MSI N580GTX Lightning XE 3GB Video Card Review @ [H]

My cards just arrived. They are beautiful. Running one currently and it uses 50 less watts than my 4870 hah.
 
xIronCrossx said:
This is hardforum not softforum bob.

Because you don't see this card being worth its price doesn't mean others don't. Try your tri/quad HD 6950s with triple 30" monitors and see how it fairs compared to this in tri/quad sli.
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My 3X30'' LCD Eyefinity set-up is working fine with my Quad-Fire set-up. So, what's your point? You should try it also, instead of copy and pasting what you have read somewhere else.

Also, that review is about a single MSI 580 3Gb card. Not Tri/Quad SLI. So it's not relevant to the article at all.
 
2 PCI-E connectors both 8 pin. Isn't that more power being used. Tr-sli would need flexible bridges. I am curious because I am thinking of going 3gb instead of 1.5gb of memory.
 
Night_Hawk-19 said:
2 PCI-E connectors both 8 pin. Isn't that more power being used. Tr-sli would need flexible bridges. I am curious because I am thinking of going 3gb instead of 1.5gb of memory.
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Heat causes increased power draw, this has better cooling and vrm for power.
 
xIronCrossx said:
This is hardforum not softforum bob.

Because you don't see this card being worth its price doesn't mean others don't. Try your tri/quad HD 6950s with triple 30" monitors and see how it fairs compared to this in tri/quad sli.
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Tri/Quad 6900 series cards work flawlessly on 3x30" monitors. Quite often whilst enabling 2x-4x EQAA, albeit not under all circumstances.

6900 series cards similarly work well in 5x1 portrait @ 11 megapixels. 3 GB 580 cards are, surely, indisputable promoting highest playable settings at such settings. In terms of performance via "apples" comparisons @ those resolutions? Your assessment is completely speculative, and the implication you make (seems to indicate the 6950s wouldn't FARE well, which is utter horseshit) isn't, well, very FAIR. Assertions made of ignorance rarely provide much in the context of discourse, but to expose the loyalties of a buffoon.
 
Brent-

I don't want to give the review results away, but a quick general question --

Are 2x XE 3GB cards fast enough in SLI to keep up with 3x stock 580s in tri-SLI at 5760x1200?

I was looking at pulling the trigger on 3x 580 3GB cards, but based on what I've seen of the overclocking ability of the Lightning cards and their features, I'm curious if OC'ing 2x XE 3GB cards high enough, could reach a point where it compensates for the third vanilla 580 at stock speeds. Thoughts or your experience with that?

Many thanks for your feedback and great reviews!
 
This review makes me feel I would have been fine if I had just bought a 1.5GB version. :(
 
xIronCrossx said:
This is hardforum not softforum bob.

Because you don't see this card being worth its price doesn't mean others don't. Try your tri/quad HD 6950s with triple 30" monitors and see how it fairs compared to this in tri/quad sli.
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Wow, you really didn't read anything I posted, did you?

The review was single card, single monitor performance. How does that have anything to do with tri/quad SLI?
 
Oh man I hope these things are back in stock before I try to order my build next week. It'll suck to put everything on hold to wait for 2 of these bad boys
 
heres to looking foreward to the 2way/3way/4way sli review with 3GB 580s
 
Sold my old system for pretty much exactly what I paid a year ago. Makes this new system build a more reasonable "$350" upgrade. ;) Goodbye liquid cooling. :(

Picked up two of these gorgeous MSI cards with a 2600k based system from newegg yesterday night, should get here on the 17th~ish. I can't wait for your review results!!! As if I'm not wet enough...

As for general guidelines on GTX 580 3GB SLI scaling:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1037104970#post1037104970
 
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When my parts arrive this friday I'll be able to do SLI of these finally.
 
bobzdar said:
I said it only outperforms in one game because it only allows higher playable settings in one game (well 2 if you lower res and enable DOF in metro 2033, but I don't know that I'd do that, maybe, but I'll give it to you). Average fps doesn't matter unless it affects the playability of the game, that's the whole point of picking playable settings instead of just looking at raw frame rate, but thanks for taking us back 10 years to the FPS wars.
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Then specify what you are saying. Then they have to go back and correct a whole lot of reviews because there have been many times where one card does not "outperform" other cards by your definition... Average FPS can mean quite a bit to enthusiasts, so I don't know how you can outright deny it.

bobzdar said:
Regarding engineering, I was talking about MSI, not Nvidia as I don't think Nvidia did any extra engineering on this card. I don't actually think the engineering was a waste, but in the context of the review (single card, no overclocking) it certainly was as it didn't improve playable settings enough for that extra $100 over a reference card or $250 over a 6970.
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How can you make that statement? As had been mentioned before, they did not review overclocking. So perhaps the engineering does bring even more advantages to the table. You can't says something isn't true just because you personally do not believe it. Plus there are many adjustable settings and software to finely tune the card that were added with the extra engineering that makes it easier for someone to tune the card. I would say many of these engineering ideas and improvements could very well be worth it depending on the circumstances.

bobzdar said:
Also, if you read the whole review, you'd see where most of the settings that the extra VRAM helped were not playable anyway, so again it doesn't really help in single card configuration, which is all the review showed us.
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More and more games coming out now require more and more VRAM especially at higher resolutions. And with SLI and extra monitors this becomes imperative. Again you cannot discount something just because it was not specifically mentioned. Much of this is based off the capabilities of the card beyond just the stock out of the box performance. It is a shame Brent did not include all of these in his initial review, but he has others coming out. Obviously he felt with the extra capabilities it had it deserved the gold award. Perhaps he has already done some initial OC tests but did not finish them in time for the initial review.

bobzdar said:
If I had $600 to spare, I wouldn't waste it on this card based on the review. I'd either save $250 and get a 6970, get a pair of 6950's, or wait until I had an extra $100 and get a 6990. I like what MSI did, to be honest, but the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
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Then don't, but don't poo poo the reviewer just because you feel the card doesn't deserve the gold award based on price to performance. Not everything is about price to everyone and the extra capabilities of these cards and the potential for better overclocking and SLI capabilities make them worth it to a number of enthusiasts.
 
bobzdar said:
Especially considering a 6990 that absolutely blows it away is $100 more.
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Just an FYI, I was initially looking at 2 AMD 6990's for my new build since you would expect them to be only a couple hundred dollars more. I could not find them anywhere in stock. Amazon had 2 month delays listed and Ebay/Craigslist want $900+ minimum unless in a bid war (some for guess what? $1200 :O) for the card (yay bitcoin)...

In the end I grabbed two of these Lightning XE cards due to several reviews experiencing the lower temps, noise and better quality construction.

Can't wait to see a [H]ard SLI review for the GTX 3GB.

Will have them tomorrow.

Purchase.jpg
 
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As I've said before, in my opinion, the 580 XE brings more to the table than just the card when comparing it against a card like the R6970 Lightning. The XE is based with Nvidia obviously and their drivers and support, more well supported CUDA, 3D vision, more usable Surround tech, and PhysX all should be taken into account when comparing it against a high end card on the Red team.

Yes, some of it's proprietary, but we're end user, if something is better, and is well supported, why should we care.

I'm simply saying, comparing card to card is one thing, but you need to compare everything that you're getting by going with one brand or another. But I'm sure you all know that.

Brent_Justice said:
It will make you happy

There will be a happy dance involved
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I feel like filming my happy dance tomorrow when I get them.

TaHoward said:
Just an FYI, I was initially looking at 2 AMD 6990's for my new build since you would expect them to be only a couple hundred dollars more. I could not find them anywhere in stock. Amazon had 2 month delays listed and Ebay/Craigslist want $900+ minimum unless in a bid war (some for guess what? $1200 :O) for the card (yay bitcoin)...

In the end I grabbed two of these Lightning XE cards due to several reviews experiencing the lower temps, noise and better quality construction.

Can't wait to see a [H]ard SLI review for the GTX 3GB.

Will have them tomorrow.

Purchase.jpg
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Xtreme Edition Bros *high five*
 
Just got my 2 from newegg yesterday and they run great, can't wait to see Brent's upcoming review!
 
XacTactX said:
I presume that you guys will be doing SLI and TriSLI eventually? I'd love to see it. Shall we make a poll to gauge people's opinions?
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Agree.
It would be pretty nice to see a 3-way of these cards, and see if 3 of them can be run at 1ghz core on air with good temperatures.
 
Crest said:
Xtreme Edition Bros *high five*
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Broforce!

I got all my parts today, had to RMA the FT02 case though. It came with the aluminum unibody partially detached from the frame with stripped threads. A Brotastrophe.

Made a quick run to a local Fry's to get a spare case (30 day return policy yay) till newegg gives me a quality FT02 back.

Picture!

build_beta.jpg


It purrs like a cat so far, no game ran yet, literally finished slapping it together 10 minutes ago.
 
Spent about 5 hours building my system finally. Metro was my first run. 1080p everything highest is incredible at full 60fps. Never drops below about 35 in the most intense scenes. I am blown away.

And it used only 500watts at the wall at full load in the game. GPU1 hit 66c, GPU2 hit 62c.
 
Are any of you guys that bought 580 XEs running 5760x1200 or 5760x1080 per chance?

I'm interested what kind of numbers you get with regular SLI on the 580 XEs at that resolution versus some of the numbers put up in the [H] reviews for Tri-SLI 580s.

Or if you even have a SLI vs. 3x SLI comparison of 580 XEs that'd be great too :)

Thanks!
 
In the process of preparing for 3 U2311 monitors, by the time I get around to it [H]ard will have a GTX 580 XE SLI review completed.
 
Yeah, I have 3 U2410s sitting in the basement waiting to go when I finally decide on whatever I am going to do.

I would prefer to try and get 2x 580 XEs going fast enough to handle most everything at 5760x1200 than have to add a third one, but even with the XE's OC abilities, I'm not sure it can do that.

I guess we'll wait and see what Brent posts this coming week. There's always the option to buy 3 and just try 2 at first to see how it goes and either add the third or sell it if it turns out positive.
 
Good info, thanks for that :)

It seems the decision was made for me, however, as when I came back from having dinner I found that Newegg had gone from having 6 to only 2 left in stock :eek:, so I grabbed those two while I could. These things are selling like crazy

I'll have to see how I make out when they get here. Hopefully I too will be having the happy dance :D
 
Yakk said:
Hmm... I have to agree with everything above.

As I mentioned in my previous post, it's a nice piece of hardware, but the price makes no sense whatsoever.

What was the criteria for awarding it Gold?
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I will have to agree with both of you guys. Maybe they gave it Gold for some other reason they will never be able to tell us. Just like the reason Osama's body was thrown in sea ;)
 
Brent_Justice said:
I'm so [H]ard I post from dentist chairs.


Ok, on the topic of the Gold award. This gold award wasn't based on pure performance in comparison to the 6970. I looked at it from the aspect of other GTX 580 based video cards we have reviewed here at [H]. This MSI Lightning XE card is by far the most [H]ardcore GTX 580 video card we've evaluated. It is the fastest performance out-of-box I've tested, and the fastest single-GPU video card that exists. The video card has a ton of features and customizations. MSI took the GTX 580 GPU and designed a PCB and feature/hardware set around it, transforming what a reference GTX 580 represents and making it geared to enthusiasts with every feature plus the kitchen sink. MSI has provided hardware control that lets you overvolt core, memory, and power, and overclock core and memory. MSI has also made the GTX 580 better, providing better idle Wattage and better full load Wattage, i.e. more efficient power management. MSI has fitted it with an awesome cooler that does the job more then well, without adding sound. The engineering/hardware that went into this thing is amazing. It has 3GB of RAM on board /nuff said. All of this combined, earns it the Gold Award. It isn't just one thing. Our awards are not based solely on performance.

Hope that clears some confusion, if you disagree with the fact that it deserves the award, that is your opinion of course, I've stated mine.
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Found the reason it got Gold so the body was shown after all :D I pretty much got it MSI Lightning XE>stock 580s at least I got the reason. But wait!!!!!!! For being better than other 580s it got Gold:confused::eek:
 
So uh any update on the GTX 580 3gb sli review? :confused:
 
I've only had the card a week, heh. Will be finished this weekend, I want to get Fear 3 in there since its brand new also. Will be a very thorough evaluation. I tested at 2560x1600 and 5760x1200, because it allows us to do some things even at 2560x1600 that 2x 1.5GB SLI could not do.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I've only had the card a week, heh. Will be finished this weekend, I want to get Fear 3 in there since its brand new also. Will be a very thorough evaluation. I tested at 2560x1600 and 5760x1200, because it allows us to do some things even at 2560x1600 that 2x 1.5GB SLI could not do.
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Why FEAR 3? The game doesn't look very demanding.
 
I'm kind of annoyed by the 2.5gb 570's as I kept wishing they'd come out with those, then I'd grab two or 3 of those for less.
 
sabregen said:
that's because you should have just bought my 590
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Probably but there's a reason why I didn't. I have until the end of this week, early next week before all my shit arrives so we'll see.
 
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