GTX 580 Tri SLI review

Originally posted by wcboltman I don't understand why they don't test with a liquid cooled system though.  I would imagine that the vast majority of people with 3 x 580s are going to have a liquid cooled setup.

Why? They cool themselves just fine stock. I wouldn't LC them either.

One thing I found interesting was that overclocking the cards barely improved FPS.  Granted they only upped the core clock from 772MHz to 830MHz, but I would still expect a greater improvement.

Metro 2033 is unoptimized as hell, probably a big part of it.

Originally posted by wcboltman Right, but like I said the majority of people running 3 x 580s will have a LC setup.  If they wanted the article to be relevant to the people who will actually be running that setup they should test with LC.

Point me to the statistics showing that?

I like how theyre running all 3 on 1200W PSU.

Pretty good of a review.

Originally posted by Dragoonseal Point me to the statistics showing that?

It's in the 2010 census look it up.

Find me ONE reviewer that has done an all-out review like that. There are definitely people who do that to eke out as much as they can from hardware, but for a reviewer to go all out like that is sort of rare from what I've seen.

Like Dragoon said though, I mean come on. The cards stock are already very decently vapochilled, with chambers specifically made for the cards themselves. Why go more than that, lol?


Edited by ablahblah - 21 Nov 2010 at 9:28pm

for the same reason a store like "next day blinds" exists

its not up for conversation that having 2 cards is all you need for gaming

Edited by !ender_ - 22 Nov 2010 at 12:03am

.

Edited by wcboltman - 22 Nov 2010 at 1:17am

@wcboltman, you are right.  This is a philosophical debate.  And I must say, I like your thinking!

This is for you rholyrag!

Edit:  This is not directed AT anyone, just a general comment.

Philosophy on spending "lots of money":

1.  The term LOTS is subjective and relative in the extreme
2.  Money isn't everything.
3. You can't take it with you.
4. No one should worry what others are willing to pay for this, that, or the other thing.
5. Some people don't have to worry about every nickle, dime or thousand.

In the end, arguments over what someone decides to spend is silly.  If the person asks for help getting the best bang per buck then worry about price but if they decide to buy something like a GTX 580 even at the current inflated prices it's up to them.   (Right now I would consider the GTX 570) 

Don't get hung up on people who have cash to burn, for the most part they earned it and deserve to spend it how they want to without being judged for it.


Edited by MagiK - 09 Dec 2010 at 9:16am

I don't know why some of you keep trying to turn this into a philosophical debate, it is not.

Wcboltman made a bold statement, that anyone who buys $1500 worth of GPUs obviously spends another $1500 to LC them. He tried to pass this off as a fact.

So the burden of proof is on him, back up his claim with evidence or it is just a fart in the wind. So far, we've yet to move out of fart in the wind status.

Originally posted by wcboltman LOL dragoonseal you need to get out more.  This isn't a trial.  There's no "burden of proof" to consider.  I stated that I would like to see a review w/ tri SLI done with liquid cooling.  I also stated an opinion that most people who drop an extra $600 on a GPU that at best provides a minimal gain in performance are likely ones who will spend similarly to eke out every last bit of performance from their systems, regardless of cost.  That's an opinion.  If you disagree that's fine.  People like you are what's wrong with most forums on the internet.  Chill with your snarky, condescending posts, they detract from the forum and leave a bad taste in people's mouths.

Oh, so you retract your statement and offer it instead as an opinion? Fair enough, thank you for sharing your opinion.

HAHA "retract my statement."  With your stellar use of legal diction I think you're ready for the big leagues . . . Judge Judy here you come!

Look at my original post.  When you start off with "I would imagine . . " you are not making a "bold statement of fact."  That's what you would call conjecture. 

Get a grip.






Edited by wcboltman - 09 Dec 2010 at 12:50am

Originally posted by wcboltman This is for you rholyrag!

Thanks, great pic of JoePa...!

It appears that air cooling gets almost as high an overclock as liquid. eg. An air cooled Noctua HAF i7 950 system gets OCd to 3.9ghz by DSO. Or you could go with the new TEC hailstorm to get up to 4.6ghz, but for $2k more. $2k for 18% clock speed increase? As Ender said, this is not cost efficient.

Liquid does look cooler, no question. That enormous Noctua cooler looks gangly. That being said, if I had money to blow, I'd go with Hailstorm b/c it's just cool. All that refrigeration technology humming along in my office ... ahh.

I'm also considering a triple monitor setup. 3 x 1080p may indeed be too much work for 2 x GTX570s to contend with. If I then decided to go triple SLI, I would definitely avoid LC. The cost is outrageous, and it does not appear to bear any fruit. Perhaps the cooling allows another 18% GPU overclock, though I doubt that. For the kind of money LC costs, I would expect a minimum 30% improvement.

That being said, I haven't heard from anyone definitively what performance gains (if any) a triple SLI system brings to a triple monitor setup. It certainly seems to do almost nothing for a 2560x1650 setup, which is 2/3 of 3x1080p. Plus, triple SLI will likely still get CPU bottlenecked anyway. Though a 3 x 2560x1650 system may actually benefit from triple SLI. I haven't seen web sites perform this kind of benchmarking, which leads me to believe triple monitor setups are as "extreme" as LC. Which is odd, considering a 1080p display can be had for only $150.

Originally posted by MagiK Statements such as "x is not efficient" can be factual, but statements such as "x is not worth it" are purely opinion and have no basis in fact.  "Worth" is a personal evaluation not a universal constant.

Well said.