Gtx 580 vs 590 question!

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Enthusiast Extreme

Limp Gawd
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Hello everyone! I have a 1080p monitor for now but will soon be going 2560x1600 or 3D. I am thinking of doing either 2x gtx 580s msi lighting extreme 3gbs sli or quad gtx 590 evga classified, what's better? (money is not a problem)
 
Enthusiast Extreme said:
Hello everyone! I have a 1080p monitor for now but will soon be going 2560x1600 or 3D. I am thinking of doing either 2x gtx 580s msi lighting extreme 3gbs sli or quad gtx 590 evga classified, what's better? (money is not a problem)
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from what i have read 2x 580's in SLI outperform a 590, either way your running SLI because the 590 is SLI on a card.
 
Two 590s have more GPU power... they're just underclocked 580 SLI on one card. However, the 580s would have more Vram and be cheaper, and quad-SLI still suffers from driver issues since it is not common. I would suggest going with the 2x 580 Lightning EE and that should be more than enough for you.
 
2x 580 3gb

faster and the extra ram comes in handy at the target resolution
 
The 590 unless they are the uber pricey 3gb per chip models, are very very fast, but they can suffer from lack of Vram, they do tend to run a little smoother becuase the chips have better communications amongst themselves but I do not think this would be much of an issue.

Dual 580 with 3gb a piece is a hell of alot of horsepower, the 590 might in certain extents pass them, but they probably would also not be able to have as high eye candy as the 580 with 3gb a piece neither. Hard call, but I think for the cost, performance, and also for power consumption, dual 580 3gb would be a sick setup either way :)
 
+1 for what the others have already said.. 2 x 580's in SLI over the quad 590's. Since I only have a 1080p monitor, the 1.5gbs are all I really need. However, at your target resolution of 2560 x 1600, the 580 3gbs models are going to come in handy!
 
ummm the mars II do suffer from lack of Vram when pushed to the absolute edge, blistering fast yes, insanely pricey yes, if you take 2x580 3gb models vs an ASUS Mars II and clock them the same pushed to thier edge, I have a feeling based on reviews I have read that the 3gb models would just have more ooomph more often(not that the Mars II are not fast, but kind of best single slot card SLI card you know) Dual 590 you mean btw, 2 gpu vs 4 gpu as far as core count goes, I do think that was a typo as far as I know you can only link dual 590 not quad them, i.e quad sli not octo sli :p
 
^^It wasn't a typo, gtx 590's are dual gpu, you sli gtx 590 and you get a quad setup... :) I am going to go with the 2x sli gtx 580s and perhaps do a 3 way sli if I decide to go surround setup. Thanks for all the advice!!
 
dragonstongue said:
they do tend to run a little smoother becuase the chips have better communications amongst themselves
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This is not true, I'm not sure why people keep repeating this. There is nothing special or unique going on inside the dual gpu cards.

On the 590 both gpus sit behind an NF200, so if you had a board with an NF200 and you put two 580s on it you would have the exact same communication path. ATI does the same thing on the dual gpu cards except with a more generic PLX chip.
 
but saying quad gtx590 is not correct in a certain fashion, being they are dual gpu a piece, so dual EVGA GTX590 would make more sence 590x2=4gpu total or at least 4 gpu cores :p

As far as the x2 style cards, the newer ones to my understanding use a better bridge then the older ones, only needing a single 16x lane, the older ones(far as I know) lacked the functionality to use a single lane for all of the traffic, and used more bandwidth then what the slot could effictively handle, part of the reason sideband was intentioned, but decided not to be used cause they figured it all out I suppose.

Im not a designer no, but in a very simple sence, even with an nf200 chip or PLX chip or whatever, sli on a single card with identical cards, I>E 2 580 1.5gb vs say a mars II, the mars II would get a slight benefit as it loses a little less in transaction times, or at least does not have to go over anything but itself, so it doesnt wait/waste as much time to do its thing, I do know as well, that generally speaking the X2 cards usually suffer less from jitter and such for this reason, the communications happen fast enough to not "jib" out if you will.

Some games, banchmarks and such illustrate this, though from my understanding it is not nearly as much an issue as it used to be example dual 9800GTX vs 9800GX2 or 2x4870 vs 4870x2. So not to argue, there is a little fancy stuff going on, not magic, but just more efficent use of communications, but clock speed, Vram, cooling etc has to be looked at as well, its not always a better pick.
 
The 590 is a load of junk which easily self destructs as the VRM circuitry is underspec. Go with 2 580s
 
gurusan said:
The 590 is a load of junk which easily self destructs as the VRM circuitry is underspec. Go with 2 580s
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something about them using the circtuitry from 560ti and expecting it NOT to have problems, just took a few hundred customers cards dying before they realesed V2 cards which helped, this is why I myself DESPISE Nvidia, performance or not, this is not the way to do things, build it right or dont bother :p

On a side note, the 560Ti and 570 are built very well, some 580s have had problems and alot of 590s due to the vregs bing underspec, and them NEEDING to use thier powertune thingy in such a fashion to try and aovid malfunctioning.
 
I thought the Mars II and Mars beofre it were exceptionally well built, packed with features for an extraordinary price :p

590 is 165MHz core clock, 329MHz shader clock difference from a stock 580. Also its memory is 600mhz slower or running at 3400mhz effective/850mhz "real" clocks, so it is much closer to a 570 then a 580, but even then is still quite a ways off, core is 125MHz slower, shaders are 249MHz slower and memory is 400mhz slower than the GTX 570! That and this card simply cannot handle huge amounts of power being fed to it, something the Mars II can(extra pci-e connector helps)

However, and there is a plus here, they are using the 580s full features set, such as Cuda cores, ROPs, TMU, though because of clock speed difference, it probably "just" keeps up to 2 stock 570 running in SLI on a proper setup. I sourced above from here http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/03/24/asus_geforce_gtx_590_video_card_review
 
dragonstongue said:
I thought the Mars II and Mars beofre it were exceptionally well built, packed with features for an extraordinary price :p

590 is 165MHz core clock, 329MHz shader clock difference from a stock 580. Also its memory is 600mhz slower or running at 3400mhz effective/850mhz "real" clocks, so it is much closer to a 570 then a 580, but even then is still quite a ways off, core is 125MHz slower, shaders are 249MHz slower and memory is 400mhz slower than the GTX 570! That and this card simply cannot handle huge amounts of power being fed to it, something the Mars II can(extra pci-e connector helps)

However, and there is a plus here, they are using the 580s full features set, such as Cuda cores, ROPs, TMU, though because of clock speed difference, it probably "just" keeps up to 2 stock 570 running in SLI on a proper setup. I sourced above from here http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/03/24/asus_geforce_gtx_590_video_card_review
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Build quality isn't the issue (though they're Asus cards, so I doubt it's very good) - the Mars II is defeated by the fact it only has 1.5GB video memory per GPU. For the exorbitant MSRP that makes it a failure.
 
Build quality isn't the issue (though they're Asus cards, so I doubt it's very good)

I myself have had 4 Asus cards, not once have had an issue, dont like the mount of thermal crap they gob on there, but they work well, only issues I have with asus is thier drivers/support or lack thereof, something like Voltage tweak can never get to work, espeically seeing as there is no modifier built into the Vreg to allow it to step up/down, but beyond that, motherboards, dvd drives, gpus asus has been very good to me. Though I well agree on the 1.5gb per, if they were 3gb per then they would just stomp on everyones party :p 6990 trades blows with this though, and I think most importantly, the extra memory per gpu seals the deal, 2x580 3gb on the other hand nomnomom :)
 
Even with 2x3GB the Mars II wouldn't be a stomping card, GTX580 SLI is barely any faster than HD6970 CF, having enough memory would make the Mars II just slightly faster than the HD6990 for twice the price, as opposed to much worse for twice the price.
As for the Asus build quality, a long list of people have thanked me for veering them away from Asus, no longer having to replace their boards and/or graphics cards every few months. It took 5/5 failures for me to eventually look elsewhere, but it's very much worth doing.
 
i wont use anything but asus boards myself, rog editions, as for vid reccomendation, i traded 2 msi lightnings 580 sli for 2 6970's crossfire, and i REGRET IT, nvidia drivers are much better, and benchmarks is daylight and dark,,,,,,,,
 
bought for the hip i keep hearing, but im gamer pretty heavy and 390 380 a piece whatever they was 800+ together id rather spend another 100 and have double the fps, imo if intel processor why use amd vid cards? anyways ive used them all on the nvidia side, and friend leaned me to get these, yea they are cheaper in price, but worse performance as well, ill take 580's over these all day long twice sunday
 
tumblr_lml9330NW41qi3osy.jpg
 
well, I used both Intel and AMD cpu with Nvidia and AMD gpu, I think that is preference, nothing more, for Nvidia, it does rely more on sheer cpu clock speed then anything else, for Radeons, it helps, but its not as much a jump.

As far as ASUS being crud, thats opinion, and choice. Last 2 GPU I have had a 4870 and 6870 are ASUS branded, I have had 0 issues, besides the fan failing on one with 3 years of use, and with my current 6870 voltage tweak does not work at all, but to me that is just an exrtra feature, and yes it pissed me off, but its not a make or break, and overall I have nothing but great things ot say about asus as do like 20 of my gaming clan/buddies whom have been ASUS users much longer then I.

But, you go with what your comfortable with after all.

That and 100% truth here, something that you alot of people keep failing to understand, if we all went Intel or all Nvidia, or all AMD for that matter, it would be pointelss for them to stay in business wouldnt it, if they left the business, you know all them shiny new lower cost higher performance parts, give them a quarter or a few, and gauranteed 100% that you wish you had never give thier competitiors no sales, we all suffer with no choices and monopolies, it has happened many times over the years, and you can be sure as shit it would happen again.

So do us all a favor, and tyr your best to give a solid nod to all sides, this way here we alll get to enjoy our toys, I have owned Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ATI, and you know what, from a desktop/gaming side, drivers or cards being "fail" if it still plays the game, and looks good, who gives a shit, really, give a solid recommendation, and try to avoid preferences and FUD, and this world and industry will still be thriving years from now :)
 
samuelmorris said:
Even with 2x3GB the Mars II wouldn't be a stomping card, GTX580 SLI is barely any faster than HD6970 CF, having enough memory would make the Mars II just slightly faster than the HD6990 for twice the price, as opposed to much worse for twice the price.
As for the Asus build quality, a long list of people have thanked me for veering them away from Asus, no longer having to replace their boards and/or graphics cards every few months. It took 5/5 failures for me to eventually look elsewhere, but it's very much worth doing.
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Not sure what's with the constant 590 hate? Hows amd crossfire skyrim support? How about the choppiness in bf3 that [h] and others have noticed? How was amd crossfire bf3 support at launch? I would gladly pay nvidia's price premium for tech that works on retail launch day.

I had a 6990, they are more than twice as loud as a 590 - as tests will support. That's significant, I couldn't stand it.

Is the 590 the fastest solution at the $700 price point? No, its probably the slowest, but that doesn't mean its all bad. Me and a host of other people with the newer cards have had no trouble while enjoying the quiet.

And any of the high-end dual card solutions (Whether they are on one chip or not) from either manufacturer are going to rip through every game (except Metro) at 2560 with the exception of one or two settings in just a few games. If we were discussing multi-monitor, it would be another story.
 
well, there is one thing here though, AMD did have better alpha/beta support for BF3 with Nvidia catching up in Release.

How many 590 failed becuase of crap Vregs among other things, you want to talk quality, that is not Nvidia, they have had far far more failure in the field and did not want to nor did pay for damage in ALOT of cases, sometimes they did.

A 6990 probably is loud, sure, but I do not believe a 590 is 1/2 the noise, less yes, 1/2 no, I find that very hard to believe seeing as they are both running some very power hungry heat pushing parts, I will not argue on this, I own neither.

I know quite a few folks that use both Nvidia in single SLI and multi setups, same with AMD, and yes AMD may be a little spotty with Crossfire support and such, but that does not make them immediately junk, at least, they know they have issues and work towards fixing them, it just takes longer, Nvidia however over the years, has shown without a doubt, they dont give a crap about end users, unless that means a loss of revenue, then they do :)
 
all i know is this.... i came from 2 msi lightning 580's to 2 6970's sapphire hd, and i do alot benching, and ill take the 580's all day and twice on sunday!! they are lil more costly but way faster and better drivers imo
 
well of course they are faster :p

It is very much similar to AMD cpu's, if used with the proper things, they do have aot of horsepower, not many devs take advantage of this as it is much more complicated to take advantage of 5d shaders then Nvidia`s single stage approach, this is why with 6900 series AMD decided to go 4d instead, they are alot more easy to tap into, look at the scaling over the years, AMD has gotten consistently better with regards to its processing power, its just getting more efficent.

Now if you are comparing Lightnings which are overclocked obviously this helps, and historically Nvidia does have better drivers, but generally, the Radeons also get performance bumps and fixes each moth, some better, some worse.

GTX580 are the single fastest cards currently out there, this is fact, take the highest clocked 6970 vs highest clocked 580 or better a 570 which is more inline with 6970 performance, how do those figures change?

That is all I am personally saying, overall, yes Nvidia does have an edge in alot of ways, but AMD cards are also generally better built, this is opinion and fact, at least Radeons are designed for what they need to do, Nvidia likes to skip out on things such as proper Vregs and instead relies on thier partners, bios and such to fix goofups, if you are paying top dollar shouldn`t they care about giving you top quality as well?

Anyways, as per original thread topic, 2 580 3gb over single 590, if looking at quad gpu and you are able to use its horsepower, I have a feeling quad 560TI would outdo 2 590 in most things, at least they can overclock very well which will take care of shader,tmu,rop deficit at least the majority of it, you got big bucks well dual 580 3gb models will be more horsepower then almost anyone really uses anyways.
 
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dunno if seen other threads, but i figired it out, i wasnt running in fullscreen on cinebench, i guess crossfire has to be in fullscreen, now im content mid 60's fps on ciny, i always ran it windowed to monitor everything during
 
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