- Nov 18, 2005
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note: Odd, the thread title is changed and shows correctly once in the thread, but when viewing the forum it retains the old title. This is no longer about the 970 SLI vs 290X CF.
[Current status of system and upgrade process]
I figure I should return to this thread as opposed to the previous RMA thread I had or the other Lightning discussions in which I had participated.
So I've got both cards now, for those unfamiliar one had to be sent for RMA.
Now, with both cards in, what I had feared was made apparent: there is essentially zero gap between the two cards. With the cards having effectively triple-slot cooler designs, and my motherboard having a triple-slot space between the GPU slots, I suspected it might be tight.
Well, in some rudimentary testing I was conducting, the bottom GPU performs admirably, basically on par with what I was seeing with only one card in the system.
One thing I had feared was impact on CPU temperature with now having two open-air coolers, on beastly cards, dumping heat into the system. I think my upgraded cooling configuration helped admirably, as the CPU really appears to be unaffected even in Crossfire.
That said, the top card? Well, she gets toasty. Very toasty. And obnoxiously loud, like a jet engine is spooling up next to me, filling the room with its throaty turbine roar. This, I can't deal with, as it effectively kills one of the main reasons a person buys a card like the Lightning: if it's this hot and loud, there is no room to OC. The bottom card clearly has room to spare without becoming obnoxious, so I have high hopes once this is addressed.
How hot does it get, you ask? With Heaven running, I saw it approaching 90ºC on stock fan profile. Pushing the fan profile to 90-100% earlier is sort of useless IMHO, because it simply becomes oppressively loud at an earlier thermal point, and it will still creep up into the high 80s, and I suspect past 90ºC if I let Unigen Heaven loop long enough. As it is, I broke that 90ºC point easily using a less overbearing fan profile but one still designed to crank the fan RPM toward max as it approaches those temperatures.
My solution? I kicked and screamed and guaranteed I wouldn't go this route, but what do you know, my sanity is sort of forcing my hand. I have a Corsair H100i, Corsair H75, and NZXT Kraken G10 on the way.
The H100i will cool the CPU and mount up top in my Corsair Carbide 400r.
The H75 will be coupled with the Kraken G10 bracket and cool the top GPU, with the push-pull radiator installed on the back exhaust spot in the case.
I could still be wrong, but going with 120mm all around does appear that I will have no clearance issue with those two essentially going right on top of one another. I eyed up other rigs with the 240mm radiators up top and it does appear that 120mm fans could extend underneath the 240mm radiator with clearance. It certainly looks to be impossible with 140mm fans.
Once this is all said and done, I'll have 2 extra Phanteks SP140's, and the one currently in the rear will replace the Prolimatech thin-profile 140mm fan. With the NH-D14 vacating the case, that will allow a full-profile and much more effective fan to step in on the side panel.
I'll see how temperatures are handled, I guess I would still have the option to mount the two SP140s on top of the case externally, but I would rather not have that simply for appearances sake. I expect I won't, so I'll hold on to them for a future system build.
I've seen at least one person mention that they installed the G10 with an H55 on a 290x Lightning, and kept the stock plates on, so hopefully this will all come together.
I did finance the purchase, partially, with returning a StarTech DisplayPort MST Hub. It worked perfectly in Windows, but I couldn't get it OS X to cooperate, so it's back to two monitors on DVI, one on DP. And one of the MSI rebates has already come in, so that helped.
Looking forward to receiving these on Monday and replacing the current coolers.
[Earlier Edit.]
So I think I'll be getting one card at first, as I'll be gaming on a single 1080p monitor for a little while. Once I move back out into my own place where I have the space again, I'll return to my 3x1080p setup. I don't foresee going 1440p or 4K anytime soon, because while that's nice for one monitor, that will be impractical for surround resolutions.
The short of it: by the time I ever move to higher resolution monitors for the purposes of gaming (a large high-resolution IPS might be great for photo editing down the road), I'll not only be able to afford upgrading the GPUs at that time, it will probably be time for an upgrade anyway. And those will, more than likely, be far more ready to tackle high-res surround.
So, I've got two considerations: I've always had Blower-type cards. I shudder at the concept of cards that dump all their heat into my system. Now, I do need to get more fans, I have a couple open fan slots. But I don't know if those would compensate for the increase in heat, and it seems the NH-D14 struggles to keep the 2600K @ 4.4GHz cool under duress.
At the numbers I've seen for temperatures from the 970's, I might not be too terribly scared adding two open-air models to my case (I do have a one-slot space between GPUs). I know the 290X generally performs better at 4K thanks to the increased bandwidth, but what do y'all think of the heat tradeoff?
And I know I am opening a can of worms here, but for a majority of games today, which multi-GPU solution tends to have fewer frame-time issues with current drives? I've been satisfied with the 560 Ti's SLI performance over the past few years.
I don't know how long I'll wait until I bought the second GPU, so if one multi-GPU solution doesn't please me, it might be too late to return the original card. I think Newegg only allows 30 days, and I don't expect the second card will be ordered prior to 30 days.
Ultimately, I'm not overly concerned about TDP, however, I do know it will relate to total heat dissipation, and that I am indeed concerned about. I haven't tested my CPU under load in awhile, specifically under games, but under stress testing for stability, I remember seeing close to 80ºC if not a touch higher (may have been summer when I tested? In a generally warmer room at least).
FYI: I have the Corsair Carbide 400R. There are 2 side intake slots, but I remember the CPU cooler preventing a fan in the top slot. I might have to try a slim fan. I have 2 front intakes, and one rear exhaust. I never installed fans in the top of the case, and I can put 2 there, so I will be doing that.
[original post follows]
I have been tossing around the idea of finally replacing this SLI setup, and honestly, I'd very much like to avoid SLI again. Not that things don't work, SLI compatibility seems better, but it seems to be more trouble than its worth. The only reason I went SLI before was the 500 series did not support Surround/triple monitors on a single card. That, and I also boot up OS X (sometimes it's my main OS, sometimes I stick in Windows for a stretch) and OS X compatibility with GPUs is a pain in the rear.
I'm leaning towards the GTX 970, but possibly the 980. I'd like to not spend that much money, but it's on the list of possibilities. For sake of fair consideration, should I still include the R290 series? It seems they were big but the 970/980s, in the benchmarks I've seen, seem to dominate.
How will a GTX 970 compare to my 2x GTX 560 TI 2GB setup? Sometimes I game with the best settings I can on one monitor, sometimes I play with a three monitor Surround resolution (which, currently, would be 6060x1080, bezel compensated). Will I still get a noticeable boost moving up to a single 970? Would I see a significant return on investment by choosing the 980?
I've tried to get an honest comparison but finding Surround performance, as well as seeing comparison between a 560 Ti SLI set with the 9xx series, seems to be hard to come by.
[Current status of system and upgrade process]
I figure I should return to this thread as opposed to the previous RMA thread I had or the other Lightning discussions in which I had participated.
So I've got both cards now, for those unfamiliar one had to be sent for RMA.
Now, with both cards in, what I had feared was made apparent: there is essentially zero gap between the two cards. With the cards having effectively triple-slot cooler designs, and my motherboard having a triple-slot space between the GPU slots, I suspected it might be tight.
Well, in some rudimentary testing I was conducting, the bottom GPU performs admirably, basically on par with what I was seeing with only one card in the system.
One thing I had feared was impact on CPU temperature with now having two open-air coolers, on beastly cards, dumping heat into the system. I think my upgraded cooling configuration helped admirably, as the CPU really appears to be unaffected even in Crossfire.
That said, the top card? Well, she gets toasty. Very toasty. And obnoxiously loud, like a jet engine is spooling up next to me, filling the room with its throaty turbine roar. This, I can't deal with, as it effectively kills one of the main reasons a person buys a card like the Lightning: if it's this hot and loud, there is no room to OC. The bottom card clearly has room to spare without becoming obnoxious, so I have high hopes once this is addressed.
How hot does it get, you ask? With Heaven running, I saw it approaching 90ºC on stock fan profile. Pushing the fan profile to 90-100% earlier is sort of useless IMHO, because it simply becomes oppressively loud at an earlier thermal point, and it will still creep up into the high 80s, and I suspect past 90ºC if I let Unigen Heaven loop long enough. As it is, I broke that 90ºC point easily using a less overbearing fan profile but one still designed to crank the fan RPM toward max as it approaches those temperatures.
My solution? I kicked and screamed and guaranteed I wouldn't go this route, but what do you know, my sanity is sort of forcing my hand. I have a Corsair H100i, Corsair H75, and NZXT Kraken G10 on the way.
The H100i will cool the CPU and mount up top in my Corsair Carbide 400r.
The H75 will be coupled with the Kraken G10 bracket and cool the top GPU, with the push-pull radiator installed on the back exhaust spot in the case.
I could still be wrong, but going with 120mm all around does appear that I will have no clearance issue with those two essentially going right on top of one another. I eyed up other rigs with the 240mm radiators up top and it does appear that 120mm fans could extend underneath the 240mm radiator with clearance. It certainly looks to be impossible with 140mm fans.
Once this is all said and done, I'll have 2 extra Phanteks SP140's, and the one currently in the rear will replace the Prolimatech thin-profile 140mm fan. With the NH-D14 vacating the case, that will allow a full-profile and much more effective fan to step in on the side panel.
I'll see how temperatures are handled, I guess I would still have the option to mount the two SP140s on top of the case externally, but I would rather not have that simply for appearances sake. I expect I won't, so I'll hold on to them for a future system build.
I've seen at least one person mention that they installed the G10 with an H55 on a 290x Lightning, and kept the stock plates on, so hopefully this will all come together.
I did finance the purchase, partially, with returning a StarTech DisplayPort MST Hub. It worked perfectly in Windows, but I couldn't get it OS X to cooperate, so it's back to two monitors on DVI, one on DP. And one of the MSI rebates has already come in, so that helped.
Looking forward to receiving these on Monday and replacing the current coolers.
[Earlier Edit.]
So I think I'll be getting one card at first, as I'll be gaming on a single 1080p monitor for a little while. Once I move back out into my own place where I have the space again, I'll return to my 3x1080p setup. I don't foresee going 1440p or 4K anytime soon, because while that's nice for one monitor, that will be impractical for surround resolutions.
The short of it: by the time I ever move to higher resolution monitors for the purposes of gaming (a large high-resolution IPS might be great for photo editing down the road), I'll not only be able to afford upgrading the GPUs at that time, it will probably be time for an upgrade anyway. And those will, more than likely, be far more ready to tackle high-res surround.
So, I've got two considerations: I've always had Blower-type cards. I shudder at the concept of cards that dump all their heat into my system. Now, I do need to get more fans, I have a couple open fan slots. But I don't know if those would compensate for the increase in heat, and it seems the NH-D14 struggles to keep the 2600K @ 4.4GHz cool under duress.
At the numbers I've seen for temperatures from the 970's, I might not be too terribly scared adding two open-air models to my case (I do have a one-slot space between GPUs). I know the 290X generally performs better at 4K thanks to the increased bandwidth, but what do y'all think of the heat tradeoff?
And I know I am opening a can of worms here, but for a majority of games today, which multi-GPU solution tends to have fewer frame-time issues with current drives? I've been satisfied with the 560 Ti's SLI performance over the past few years.
I don't know how long I'll wait until I bought the second GPU, so if one multi-GPU solution doesn't please me, it might be too late to return the original card. I think Newegg only allows 30 days, and I don't expect the second card will be ordered prior to 30 days.
Ultimately, I'm not overly concerned about TDP, however, I do know it will relate to total heat dissipation, and that I am indeed concerned about. I haven't tested my CPU under load in awhile, specifically under games, but under stress testing for stability, I remember seeing close to 80ºC if not a touch higher (may have been summer when I tested? In a generally warmer room at least).
FYI: I have the Corsair Carbide 400R. There are 2 side intake slots, but I remember the CPU cooler preventing a fan in the top slot. I might have to try a slim fan. I have 2 front intakes, and one rear exhaust. I never installed fans in the top of the case, and I can put 2 there, so I will be doing that.
[original post follows]
I have been tossing around the idea of finally replacing this SLI setup, and honestly, I'd very much like to avoid SLI again. Not that things don't work, SLI compatibility seems better, but it seems to be more trouble than its worth. The only reason I went SLI before was the 500 series did not support Surround/triple monitors on a single card. That, and I also boot up OS X (sometimes it's my main OS, sometimes I stick in Windows for a stretch) and OS X compatibility with GPUs is a pain in the rear.
I'm leaning towards the GTX 970, but possibly the 980. I'd like to not spend that much money, but it's on the list of possibilities. For sake of fair consideration, should I still include the R290 series? It seems they were big but the 970/980s, in the benchmarks I've seen, seem to dominate.
How will a GTX 970 compare to my 2x GTX 560 TI 2GB setup? Sometimes I game with the best settings I can on one monitor, sometimes I play with a three monitor Surround resolution (which, currently, would be 6060x1080, bezel compensated). Will I still get a noticeable boost moving up to a single 970? Would I see a significant return on investment by choosing the 980?
I've tried to get an honest comparison but finding Surround performance, as well as seeing comparison between a 560 Ti SLI set with the 9xx series, seems to be hard to come by.
Last edited:
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