2 x GTX580's watercooled and in SLI OR 1 x GTX590 watercooled?

[Germonicus]

2 x GTX580's watercooled and in SLI OR 1 x GTX590 watercooled?

I ask because I've just noticed that the Asus Maximus IV xtreme has 2 x PCie 16x but they only work x8 x8 with 2 cards.

I'm wondering how big an effect running a dual card x16 over 2 cards at x8 x8 will have? Will it be noticeably better or will the beefiness of 2 GTX580's compensate for any (if there is any) PCie bottlenecking x8 x8 may cause?

It or they will be going in this system:
Corsair Obsidian Series 800D case
Watercooled CPU block
360 rad +3 fans,pump,750 res etc
8GB Corsair Dominator GT with DHX and Airflow Fan (If I go for 4 cores)
Corsair 1000 Watts HX1000W PSU
128 GB Crucial C300 Series SATA III SSD
1 x 2TB HDD
Asus Xonar Essence STX PCI-E Audiophile Sound Card

Few other bits n pieces but that's the main stuff.

 

[Kenmitch]

I don't think you'd notice a diff in real life. Here's the 1st comparison I found

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...a-x58-sli-lga-1366-motherboard-review-13.html

It's your choice as far as which way you go on the cards. I guess the 590 would wind up the cheaper route....But the 580's would give better performance due to clockspeed and overclocking headroom.

 

[smackababy]

Going 8x/8x won't cost you enough performance that the GTX590 will out perform them.

 

[Germonicus]

Cool,that's what I wanted to hear,Thanks guys

 

[3DVagabond]

AFAIK there's no difference between x16 and 2*x8. It's still the same overall bandwidth. The 2 GPU on a single card are sharing the x16 bandwidth the same as the 2 slots are.

 

[scooterlibby]

I was hesitant to about 8x 8x and I don;t have any metric to personally compare my experience to, but my 580 SLI experience (air cooled) has been nothing but positive. I like how much SLI and Crossfire have improved over the years (my first dual setup was two 7600's).