Most poweful graphics..

[Darr2cool78]

Got a bit of spare cash so going to make me a nice gaming rig as the 360 is getting outdated visually (IMO). Been researching over the past few weeks about various GFX cards and a few contenders are..

GTX 580, HD 6990, GTX 590

Been seeing different things about these cards like the 590 is crap compared to its 580 predecessor and the 6990 doesn't live up to the hype. Which means that the obvious choice should be the 580 (value wise) but its been out so long now I am reluctant to get it.

My goal for Z system is to take a game with the graphical demand of BF3 have every setting maxed and stay well above an average of 60FPS. Setup would be single monitor 1920 X 1080p.

So my question is if I have enough cash to get a really good graphics card setup (within reason) should it be:

• 580GTX MSI 3GB LIGHTNING EDITION
• 590GTX (standard model)
• HD6990 (4GB edition)

or SLI

• 2x SLI 580GTX (standard 1.5gb editions, factory clock)

or...

is it REALLY worth to wait for next generation cards at this stage (600gtx HD7XXX) because I could be persuaded to do this.

thanks for any feedback

 

[Krony]

Sli 3Gb 580's are the best option or wait till next year.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Hi there,

I probably should highlight that the GTX 580 and HD 6970 are the two fastest single GPU cards offered by Nvidia and AMD.

In contrast the GTX 590 and HD 6990 use two GPUs on one card and link them together in an internal SLI/CF. Each of these GPUs is a lower speed version of the GTX 580 or HD 6970 - so the card can be sufficiently cooled and powered.

I personally would not suggest going for the GTX 590 or HD 6990 since they are both VERY expensive, plus the GTX 590 has temperature issues and the HD 6990 is REALLY loud under load. You are much better off going for a single GPU card and add a second in SLI/CF if you need the extra performance.

If you don't have a gaming PC right now then I would not wait it out for the next generation of GPUs. These new 28nm cards will be nice, but not worth waiting months for - time you could be be playing PC games. Instead I would suggest getting a nice (but not wallet busting) HD 6950 2GB like this which will play all modern games very nicely at 1080p, then sell it on and upgrade when the 28nm cards come out in early of 2012.

Do you have a spec in mind for the rest of the system and an approximate budget?

 

[Darr2cool78]

Thanks both for your replies

In contrast the GTX 590 and HD 6990 use two GPUs on one card and link them together in an internal SLI/CF. Each of these GPUs is a lower speed version of the GTX 580 or HD 6970 - so the card can be sufficiently cooled and powered.

now the strange feedback on these cards makes sense, didn't realise they were 2 in 1 cards!

been a while since I built my last rig (back in the 8800GTX days) so hope this is accurate,

well i'm going for fairly high end components like (budget around 1200 for components)

• i7 2600k (oc to around 4.5GHZ) + a reasonable cooler
• descent motherboard supporting SLI USB 3.0 etc
• 8GB 1600MHz dual channel DDR3 (or slightly higher MHz? trichannel?)
• good PSU for possible SLI setup (850w minimum?? modular??)
• any old case that will fit those beastly graphics cards
• 1TB SATA III 6gb/s etc etc (maybe seagate or WD, SSD not required at this point cud add later) optical drive etc

sick of the lack luster 360 graphics so want this rig to destroy games like:

• Battlefield 3
• Witcher 2
• Skyrim
• Warcraft and Starwars TOR (not as graphicaly demanding ofc)
• Rage
• Diablo 3

so with all these components i'm leaning towards the MSI Lightning Extreme 3GB 580GTX (832/4200)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-133-MS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1812

and adding another in SLI in Q1 2012 to keep up with the new generation of cards? or would this setup be blown out of the water by the new cards?

Cheers

 

[Hyburnate]

6990.

 

[josh3190]

get the 580 and SLI it down the line, I'm chuffed with my 570 and it plays RAGE great, can't give you any FPS rates but i'm pretty fussy when it comes to FPS rates and I'm a happy camper playing RAGE with my 570 slightly overclocked

 

[MeMeMeMe]

Some comments:

The 3GB Lightning is overkill for your resolution. If you plan on getting a 2560x1440 monitor, or running 3 monitors in Nvidia Surround, it might be worth it. Otherwise, stick with the 1.5GB 580, and if you need to, SLI it.

If you're going for 2 580's, I'd recommend a 1000w PSU just to be on the safe side.
You dont really need faster RAM than 1600.

Dont go for "any old case" - make sure you get one with decent cooling and plenty of space to mount the cards if you're going to potentially SLI such powerful cards.

Note also - a lot of cheaper cases wont actually have enough space for the toip end graphic cards: they are a lot longer than they used to be.

 

[shadow_boxer]

Agree with everything MeMeMeMe has just said above. Why not get a single GTX580, try it out and if you want more performance then add a second. A high quality 850W PSU will be enough but if you want to add loads of additional hard disk drives/LED/Cathodes etc then the 1000W will give you more headroom.

 

[arc@css]

Change the cpu to the i5 2500k, unless you really do need the extra benefit of the 2600.

 

[s7cn]

According to nVidia's roadmap the chips in 2012 will just be a refresh of the fermi die, and not a new architecture so the new cards shouldn't perform majorly better afaik.

Getting SLI 580s is not a bad idea, but as others have suggested get one and see how games perform - A single 580 should have no problem with any game at 1080p. I'd suggest that you get a single 580 and wait and see how BF3 performs on your rig and then see if you would need another card.

 

[SheepBeast]

• i7 2600k (oc to around 4.5GHZ) + a reasonable cooler
• descent motherboard supporting SLI USB 3.0 etc
• 8GB 1600MHz dual channel DDR3 (or slightly higher MHz? trichannel?)
• good PSU for possible SLI setup (850w minimum?? modular??)
• any old case that will fit those beastly graphics cards
• 1TB SATA III 6gb/s etc etc (maybe seagate or WD, SSD not required at this point cud add later) optical drive etc

2600k is a good choice but you should know that for almost all current games the 2500k performs just as well, so if you want to save money then that'd be a good second option. properly multi-threaded games like BF3 will make use of the 2600k's hyper threading though so you'd notice a difference there (maybe 15% - 20% educated guess, assuming your setup is CPU limited which i'm not sure it will be).

RAM sticks aren't "dual channel" or "tri channel". they're all the same, just if you have 3 or 6 of them, they are running in triple channel mode and if you have multiples of 2 or 4 they are running in dual channel. the only desktop processors and platform that support triple channel is the first gen i7 series (X58). sandy bridge is dual channel, so you'll want 2 or 4 sticks. go for 1600MHz or 1866MHz. any faster is a waste of money on sandy bridge setups as it won't affect real world performance (only in artificial benchmarks designed to bottleneck at the RAM).

as for hard drives, SATAIII makes no difference to mechanical hard drives as they do not saturate SATAII. SATAIII is great for SSDs but if you're shopping for hard drives don't let the SATAII label affect your choice as it makes no difference.

so with all these components i'm leaning towards the MSI Lightning Extreme 3GB 580GTX (832/4200)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-133-MS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1812

and adding another in SLI in Q1 2012 to keep up with the new generation of cards? or would this setup be blown out of the water by the new cards

it wouldn't be blown out the water, no. the new cards will have much lower power draw and temps (and therefore noise levels) but performance wise they will be nothing breath taking. a decent improvemen to be sure, but not enough to render SLI 580s obselete. after all, it's not like games will all of a sudden become way more demanding just because new cards are released. even a mid range card these days is plenty to run most of the console ports we are lumped with, for lack of many good PC exclusives

btw +1 to what someone else said, 3GB cards are a waste of money unless you're going multi monitor or HUGE screen

 

['Wes]

Hi there,

I probably should highlight that the GTX 580 and HD 6970 are the two fastest single GPU cards offered by Nvidia and AMD.

In contrast the GTX 590 and HD 6990 use two GPUs on one card and link them together in an internal SLI/CF. Each of these GPUs is a lower speed version of the GTX 580 or HD 6970 - so the card can be sufficiently cooled and powered.

I personally would not suggest going for the GTX 590 or HD 6990 since they are both VERY expensive, plus the GTX 590 has temperature issues and the HD 6990 is REALLY loud under load. You are much better off going for a single GPU card and add a second in SLI/CF if you need the extra performance.

If you don't have a gaming PC right now then I would not wait it out for the next generation of GPUs. These new 28nm cards will be nice, but not worth waiting months for - time you could be be playing PC games. Instead I would suggest getting a nice (but not wallet busting) HD 6950 2GB like this which will play all modern games very nicely at 1080p, then sell it on and upgrade when the 28nm cards come out in early of 2012.

Do you have a spec in mind for the rest of the system and an approximate budget?

Really well done post, knocked some sense into my brain as well.

 

[lee20010]

get the 580 and SLI it down the line, I'm chuffed with my 570 and it plays RAGE great, can't give you any FPS rates but i'm pretty fussy when it comes to FPS rates and I'm a happy camper playing RAGE with my 570 slightly overclocked

Why have you not overclocked that i5 if you game. You're missing out on some extra FPS

 

[harmony]

Most powerful? Definitely 4-way SLI of GTX580 3GBs, either EVGA Classified or MSI Lightning XE. I would prefer the EVGA ones, as they are OTES design, good for 4-way SLI.

 

[TheRealDeal]

I would just go for 2 of these in my link below which dont cost much more than a custom gtx580. You will get much better performance than a gtx580 and they come with a 6970 ice-q cooler. You can basically get all the performance you need right now. They also come with 2gb of ram which should see you good til they are obsolete.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-042-HS