so far not a good experience with my pc

[keynes]

It will but if it guarantees a better performance for the 3D surround set up I do not mind paying extra, again if it is a possibility as well since I am still waiting for a reply from PCS.

[keynes]

The PC is going to be collected today and I was told my RMA will be treated as a priority. I think I'll stick with the GTX 580 3GB since I could not find any evidence that the GTX 590 SLI could perform significantly better and the GTX 580 1.5 SLI will underperform with games that require a lot of memory. My conclusion on this matter is that I have been unlucky with the build, I am pretty sure that PCS did their best during building and testing and the first issue with the USB ports not working and the last one with the fan controller malfunctioning may have been caused in transit and I was unlucky with the faulty GPU. A new rebuild was authorised and I was promised a change of components, technical support was always helpful and very polite when answering my queries even if I was very frustrated in some occassions. I am still happy to recommend PCS to anyone for their excellent customer support and prompt response to RMAs and I'll be purchasing again from them in the future. Thanks for everyone that contributed to my thread.

[Maestro]

Not true, the only reason manufacturers release gpus with more and more memroy is because they know a p***ing contest will make people buy em and pay more for em. There is hardly any difference in performance between the 2. Put them side by side in identical rigs and the benchmarks will be almost identical give or take a few points, irrepsective of what games you are playing or number of monitors you are running.

[keynes]

Thanks for the feedback, I based my judgment on the benchmarks that I found online for the GTX 580 SLI vs GTX 580 3GB SLI
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=684954
It states that there is not much improvement between the 2 cards and most games (apart from some exceptions such as Metro) will not benefit from the additional RAM.
If you have to go with NVIDIA and it is a 3D surround, what GPU would you recommend?

[Maestro]

Interesting to see in those benchmarks that the 1.5gb cards in both sli and single score higher in over 50% of those scores. For this reason i would go with the 1.5gb cards.

[keynes]

I was also recommended the 1.5 by technical support as it seems they are more stable for 3D surround but I am unaware of why that is the case.

[Maestro]

As with all gpus some cards have more driver issues than others. This is why nvidia and amd release updates to the drivers on almost a monthly basis. If you look at the notes for new driver releases you will see that in a lot of instances they have sorted issues with particular games, and they also list known issues that they are still working on. At the moment it seems there are more gremlins in the drivers for the 3gb version than the 1.5gb.

[Grinder]

I read somewhere that 3 gpu's were a sweet spot for Sli.
Maybe 3 x 1.5's will give you the best possible performance for your rig .
If moneys no object .

[keynes]

I think it may be almost the same than 2 GTX 580 3GB but I am not sure the motherboard I have may support Tri-SLI or it will give a better performance for what I am looking for.


Case COOLERMASTER HAF-X FULL TOWER GAMING CASE

Processor Intel® Core™i7-2700k Quad Core (3.50GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics

Motherboard ASUS® P8Z68-V/GEN3: PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX
Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card 3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

2nd Graphics 3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready

3rd Graphics Card NONE
Memory - 120GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk 2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

RAID NONE
SSD CACHE DRIVE NONE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£44)
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NONE
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

Change to: NONE

Power Supply CORSAIR 1200W PRO SERIES™ GOLD AX1200-80 PLUS® GOLD MODULAR(£209)

Processor Cooling COOLIT ECO II FAT BOY PUSH/PULL CONFIG LIQUID CPU COOLER (£79)

Fan Controller NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller with upto 5 Fitted Case Fans

Change to: 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

[tom_gr7]

look good mate, but remember the soundcard is going to be placed right under the top gpu, therefore it will block one of the gpu fans.

and I'd get a pci -e wifi card, the card would then be placed above the top card, and again not impede any airflow.

Infact You could chin the wireless of completely and get a good set of homeplugs, then get a PCI -E soundcard instead, so both ya gpu's have nothing blocking the airflow only a soundcard above.

Hope that makes sense (long day)