Dear Sam [3GB GTX 580]

[MiRai]

This was a quick screen shot I took a few nights ago after getting the card while screwing around on my 4 DK's. Their video
settings are almost identical and they are a mix between high and medium settings with the main window at 4x Multisampling.

http://multiboxology.com/bin/images/beastly.png

While the CPU info is slightly irrelevant I didn't feel like loading up a team at the moment just to setup another screen shot.
Prior to taking the shot I had rode around Stormwind numerous times making sure everything was nice and loaded up into the
video memory. I would take a shot in a more intense scene but my characters have just been reactivated and they're all too
low level to do anything exciting. As a reference, I just rolled 5 Mages and while questing with them out in the world the GPU
doesn't break 35% load.

I would say the card is unnecessary for 5 boxing and the 1.5GB model would do just fine but for $100 more I figured "WTF?"
I also picked this card up in order to future proof for the day that I may just end up 10 boxing on a single machine with ease.

EDIT:
I finally setup a video settings macro that dynamically changes when I swap windows and it seems that questing in the low-
level zones keeps me hanging around 1.3GB which is where I'd like to be giving me plenty of unused video memory to add
in another five copies of WoW should I choose to in the future.

[Shodokan]

good info man, i might pick one up.

[Bollwerk]

Am I misunderstanding something, or doesn't GPU-Z say it's using 2.5GB of video ram?
Doesn't that seem to make a case FOR a 3GB card?

[MiRai]

Am I misunderstanding something, or doesn't GPU-Z say it's using 2.5GB of video ram?
Doesn't that seem to make a case FOR a 3GB card?
I'm not using all 3GB.

[AgentSnipps]

Do you think it becomes more worthwile for people who play games other than just 5 boxing wow? Say 5 boxing rift wich looks more graphics intensive than WoW.

[coglistings]

bahh, finish lvl'in your dk's to 85 instead of flying around making screenshots so I can rape you ingame :D

[MiRai]

Do you think it becomes more worthwile for people who play games other than just 5 boxing wow? Say 5 boxing rift wich looks more graphics intensive than WoW.
I really wish I could give an answer in regard to RIFT. I don't currently have any active RIFT accounts to test this bad boy out on
but, you could always take the same approach that I took meaning that if you're already about to drop $500 on a video card...
what's $100 more for an extra 1.5GB of memory. :)

If I remember right someone here had 2x 1.5GB 580's in SLI and couldn't max the settings of RIFT and still get 60 FPS, but I
believe this was back in the beta phases and I'm sure Trion has tweaked a little bit since then.

I guess a good test would be for you to start up a single game of RIFT on the settings you'd like to play on with your main
window and see what GPU-Z reports for memory usage. Then turn the video settings down to what a slave would normally be at
and then multiply that by how many you play. Add them all together and I would say that's a good estimate on how much video
memory you would normally use. You may have to shut down the game between tests because just turning down settings
probably won't "clear" the video card's memory and it'll most likely be reporting a higher value.

bahh, finish lvl'in your dk's to 85 instead of flying around making screenshots so I can rape you ingame :D
I'm making it a point to keep starting new teams so I don't have to hang out with the big kids at level 80+. :)

[Bollwerk]

I'm not using all 3GB.
Right, but they don't make a 2.5GB card. =)
Seems like only 1.5GB would be a bottleneck, based on your screenshot.

[MiRai]

Right, but they don't make a 2.5GB card. =)
Seems like only 1.5GB would be a bottleneck, based on your screenshot.
As far as I know nVidia does not make a 2.5GB 5xx card and from a quick Newegg search the top dog choices are 1.5GB, 3.0GB,
and 4.0GB for any thing current from ATI or nVidia. I guess what I'm showing in that picture is that even with the main screen
using 4x Multisampling I still have headroom meaning I can continue to crank up my settings if I really wanted to.

[AgentSnipps]

Thanks for the info think I'll pay the extra $100 bucks and upgrade. I've pretty much got all parts ready to order now I just need to finalize monitors and pick a server to play on and I'll be all set.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Ok excellent info's.

Clearly there is no 2G limit of some kind on the video card usage so basically the more video ram you can get the better (there were some articals stating that more then 2G is only used when you multi monitor, guess they are wrong).

I do wonder why the extra .5G is not in use. Maybe there just isnt more then 2.5G of textures in a single zone with only one side characters. That would also be some super information if that were the case. Where you on at prime time?

If you ever have the time and inclination run this:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896646

and see if you are still loading textures after a bunch of passes through SW like you did. If not then we would know that people with 3G video cards don't need SSD ....

[MiRai]

Clearly there is no 2G limit of some kind on the video card usage so basically the more video ram you can get the better (there were some articals stating that more then 2G is only used when you multi monitor, guess they are wrong).
Technically speaking I was using 2 monitors for the Window Layout. I'm assuming the articles you read weren't
exactly referring to multiboxing when the mentioned that limit. I can do another test like my original and stack
the windows on top of each other to see if the results will be the same.


I do wonder why the extra .5G is not in use. Maybe there just isnt more then 2.5G of textures in a single zone with only one side characters. That would also be some super information if that were the case. Where you on at prime time?
It was prime time. Also, I could've used all 3GB if I wanted to by just increasing some more video settings. I
was really just testing out how well MSAA x4 was going to be handled by the main window while boxing with
this card.


If you ever have the time and inclination run this:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896646

and see if you are still loading textures after a bunch of passes through SW like you did. If not then we would know that people with 3G video cards don't need SSD ....
Maybe... :)

[Sam DeathWalker]

Check this out:

http://www.hwcompare.com/9280/geforce-gt-440-3gb-vs-geforce-gtx-580-3gb/


Now if I can only find a 440 3G card for sale.

Just won an ebay auction for that 440 3G cards at $112. Now to see if its not junk lol .... Gonna hurt to go from a 460 to a 440 but going from 1G to 3G well ....

[Knytestorme]

hmm, looking at Anand benchmarks a 580 is on par with 1 Gb 460 SLI but I'm going to go with the assumption that one of these 3G 580's would make a damn nice upgrade with getting back into boxing :/

[MiRai]

hmm, looking at Anand benchmarks a 580 is on par with 1 Gb 460 SLI but I'm going to go with the assumption that one of these 3G 580's would make a damn nice upgrade with getting back into boxing :/
This has been repeated one-hundred times on this forum to not use SLI or Dual GPU cards with multiboxing
until something changes in drivers or GPU architecture.

[Knytestorme]

This has been repeated one-hundred times on this forum to not use SLI or Dual GPU cards with multiboxing
until something changes in drivers or GPU architecture.


Didn't say I SLI them while boxing Fen ;)

But that was my point. With the 580 being about the same overall in benchmarks for other games as the 460 SLI the extra VRAM and moving to a single GPU would be a worthwhile reason to upgrade to benefit WoW without sacrificing in other games that did make use of SLI.

[MiRai]

Didn't say I SLI them while boxing Fen ;)

But that was my point. With the 580 being about the same overall in benchmarks for other games as the 460 SLI the extra VRAM and moving to a single GPU would be a worthwhile reason to upgrade to benefit WoW without sacrificing in other games that did make use of SLI.
I was just making sure that the stance on SLI was clear in case some new random person wandered in here
saying, "LOL I just dropped my entire mortgage payment on 2x GTX 580's and now I get shitty performance
help plz!!!"

[remanz]

<rant>

I am so fed up with SLI as well. wow doesn't support SLI is well known. But all these new PC games (mostly stupid console ports these days), most of them have poor SLI support on day 1. Always have to wait for SLI patches , profile updates. And I have a GTX295, which is a dual GPU GTX 280 on 1 card. Since it can't handle the heat and two chips being so closed to each other, it has to throttle the 280 speed for each. So when SLI is not supported, my 295 is slower than a single 280. It runs at around GTX 260 performance.

So when they announced GTX 590, which is two throttled GTX 580 glued together. I am "so not gonna fall for this shit again."

So the verdict is , if you can get by with 1 card, go with 1. If you want to push it really hard and don't mind the wait for SLI patches, then go with normal 2 card SLI. stay away from dual GPU card 295 , 590 etc.

</rant>

[MiRai]

So when they announced GTX 590, which is two throttled GTX 580 glued together. I am "so not gonna fall for this shit again."
I couldn't agree more with the rant about underclocking GPUs so they can jam them together on the same card.

However.......

http://www.techpowerup.com/146327/ASUS-Designs-MARS-II-Dual-GTX-580-Graphics-Card-for-GeForce-Enthusiasts.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146588