PCper Nvidia surround review with benchmarks vs. Eyefinity

[whismerhill]

by the way, as an aside I don't know if anyone is aware that depending on your country/electricity cost where you live an extreme configuration could cost you a non negligible amount

let's take a GTX480 alone : 51W idle 298W load

let's take a virtual tamlin living in france
298W /1000 * 3 GTX 480 * average number of hours of gaming per day * 365 * 0.0839 kWh (price of electricity)
+ 51W /1000 * 3 GTX 480 * average number of hours of idling/surfing per day * 365 * 0.0839 kWh

this can become quite an amount in itself if we take 3 hours of idle & 2 hours of gaming per day that gives 69€ or 86$ per year of electricity cost alone WITHOUT accounting for power efficiency loss due to power supplies consuming more than the hardware really use (with an already quite solid 80% efficiency this would become 86€ or 107$ ...)

sure I took an extreme case example but still, take this basic formulae, tweak it for your own needs and find out whether your expensive hardware actually cost you some more than you thought ;)

As for myself, this actually represent a bit more than one month worth of electricity bill, or 1/10 of my yearly expenses or a new hard drive per year in electricity bill :lol: :lol: :lol:

edit : a reading error slipped in my math now corrected :oops: :oops:

[Tamlin]

:lol: Virtual wife would be very happy if virtual Tamlin decided to move to France! She was bugging me yesterday about going to Paris again!

Good point, but I would have preferred to use: Cost of GTX480 setup - (minus) cost of alternative = added cost, since a user would probably get a system anyway. :)

[thales100]

hey thales, did you post pictures & details somewhere of your setup I'm interested how all that fits & is cooled
thanks.

Hey, yes i posted two pics here - http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=193400#p193400 . :)

[whismerhill]

:lol: Virtual wife would be very happy if virtual Tamlin decided to move to France! She was bugging me yesterday about going to Paris again!

Good point, but I would have preferred to use: Cost of GTX480 setup - (minus) cost of alternative = added cost, since a user would probably get a system anyway. :)

lol :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
if you're thinking about a couple of alternatives then name them I'll do the calc
or your could use the general formulae below :
(Watt Consumed by your new gfx cards in load - Watt Consumed by your old gfx cards in load) /1000 * average number of hours of gaming per day * 365 days * price of electricity in kWh + (Watt Consumed by your new gfx cards in idle- Watt Consumed by your old gfx cards in idle) /1000 * average number of hours of idling/surfing per day * 365 days * price of electricity in kWh

this could be simplified however I don't think anyone actually cares ^^



ho by the way I did the calc wrong, took the wrong number about idle consumption :oops: :oops: :oops:
I'll correct that right away now corrected

ho and thanks thales100 BTW nice gaming rig :)

[Tamlin]

[quote]:lol: Virtual wife would be very happy if virtual Tamlin decided to move to France! She was bugging me yesterday about going to Paris again!

Good point, but I would have preferred to use: Cost of GTX480 setup - (minus) cost of alternative = added cost, since a user would probably get a system anyway. :)

lol :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
if you're thinking about a couple of alternatives then name them I'll do the calc
ho by the way I did the calc wrong, took the wrong number about idle consumption :oops: :oops: :oops:
I'll correct that right away

ho and thanks thales100 BTW nice gaming rig :)


Take 3X 480 minus 3X 5870 as example. :) It will never be 100% accurate, but review comparison is often done with same amount of cards, so the number can be seen in contrast with those reviews.

[thales100]

ho and thanks thales100 BTW nice gaming rig :)

Thanks whismerhill, yes its running great now with these new Nvidia drivers. :mrgreen:

[Tamlin]

[quote] ho and thanks thales100 BTW nice gaming rig :)

Thanks whismerhill, yes its running great now with these new Nvidia drivers. :mrgreen:

Would be cool if you made a "Nvidia surround - first impressions" thread. I'll sticky it for sure. :D

[thales100]

Would be cool if you made a "Nvidia surround - first impressions" thread. I'll sticky it for sure. :D

Nice idea, ill post my first impressions tonight ok.

[Tamlin]

Nice! :D Lots of pictures if you can! Not a requirement, but I think many would find that fun!

[whismerhill]

in the case of 3x 5870 with still 2 hours of gaming per day & 3 hours of idle per day we're talking about 41€ or 51 $
with a power supply efficiency of 80% that would give a 51€ or 64$

so by upgrading from 3x 5870 to 3x 480GTX you would add 86-51 = 35 € or 44$ to your yearly electricity bill

however that's only valid for this particular example, I know people that leave their computer always on and that changes the whole calculations by a lot, I know people who have childs and play like 30 minutes per day on average and that changes everything again ...

hence why everyone should adapt to himself

Bottomline if you're an extreme gamer and or if you're used to letting your computer idle for several hours a day, it could become more & more meaningful ... however if you're not in any of those case and you have very casual usage obviously it will mean nothing to you ;)

[01Boxer]

So, has there been any other reviews with benchmarks? I would like to see enough consistent data before spending my money.

[skipclarke]

My god there is no other forum, that I see so many complaints. You can go ahead and ban me if you want, I can easily set a new IP and create a new account. If you want to really ban me, then I will just create my own WSGF, I have my BS in CS majored in Web Dev.

You see more Moderation here, so that the forums don't degrade into the quagmires you find other places. Feel free to have a go at creating the next WSGF. You won't be the first. To my knowledge, you'd be the third. They never lasted long.

Designing and loading a site isn't the hard part. Spending the time to build the content and community is what kept the other sites from going anywhere. I like our community. We have very few issues.. Our sponsors and partners have commented on the nice, friendly and helpful nature of our community.

So, has there been any other reviews with benchmarks? I would like to see enough consistent data before spending my money.

I have been in contact with NVIDIA about evaluation hardware. Hope to have it soon.

[Delphium]

I like our community.

+1

I have been in contact with NVIDIA about evaluation hardware. Hope to have it soon.

Ohhh exciting, I like this x]

[matrices]

++

Compared to certain other forums, it seems like the 12-year-old mentality is mostly suppressed here.

[thales100]

So, has there been any other reviews with benchmarks? I would like to see enough consistent data before spending my money.

Hardocp review Nvidia Surround x Eyefinity :

It is disturbingly obvious in our testing that GeForce GTX 480 SLI is superior to Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 2GB and Radeon HD 5870 1GB CrossFireX configurations in 3x1 multi-display gaming. GeForce GTX 480 SLI is a powerhouse of performance at high resolution multi-display gaming. In every game we played it didn’t just come out on top a little, it completely owned the two HD 5870 CrossFireX setups.

If you just want the best performing multi-display gaming experience you can buy with the highest level of image quality, nothing surpasses GeForce GTX 480 SLI with NV Surround. (Except quite possibly 3-Way SLI!) GTX 480 SLI is going to give you the highest framerates and allow you to enable more in-game graphical features and antialiasing levels.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/07/20/nvidia_surround_technology_performance_review/1

:rockout

[SiriusDragon]

That HardOCP article is awesome news. I game at 1680x1050x3, so technically I should get much better performance, even if I did use 'just' 2 cards. 30-40fps to me is fine if it keeps it up consistently, so really the quality settings allowed should be amazing.

The Corsair AX1200 PSU can't come out in Aus fast enough :- I have their HX1000 PSU currently but i'd prefer not to risk it with 2 480s and I want 3 eventually anyways.

I wonder how well 4-way would work in surround, or if it's even supported in surround o.O I've considered 4-way for geek factor reasons, but if it doesn't help with surround then it's pretty pointless. Considering you'd think surround would be an awesome use of all the gpu power.

I feel glad I didn't buy the 5870s i was thinking of buying at some point, even if I have had to wait a while x.x

[thales100]

I wonder how well 4-way would work in surround, or if it's even supported in surround o.O I've considered 4-way for geek factor reasons, but if it doesn't help with surround then it's pretty pointless. Considering you'd think surround would be an awesome use of all the gpu power.

4 way isnt supported in games, only to run benchmarks like Vantage. Tri-SLI is the way to go imo, one monitor per GPU. :rockout Yes, youre right about the PSUs, its much better to buy a tri-SLI capable PSU.

[SiriusDragon]

I dunno about not supported, there has been some benchmarks done and it does *something* the difference just isn't as pronounced as with 2 way or 3 way sli.

This is why I'm curious as to if it'll make an even bigger difference in surround - after all you're pushing WAY more pixels than even a 3d vision setup.

I know there's been some game benchmarks done of 4 way but they've all been a bit suspect. In one the cards barely had any cooling :- Or in other benchmarks all the do is run vantage...

With the way sli and sli profiles work I think 4 way would work in games, it's just nvidia don't want people bitching about it not working as well so they say just use it for benchmarking :P

As much as I'd like a 4 way setup I doubt it'll get one, at least not until I've tried with 2 and 3 480s.

[thales100]

I dunno about not supported, there has been some benchmarks done and it does *something* the difference just isn't as pronounced as with 2 way or 3 way sli.

Do you have a link for these benchies ? Im also interested. :wink:

[SiriusDragon]

I thought there were more, but this is the main one that springs to mind.

http://www.hardware.info/nl-NL/articles/amdnampoZGSa/4way_SLI_GeForce_GTX_480_test/1

There are some cool videos on youtube however...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc0oMzYmJlc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgsVg_KLTy8

So 4 way gaming is definitely possible, it's just not officially supported.