Dual EVGA GTX 285s? Any input?

[sqeaky4100]

I've been using a GTX 260 (old style) for a while now... and I swear it's the one thing holding me back. I run 5 Accounts over 2x 24" monitors. And I'm starting to think this card just can't keep up with both large monitors. Heres my specs:

Intell i7 @ 2.66
EVGA GTX 260
12gb Corsair Dominator RAM
2x Velociraptor 10k RPM in Raid0

I'm running my slaves at 10fps everything low... and my main, with settings medium-high, only get's around 30-40fps. Which I just feel is because of my video card.


1) Will having 2x EVGA 285's in SLI benefit me over a single 285? ... I plan on plugging one 285 into my main monitor, and the second 285 into the other monitor- Hoping to spread the load between my main and my slaves.

2) If it wont benefit me... Do you all have any recommendations of what I can do? I'm trying to not give 2x 24" monitors ALL ONTO a poor single little gtx 260.

[Tight]

ehh my old comp was alot wors then yours and i had about the same framerate.. ^^

Phenom 9500 Q
4 gig ram
Asus 8500GT 512m
vista 64 Ult.
not sure about the drive but it was not a 10k RPM.
2x Syncmaster 245B.

To me your system should be smoth as hells..
I use this setup x2 for 10 boxing now, only difference is i got 8 gig on both pc's.

[jag989]

1) Will having 2x EVGA 285's in SLI benefit me over a single 285? ... I plan on plugging one 285 into my main monitor, and the second 285 into the other monitor- Hoping to spread the load between my main and my slaves.

2) If it wont benefit me... Do you all have any recommendations of what I can do? I'm trying to not give 2x 24" monitors ALL ONTO a poor single little gtx 260. 1. No, unfortunately WoW does not really utilize SLI

2. One 285 will be more than enough to run 5 copies just fine on that system

[Enndo]

A single GTX 285 is more than enough. The performance increase up from the 260 series will be about 20-30 more FPS depending on your settings and how your machine is tuned. You will most likely have around 55 fps as long as you set your core affinity.

[Catamer]

the SLI will not help you with this setup.
SLI is intended to have two GPU making up one screen of data back when one GPU couldn't or had a hard time rendering 1920x1200.
once you connect a second monitor you pretty much defeat the whole purpose of SLI.
if you must put two cards into your machine have one monitor on each card, disable SLI and hope for the best ( hope that each card renders it's own monitor as opposed to the main card doing all of the work anyway ).

I agree with the other poster though, most video cards like the 285 are so awsome today that one card should be able to drive both of your monitors.
I use a 280 and have two monitors at 1680x1050 but I only run 3 copies of wow.

[sqeaky4100]

A single GTX 285 is more than enough. The performance increase up from the 260 series will be about 20-30 more FPS depending on your settings and how your machine is tuned. You will most likely have around 55 fps as long as you set your core affinity.Since you have an i7. What is your affinity set to?

[confusedtx5]

If you have Vista, theres your problem. Get XP.

1 char in Dal = 30fps tops on Vista, 100fps on XP.

If not, you have some settings wrong. Otherwise, you can use SLI, but you need a Matrox DualHead2go which will allow you to use the 1 output from your graphics card and stretch the massive 3840x1200 res screen onto the 2 monitors as 1920x1200 (which i assume your screens are). best bit is, you can have graphics up high as the graphics cards will render both thinking theyre on the same screen.

[confusedtx5]

If you have Vista, theres your problem. Get XP.

1 char in Dal = 30fps tops on Vista, 100fps on XP.

If not, you have some settings wrong. Otherwise, you can use SLI, but you need a Matrox DualHead2go which will allow you to use the 1 output from your graphics card and stretch the massive 3840x1200 res screen onto the 2 monitors as 1920x1200 (which i assume your screens are). best bit is, you can have graphics up high as the graphics cards will render both thinking theyre on the same screen.

[Sajuuk]

If you have Vista, theres your problem. Get XP.

1 char in Dal = 30fps tops on Vista, 100fps on XP.
Hm, funny. Because if you have XP and use more than one monitor for multiboxing your performance is going to get SLAMMED unless you use horizontal span - which can be a pain in the butt.

With vista...just dual-view and put the windows wherever you want.

[confusedtx5]

Oddly enough, i had more problems with the vista windows, where my foreground focus window would have bad fps and a background window would be getting 30+ fps. never bothered to track the problem down - went away when i limited the background window fps with keyclone. But yes, horisontal span can work well - thats where the matrox box can come in handy for some people. I would use the triplehead version for 2,3 and 4th screens until i got a second video card at which point i went to extended desktop for all.

(can a mod delete one of my double posts above plz? i cant seem to do it myself)

[Kayley]

If you have Vista, theres your problem. Get XP.

1 char in Dal = 30fps tops on Vista, 100fps on XP.
Hm, funny. Because if you have XP and use more than one monitor for multiboxing your performance is going to get SLAMMED unless you use horizontal span - which can be a pain in the butt.

With vista...just dual-view and put the windows wherever you want.

I'm using dual-view in XP and am getting no fps loss. I know what you are talking about, it used to happen. Nvidia drivers (I think) fixed this a while ago.

[Herc130]

GT300 will be coming out in Q4 2009, which is around November. This will be a real jump in tech. Much more then the GT200 was to the G80. I am no vid card expert, but been looking for a new card to replace my 8800GTX on my secondary computer and from what I see, GTX275's, GTX 285's and 4890's are damn close in performance at 1920x1200 that I am better off getting the best $$ deal I can get on it. The extra edge you can get with the GTX285 is probably not much and considering the price difference (@$100) not worth it unless you got money to burn or you plan on going up to 2560x1600 where the GTX285 pulls away from the other cards.

Then throw in GT300 coming out in 5 months or so and RV870 coming out in a couple months and I gotta question myself on getting a GTX 285 now. Personally, I am probably gonna go with a GTX275 (or 4890), which even beats a GTX285 in many benches. Dunno why since it is pretty much the same card, but only 896 memory compared to 1gig and 448bit memory interface compared to 512, but for $100 less. Possibly the GTX285, the game, the resolution just doesn't take advantage of the extra bandwidth and memory size. No doubt boxing a bunch of accounts on the card, more memory is better, but 104 extra is not much. Then consider they are now coming out with vid cards that have 2 gigs of memory and I am not talking about the X2's or dual GPU/PCB cards. So...yah. I will save myself $100 and instead of going for the top dog (barely) I will get it's little brother and put that $100 towards a GT300 card in 5 or 6 months (or RV870 even sooner) and have an actual next generation card card compared to the 8800GTX days(......GT200's are more like an improved G80 and not actually next generation). GT300 will be 40nm, GDDR5, probably 256 memory interface, probably more then 1gig memory, DirX 11 and whatever else.

[Simulacra]

If you have Vista, theres your problem. Get XP.

1 char in Dal = 30fps tops on Vista, 100fps on XP.
Hm, funny. Because if you have XP and use more than one monitor for multiboxing your performance is going to get SLAMMED unless you use horizontal span - which can be a pain in the butt.

With vista...just dual-view and put the windows wherever you want.

I'm using dual-view in XP and am getting no fps loss. I know what you are talking about, it used to happen. Nvidia drivers (I think) fixed this a while ago.For sure? I gotta check that out, I hate using span. Are you using xp64 or 32?