SLI 660 Vs Single 580

[HungryHippo]

Tittle says it all, I'm currently considering selling my GTX 580 in favor of two 660's in SLI but I'm not 100% sold on their performance. Is there anyone out there that can give me an opinion on whether they would live up to expectation or if not advice on other cards.

[Currently the 580 is WC so i got it above normal clocks where the SLI 660's will be air cooled @ stock, maybe a bit higher]
[Will also be running in 1920x1080]


Thanks in advance.

[Evil Inside]

SLI is not worth it honestly, your 580 can still run almost all the recent games on high+ settings, SLI comes with alot of potential problems that are not worth it IMO.

[Deleted]

since you got a 580 might be better to wait for 7xx series.
else i'd rather pick a single 670/680 over SLI 660's

[HungryHippo]

Maybe its just my fail optimization but in games like say Rift, WoW, Swtor, I can get 60 FPS but without bloom, shadows, etc etc and i am kind of getting sick of water cooling. Any ideas to boost my game performance because at the moment I'm at a loss as my 580 should be enough to run these games @ their maximum but falls short at doing so.

[danki1337]

id say get it, but only if its Asus directcoling gtx660 (the fan profiles are amazing and cooling performance) if not id say stick with what you got

[Evil Inside]

Maybe its just my fail optimization but in games like say Rift, WoW, Swtor, I can get 60 FPS but without bloom, shadows, etc etc and i am kind of getting sick of water cooling. Any ideas to boost my game performance because at the moment I'm at a loss as my 580 should be enough to run these games @ their maximum but falls short at doing so.

What's your cpu? MMOs depend alot on the cpu.

[HungryHippo]

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: P55A-UD3R
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8188MB RAM
Page File: 2782MB used, 13590MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode

[kNite]

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: P55A-UD3R
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8188MB RAM
Page File: 2782MB used, 13590MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode

your CPU is the problem not your GPU. I have a I5 overclocked to 4.4GHZ and it runs wow at 100+ on a 560ti. I7 are not as good as i5s when it comes to pure gaming. And the clock speed on yours is way slower that usual gaming i5s. Keep your 580 and upgrade to a overclocked i5 and you will see a huge improvement in FPS in MMOs.

[Tomec]

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.8GHz

Why no OC on that? I mean 2.8 GHz isn't bad per say, but a lot of times nowadays people are getting 4 with very little effort on CPUs. And even going to like 3, 3.1 or so would probably be a big improvement.

You have water cooling so could possibly already have it in the loop with the vid card (which admittedly adds a lot of heat to a loop... I know as I have a WC system myself) but I can't see why you couldn't get away with a small OC and it would probably help like I said.

[Deleted]

your CPU is the problem not your GPU. I have a I5 overclocked to 4.4GHZ and it runs wow at 100+ on a 560ti. I7 are not as good as i5s when it comes to pure gaming. And the clock speed on yours is way slower that usual gaming i5s. Keep your 580 and upgrade to a overclocked i5 and you will see a huge improvement in FPS in MMOs.

Agree with this advice - and you can even use the money you saved from buying two 660s for it! Double Win!

[HungryHippo]

The reason the clock is so low it because i was messing around with voltages/ocing before, a while ago actually lol and guess i forgot to bump it up again. Normally have it sitting @ 3.4. So i7 is inferior to i5 in terms of gaming? because i was eyeing off an Intel Core i7 3770K or would the Intel Core i5 3570K be better?

[kNite]

The reason the clock is so low it because i was messing around with voltages/ocing before, a while ago actually lol and guess i forgot to bump it up again. Normally have it sitting @ 3.4. So i7 is inferior to i5 in terms of gaming? because i was eyeing off an Intel Core i7 3770K or would the Intel Core i5 3570K be better?

The issue is there are very few games that use the four cores available in a i5 let alone the 8 available in a I7. Must games are single thread or dual thread atm. Therefore the last 4 cores available in i7 are useless for a gaming machine. Therefore a i5 and a i7 running at equal cloak speeds perform equally for gaming. But a i5 is much cheaper (around 30-40%) and in some situations perform better (around 2-5% max) because its does not have the overhead of the hyper-threading. Also they tend to overclock better, have lower heat output and voltage consumption. So for gaming a i5 is indeed much better than a i7.

[Blupparen]

3570k and 3770k performs similar in most games. They are almost the same processor but the 3770k supports hyperthreading which means one core can process two threads at the same time. Its not a 8 core processor. It has four physical cores and 4 virtual from hyperthreading. 3770k is aimed at videoeditors that use programs that can use more than 4 cores. Games usually use one or two and in some rare cases 4.

If I would buy a cpu today I would buy a AMD 8350. It performs like a 3570k but is cheaper and have 8 cores. Since the nextgen consoles will use 8 core processors the 8350 will be more future proof.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

your CPU is the problem not your GPU. I have a I5 overclocked to 4.4GHZ and it runs wow at 100+ on a 560ti.

Not at ultra settings you aren't. At least, unless you spend the entire time staring at a cliff-side in the back end of the Badlands or Silithus.

I7 are not as good as i5s when it comes to pure gaming. And the clock speed on yours is way slower that usual gaming i5s. Keep your 580 and upgrade to a overclocked i5 and you will see a huge improvement in FPS in MMOs.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with an i7 860. Stick that 3.4 Ghz OC back on it and you'll be just fine. I would wait for Haswell and the new GPU series (either AMD or nVidia) with that system (not least because you'll have to rip the water cooling apart and that is a pain in the backside) before. Not much point upgrading it tbh. At least, not for the money it would cost to upgrade it.

[Deleted]

Well my old 460's could beat a 580 so no doubt a pair of 660's would do the same but not by much.....not enough to justify spending £370 on. Better to wait and see what the 700 series will be like. And for the record I recently upgraded from 460's SLI to a single 670 and I still didn't see any real upgrade....only a little less noise and heat.