• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

keep current..sli 580..revised 590..kepler series?

HornyRhino

HornyRhino

HornyRhino

Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2008
Posts
426
Location
UK
hi

can anyone tell me whether its worth upgrading my O/C Tri-sli gtx 285 setup to recent nvidia cards as in is the price to performance worth it regardless of directx 9/10/11?

i feel that i was tempted by o/c 580's in sli but i dont think that slighly more oomph would warrant me shelling out over £7-800 and i dont like the idea of Tri-sli 580 as the 285 can get toasty ...gamming in crysis is mid 70's tho metro can shift it to 80's unless i alter the fan speed algorithum so the 580 would even more so hotter in the sandwich.....and cost further for 3rd card............. dont know what to do...


now the 590's are russian roulette even tho nvidia say otherwie i would have liked 2 of them but not now...not risking it.

so would anyone advise me? wait for kepler series after christmas or get new revised 590 should it ever surface?

thanks...


HRhino"
 
Your missing out on some DX11 goodnes, in DA2, Metro 2033, BC2, stalker 2 etc.

I suppose if those games don't tickle your fancy then there is not much reason to change just yet, but Battlefield 3 and Deus Ex are just around the corner and you wont have any DX11 candy in your machine.
 
DX11 goodies in DA2?

It looks just as bad without DX11, so theres not really any need for that :D

The only game I play where DX11 is absolutely worth it is Civ V.
 
It's really up to the money you can spend. To be most economic, you could sell all your old cards and get the 480 for around £200 each. It may not be wise to dump cash for 580 for now, because 1.5GB vram is not future-proof (not even Metro2033-proof), and it would become obsolete when nVidia and AMD move to the 28 nm node.
 
Get two gtx 580s 700 pounds ish it will set you back but u wont need to upgrade for a couple of years :) or wait it out without having dx 11 and see what the next series brings! tri sli gtx 285 should still be giving out so serious fps tbh !!
 
trisp said:
Get two gtx 580s 700 pounds ish it will set you back but u wont need to upgrade for a couple of years :)
Click to expand...

A couple of years? No, not even 1 day after the release of 28 nm cards. I used to have 2 x 580 1.5GB SLI (along with 980X@4GHz if you doubt) and I can tell that they cannot decently handle old games like Metro 2033 even at 1920x1200 with max settings.

Proof:

203159j3339icdss7u70le.jpg
 
Last edited:
right well looking around at reviews and what you have all said im a little wiser

ill look into the 6990 (reported noise worrys me)

and 3x Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC 2048MB looks okay pricewise
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-248-AS&tool=3

especially as they have 2gb ram and not the 1/1.5 like nvidias

i havent really used any ati card for ages (the last time i ever had a ati card was way back with 1900xtx) can i ask do all mother-boards accept 2/3 of these in crossfire ? since currently have 3 285's in sli i suppose it must do but thought id ask.

my board (e760 evga 3way classified) only came with 2 and 3 way sli bridges. was wondering does the actual ati cards have bridge boards for linking the cards?

oh yeah and im still puzzled why the pirice gap between nvidia cards and ati? why so expensive compared to Ati's range

thanks again for everyones input
 
Last edited:
trisp said:
tri sli gtx 285 should still be giving out so serious fps tbh !!
Click to expand...

i admit i can play games okay i mean crysis 1 is still okay setting high @1920 althought metro has its moments and i think its the memory thats not helping out...1gb isnt really enough for some game but i do say some as most will go to 2560 res fine.

i bought the cards in late 2008 and to me that seem to be getting long in the tooth i suppose and i havent experienced direct11 yet :D let alone a direct 10 cant really see the difference.

but the shocker for me is Vantage scores i have for my cards beat sli 580's ??:confused: so i think its the memory holding back the 285's hench the upgrade.......but i suppose i could wait longer for new ones but someone on another thread said i could be jan 2012 now:eek:

as stated ill look into the 6950 in trifire as they are cheap and upgrde bios'es unless told differently......so glad the update is every 3years in my case otherwise id be bankrupt with nvidia:p
 
metro is a poorrly optimised piece of ****. dont start shelling out money for it. if every game needed upgrades its a different matter. if u blow money on 580s or a 6990 u will regret it when shiny new kepler arrive. gtx 285 tri sli is an amazing setup and dx11 isnt all that tbh. a lot pof games dot even fully use it. wait for kepler and splurge on the really top end when it arrives
 
xsistor said:
metro is a poorrly optimised piece of ****. dont start shelling out money for it. if every game needed upgrades its a different matter. if u blow money on 580s or a 6990 u will regret it when shiny new kepler arrive. gtx 285 tri sli is an amazing setup and dx11 isnt all that tbh. a lot pof games dot even fully use it. wait for kepler and splurge on the really top end when it arrives
Click to expand...

There were loads of such posts in 2008 regarding Crysis when 8800 Ultra SLI was destroyed. Enthusiasts like the OP would even care about such moans? :D
 
Metro isn't really unoptimised, the main issue lies with three graphics settings, which are:

DX11 Advanced DoF
Tesselation
MSAA

The DoF setting is the worst, probably just something that was tacked on right at the end and completely unoptimised. Also, when you turn it off, the game still uses a much less resource hungry DoF effect, that looks almost as good.

Tesselation isn't so bad (especially on nvidia cards) but will always have a big performance impact one way or another.

MSAA seems to be the full scene type, which always has a big performance impact since it is applying MSAA on the full frame, not just select parts of it. When you consider the huge polygon counts in Metro2033 it's no wonder it makes a big impact.

Turning off those three features are at least just the DoF, makes the game run infinitely better without a massive drop in image quality.
 
xsistor said:
metro is a poorrly optimised piece of ****. dont start shelling out money for it. if every game needed upgrades its a different matter. if u blow money on 580s or a 6990 u will regret it when shiny new kepler arrive. gtx 285 tri sli is an amazing setup and dx11 isnt all that tbh. a lot pof games dot even fully use it. wait for kepler and splurge on the really top end when it arrives
Click to expand...

metro is not poorly optimised at all, it scales well with older hardware, my old 460 ran it great on high settings at 1920, and even very high at 1680, i just had to run it in dx10. Now my 2 6950's can run it every setting maxed includning dof and 4xmsaa perfectly fine.

But older hardware can play it fine so its not poorly optimsed imo. It doesnt even need a quad core cpu.
 
Keep your Tri-GTX285 SLI (unless you decide you can no longer tolerate the noise level or power consumption) and wait for the 28nm HD7000 or GTX 600 series.

IMHO, the current gen high-end card (both Nvidia and AMD) are still a bit on the high power consumption and on the hot side.
 
drifting said:
A couple of years? No, not even 1 day after the release of 28 nm cards. I used to have 2 x 580 1.5GB SLI (along with 980X@4GHz if you doubt) and I can tell that they cannot decently handle old games like Metro 2033 even at 1920x1200 with max settings.

Proof:

203159j3339icdss7u70le.jpg
Click to expand...

You scores are about the same as mine are for one card i would check you have the latest drivers tbh
 
thanks everyone for the input.....very gratefull.

ive decided to keep my current for a while longer and see how it goes at the very least i can start putting money away for when the new series comes out..

suppose its all stemmed from the initial outlay being so high for a newer set of cards that may or may not bey a lot faster than my current setup but becoming obselete at the end of the year with directx 12 hardware which is reported.

thankyou all for putting my mind at ease. :cool:
 
drifting said:
There were loads of such posts in 2008 regarding Crysis when 8800 Ultra SLI was destroyed. Enthusiasts like the OP would even care about such moans? :D
Click to expand...

The difference with Crysis is that:
1)DX10 is resource heavy while DX11 was designed to actually offer better performance
2) Crysis was groundbreaking in terms of graphics back in 2007 (so much so that Crysis 2 is literally a step backwards). Metro 2033 isn't groundbreaking compared to even 4 year old Crysis.
3) Compare Metro 2033 to the real time Samaritan Demo running on GTX 580 tri-SLI. Now if Metro 2033 looked anything like that I'd agree it's worthwhile spending buttloads on cards for it

Throw in a few mods and nothing comes close to Crysis/Crysis Warhead even today. There's a lot the programmers could've done to better optimise the performance on Metro 2033 but these days the build-it-for-consoles mentality means that they lazily put out a ****ty version for PCs that takes 20x the processing the console version does without giving you anywhere near 20x the IQ gain... or even 5-10x the gain.

While having GTX 285 tri-SLI I just think it would be silly to spend on cards now when Kepler is coming in a few months. Because that would mean he'll have to skip kepler and another 1-2 generations before upgrading again.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom