Hi folks, I've just ordered myself 2 MSI GTX 580 Lightnings and I've just had that horrible feeling that I don't have enough power. I have a 2600K at 5.0GHz, 8Gb of 1600MHz RAM, a couple of SSDs and WD Black HDD. My PSU is a Corsair HX1000W. If you guys could let me know it would be much appreciated. Thanks
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2 580s - Can my psu cope???
- Thread starter Rossdh
- Start date
If you are lucky (i.e. the quality of your PSU is above average of HX1000), then it might be fine. But unfortunately for me, and also for 2 other users I've seen on the internet (this and this), the HX1000 failed.
I think the reason is because HX1000 is essentially sticking a pair of 500W PSUs with glue, and it cannot do load balancing between two rails. One of my GTX580 (which was connected to the same rail as my i7 980X @ 4GHz) failed within about 5 days. When I look into the specification of HX1000 carefully (printed on the PSU), I found that the output of 12V1 is 300W while 12V2 is 500W, pretty vague and confusing.
You could also find a review at bit-tech here. Their sample couldn't pass the 1100W wall during their test. Thus it's not true for every sample being able to do 600W from each rail.
Given that the MSI 580 Lightning is well made with top-class components and sophisticated circuits, it should have enough protection from power shortage, and I assume if your HX1000 fails it wouldn't hurt much. If I was you I might just try the HX1000 first, and if it fails I go for something like Corsair AX1200 with a single rail to stay away from trouble.
I think the reason is because HX1000 is essentially sticking a pair of 500W PSUs with glue, and it cannot do load balancing between two rails. One of my GTX580 (which was connected to the same rail as my i7 980X @ 4GHz) failed within about 5 days. When I look into the specification of HX1000 carefully (printed on the PSU), I found that the output of 12V1 is 300W while 12V2 is 500W, pretty vague and confusing.
You could also find a review at bit-tech here. Their sample couldn't pass the 1100W wall during their test. Thus it's not true for every sample being able to do 600W from each rail.
Given that the MSI 580 Lightning is well made with top-class components and sophisticated circuits, it should have enough protection from power shortage, and I assume if your HX1000 fails it wouldn't hurt much. If I was you I might just try the HX1000 first, and if it fails I go for something like Corsair AX1200 with a single rail to stay away from trouble.
Let hope they don't end up looking like this guys MSI motherboard with MSI military class components that went bang
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18283886
So, I just took my motherboard out, and took the MOSFET heatsink off...
ROFL that might be the board I've got :S My hx1000w went bang last month with it actually funny enough! Only just got my replacement coming in the post had to buy a silent pro in the meantime which actually seems more stable with my overclocks......can get to 4.5ghz now if I want to. But yes hx1000 is perfect for upto 3x480 or 3x580 as long as you drop the cpu to about 3.6ghz.
Let hope they don't end up looking like this guys MSI motherboard with MSI military class components that went bang
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18283886
Holy cr@p that's a mess there! But that MSI mobo wasn't designed for LN2 sessions was it? Remember 580 Lightning is born for LN2 sessions, and MSI is putting great effort in graphics cards these years...
Two 580s for 1920x1080 is definitely NOT overkill at all. You'll get unplayable fps in several games like Metro 2033/Shogun 2/The Witcher 2 etc if you only have a single 40nm GPU but don't lower the graphics settings. Even with a pair of 580 3GB here, I still get unplayable lag spikes upon campaign map in Shogun 2 (most probably due to driver issues).
Regarding vram options, I have a thread here for your reference (but the resolution is at 1920x1200).
What would be the resolution? I assume 2x1920x1080 is roughly the same number of pixels as a 2560x1600? I never played multiscreen and I'm not even sure if it's possible to just do something like 2x1080x1920 (2 monitors in vertical direction?)
Let me quote a recent review of 580 3GB vs 1.5GB from hardocp:
Metro 2033 @ 1920x1200 Very High 4X MSAA + Depth of Field
When we lowered the resolution to 1920x1200 something wonderful happened. We were able to play at Very High, with 4X MSAA and we were also able to finally turn on Advanced Depth of Field with it!
The only video card that was playable at these settings was the MSI N580GTX Lightning XE video card. It was the only one that felt smooth enough, with enough performance, to play at 1920x1200 Very High 4X MSAA with Depth of Field. There were some upper 20's framerates toward the end, when we had wide vast outdoor areas. However, a lot of this game is underground, and the experiences were not bad at all. The GeForce GTX 580 was almost playable, but it felt a little too laggy for our likes. The AMD Radeon HD 6970 was most certainly not playable at this setting. The clear winner for the best gameplay experience, is the MSI N580GTX Lightning XE.
In all of our gameplay testing we haven't hit the VRAM wall with the GeForce GTX 580 with 1.5GB of RAM. In Metro 2033 we had the opportunity to show you what this looks like. We found that at 2560x1600 with Very High quality and 4X MSAA enabled and Depth of Field enabled, the VRAM requirements are at least a 2GB video card. This graph above proves that.
If you look at the GeForce GTX 580 line, it has a framerate between 6-9 FPS, varying only by 3 FPS the entire run-through. This is a clear cut VRAM bottleneck imposed by the insufficient 1.5GB of RAM on the video card for these settings. When you look at the performance of the AMD Radeon HD 6970, with 2GB of RAM, the performance is better and there is a wider range of framerate over time. The same goes for the 3GB MSI N580GTX Lightning XE which is faster still, with varying framerate.
Though the performance of the 2GB Radeon HD 6970 and 3GB MSI N580GTX Lightning XE is more than unplayable, this is a performance bottleneck, not a VRAM bottleneck on those two video cards.
We will talk more about this particular graph in the conclusion, as it has given us several points to talk about.
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I'm wondering a similar thing - contemplating going from a 5870 to a 580 using an Antec TruePower New 750W - I think i'll be fine, anyone got any experience with a 580 using a 750W or less?
I am using mine on a 650w Corsair....even a good 600w psu could handle a single 580.
SLI 580 is overkill for 1920x1080, yeah it's great for Metro 2033/Crysis but come on lets be realistic here nearly every game a single 580 handles easily at that res unless you playing every game with 32xCSAA or something.(also if your monitor is 120hz then by all means SLI 580 will be brilliant)
I would get the 3gb model even at that resolution it's always nice having the extra vram available.
Also the psu would cope even with the 5ghz overclock however if you want to not worry at all get a Corsair AX1200 or Antec HCP 1200.
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Power consumption reviews here.
