read and re-read all of that, and your entire post is basically saying... "Contrary to my previous argument, you guys actually are correct, but let me point out some technical flaws in your statements which aren't actually relevant to this discussion.". What NoPeace said was spot-on, you are just exaggerating his statements so they seem stupid.

That's not true at all. Precisely what he said is incorrect.

Secondly, I have been on this forum for a bit over 5 years and been active in hardware for a good majority of that. I can without batting an eyelid say that NoPeace knows more about PC's than anyone else here. I build PC's, i'm a techie, hell i'm even a network admin, but even i don't have any where near as much knowledge as he does.

I can tell you he doesn't.

Also have you actually seen that link you posted? for many games there is actually a drop in performance with 2 GPU's, while any gains are minimal at best. DEFINITELY not enough to justify the cost of a second GPU.

"For many games". Let's look at the stats:

BattleForge: 70.6% increase
COD 4: 1.97% increase
Call of Juarez 2: 87.4% increase
Company of Heroes: 45.3% increase
Crysis: fail @ max reso, next highest: 8.99% increase
Dawn of War 2: 42.03% increase
ETQW: 42.74% increase
Far Cry: 64.26% increase
Far Cry 2: fail @ max reso, next highest: 29.35% increase
FEAR: 85.45% increase
HAWX: 88.98% increase
Prey: 26.29% increase
Quake 4: 5.68% increase
Riddick - DA: 68.36% increase
STALKER: 10.64% increase
STALKER - CS: fail @ max reso, next highest: 6.27% increase
TF2: .13% increase
UT3: 33.81% increase
WoC: 57.89% increase
3dMark03: 76.55% increase
3dMark05: 12.79% increase
3dMark06: 13.58% increase

That makes an increase in ALL scenarios. That makes 3 games which can't support dual 5970 at max reso, out of 22. We had more of this happening when the 295 came out and people ran dual 295s in SLI. Further, we have only 5 games out of 22 where the increase was under 10%. And finally, the average increase in performance was 39.96%.

Several of these games show to take poor or no advantage of multi-GPU solutions. Despite of this, we have a metric which is roughly 40%, which is some 8 times what mr chris here estimated. And this is on brand new hardware on brand new drivers. That's astonishingly good increase in performance ON average. Tri SLI gains are smaller, yes, due to the same problems and emphasis on drivers. The way they designed SLI/CFX doesn't scale well intrinsically, but it still does a lot better than 5%.

We get it, you deal wth PC's on a daily basis and i'm sure you know alot about the inner-workings of hardware. However exaggerating peoples statements (i'm saying this twice because it is not the first time you've done it) just so you can give some long-winded argument against something they never said in the first place... is just idiotic.

If by exaggerating you mean pointing out their inadequacies? I don't exaggerate what people say, I just point out how it's not correct. Analyzing something doesn't mean you're exaggerating it.

I stand by what i said back when i was a mod here - you DO know your stuff. However, you can get VERY cocky, and when you do, you go way off topic and make yourself look clueless and naive. I can point this out because i can shamelessly say that i have done exactly the same thing. Which is why i said in the PC thread in the lounge, you need to learn how to turn off.

I don't like ignorance.

At the end of the day - Chris said that Running 2x high-end GPU's will a) give you MINIMAL performance gain IF ANY, b) put extra strain on your other components, and c) reduce the overall lifetime of your components.

a) Incorrect.
b) Incorrect.
c) Incorrect.

The components are not being overly stressed beyond their spec, therefore their lifetime will not be diminished. If you only run an eighth of a PSI of water through a pipe rated for 10 PSI, then quadruple that to half of a PSI, you're still not reducing its lifetime. Sorry.

Now if you, as an IT professional, can honestly tell me that those points are incorrect, then i think you REALLY need to to a catch-up course or something, because you are losing touch.

I don't think so.

 

[Rishwin]

There you go YET AGAIN!

He said added stress on the capacitors, your response was "overload capacitors".

I said extra strain on the components, you respond with "not being stressed beyond their spec".

He mentioned NOTHING about overloading them, and i mentioned NOTHING about them being stressed beyond what they are meant for.

Do you not realize that you ARE exaggerating things we are saying. You are making huge arguments and long posts in response to things WE NEVER SAID.

Do i agree with what you are saying? Yes, absolutely, 100%. HOWEVER, what you are saying is NOT in response to our statements, you have just gone off-topic.

 

[jMerliN]

There you go YET AGAIN!

He said added stress on the capacitors, your response was "overload capacitors".

I said extra strain on the components, you respond with "not being stressed beyond their spec".

He mentioned NOTHING about overloading them, and i mentioned NOTHING about them being stressed beyond what they are meant for.

Do you not realize that you ARE exaggerating things we are saying. You are making huge arguments and long posts in response to things WE NEVER SAID.

Do i agree with what you are saying? Yes, absolutely, 100%. HOWEVER, what you are saying is NOT in response to our statements, you have just gone off-topic.

How else do you diminish the lifetime of a capacitor but overloading it or overloading your PSU so that you get ripples and power fluctuations which kill electronics and the like?
:huh:

 

[yjlasher22]

Alright, as a noob (O_O) bystander here, I'll give some comments. Don't turn this into a flame war. It's a help section.

jMerlin, I know you know a lot, but you are misinterpreting what other people like NoPeace and Rishwin has stated. Plus, you are giving a really cocky tone here.(Rishwin did that quite a while ago, no one like that, though his tone was more aggressive) No one likes that kind of tone.

The impression on NoPeace is he is experienced, and you, quite a new person here. You don't have enough reputation to just say that he is not any good at these stuff. Like if a 5-year-old kid said you were an IT noob compared to a well renowned IT guru.

The point that NoPeace put across is that no human would notice a difference of a 5970 compared to two 5970. Saying a 100% improvement of framerates when the fps is already ~60 per second is not justifiable as the user would not notice it. Yes, there are improvements, but it is not enough to justify buying one more to cfx with.

Rishwin, I hope you see the cockiness and the tone. I really hope you are annoyed and realise that you had that tone, albeit 10x more aggressive and vulgar, showing not an ounce of respect to the others. I hope this is a good chance to see how it pisses others and hope you don't commit that mistake again.

There, my humble two cents worth. Keep a calm and nice tone guys, its a discussion, not a war.

 

[Rishwin]

Adding a second GPU will add extra stress on your components. It will NOT put any strain on them that they can not handle, or that they are not "expected" to handle, yet compared to a single GPU setup, it will still put extra strain on them. Even if it's not overloading them, having extra strain than it is normally used to will still effect its lifetime in some way, shape, or form.

We are not comparing it to its max capabilities, we are simply comparing it to the single GPU setup.

Just like your CPU. You can very easily overclock your CPU by an extra 20% and it will STILL be safely within its default manufacturers operational standards. It is not producing excessive heat, nor is it operating at speeds exceeding what it is expected to run at, yet its lifetime has still been affected. Only very slightly, but it has still been affected.

It is general knowledge which can be applied to countless other things outside of IT as well. Even if something is capable of handing more than you are giving it, as long as it is higher than what it is used to running it, it will be put under increased stress.

Another example which is not EXACTLY what we are talking about, but it is still relevant and because it has numbers i can use, i think it will be easier to explain : My car. The RPM limiter is at 8000 RPM. I generally drive no higher than 3500RPM. However if sometimes i accelerate up to 5000RPM, my engine is put under more strain. It is designed to go way above the 8000 mark, however because 5000 is higher than what i normally run it at, it is put under a little bit more strain.

Like i have said countless times, i DO agree with what you are saying. However, the flaws that you are picking at NoPeace for is simply because he is comparing his statement to something different than you are, which is why you find it to be "wrong".

//Edit: @ yjlasher22 : Haha yea like i said, i know that i myself have been cocky to that extent before also (and i was worse/more aggressive, but that was due to other factors), that's why i'm pointing it out

 

[jMerliN]

Alright, as a noob (O_O) bystander here, I'll give some comments. Don't turn this into a flame war. It's a help section.

jMerlin, I know you know a lot, but you are misinterpreting what other people like NoPeace and Rishwin has stated. Plus, you are giving a really cocky tone here.(Rishwin did that quite a while ago, no one like that, though his tone was more aggressive) No one likes that kind of tone.

The impression on NoPeace is he is experienced, and you, quite a new person here. You don't have enough reputation to just say that he is not any good at these stuff. Like if a 5-year-old kid said you were an IT noob compared to a well renowned IT guru.

The point that NoPeace put across is that no human would notice a difference of a 5970 compared to two 5970. Saying a 100% improvement of framerates when the fps is already ~60 per second is not justifiable as the user would not notice it. Yes, there are improvements, but it is not enough to justify buying one more to cfx with.

Rishwin, I hope you see the cockiness and the tone. I really hope you are annoyed and realise that you had that tone, albeit 10x more aggressive and vulgar, showing not an ounce of respect to the others. I hope this is a good chance to see how it pisses others and hope you don't commit that mistake again.

There, my humble two cents worth. Keep a calm and nice tone guys, its a discussion, not a war.

Understandable but my argument is that it makes a significant difference. If it raises max framerate from 60 to **** that's a huge difference. Your eyes won't see a difference because your monitor is likely limited to 60hz, but most games still inline their input code with rendering code (why? i don't know). Most gamers feel a hefty lag when running at 60 fps vs 100 fps or higher. You expect that your cursor or FOV is moving absolutely in-sync with your mouse with less than 10ms-15ms of lag. If it's more, you notice it, and it's distracting, and twitch gamers can't stand it (competitive players etc). This is why I game without vsync on because it forces input routines to run once every 16ms which is enough to tick me off because it's too slow.

Further, it lets you make games shiny and pretty and still playable at max resolutions. Games are more fun when they're beautiful ^.^

Adding a second GPU will add extra stress on your components. It will NOT put any strain on them that they can not handle, or that they are not "expected" to handle, yet compared to a single GPU setup, it will still put extra strain on them. Even if it's not overloading them, having extra strain than it is normally used to will still effect its lifetime in some way, shape, or form.

Comparing an internal combustion engine to solid state transistors is definitely apples vs oranges . I think my pipe example is more fitting, personally.

 

[Rishwin]

Comparing an internal combustion engine to solid state transistors is definitely apples vs oranges . I think my pipe example is more fitting, personally.

They both have internal parts which can be effected by stress. That was the connection i was making.

A pipe is a pipe. Unless it is loaded with massive PSI of water and bursting at the seems, it doesn't care if there's a steady stream or a single drop.

 

[jMerliN]

They both have internal parts which can be effected by stress. That was the connection i was making.

A pipe is a pipe. Unless it is loaded with massive PSI of water and bursting at the seems, it doesn't care if there's a steady stream or a single drop.

Exactly!

 

[yjlasher22]

a capacitator ages faster with more power while a pipe's wear makes little difference if there's a stream or drops. i think