Hurling myself back into pc gaming...

[r-18]

2006...really ...that long ago...it seems like it was just ...idk like last year....

[mussolini]

Age of Empires III?

[captaincrunch]

Don't get skyrim if you have other priorities...



... because those will no longer be priorities anymore :)

SLI isn't necessary btw. I bought a 6850 last year in anticipation of going crossfire w/ 2 of them, but quickly found out I can run basically everything at max or near max res at decent fps with the one. Your 580 is far better than that.

[KelsieKatt]

Originally Posted by captaincrunch

SLI isn't necessary btw. I bought a 6850 last year in anticipation of going crossfire w/ 2 of them, but quickly found out I can run basically everything at max or near max res at decent fps with the one. Your 580 is far better than that.

That's true. In general it's not hard to max out most games these days as the console market has been holding PC hardware waaaaaaaaaaaaay back.

As it is, one of the major downsides is that a lot of games still even to this day launch with various bugs related to Multi-GPU set ups, which requires you to disable the second one anyway just so you can play the game.

---

As for me, I'm running on a 4890 and I can max out everything in DX10. (My CPU is the i5-2400k model @ 3.1Ghz.) The only thing I can't do is DX11 which is barely supported right now so I'm not in a hurry. Really crazy thing is I was originally using a Geforce 8800 Ultra (5 year old card) which could still hold its own extremely well and almost max out most games after I updated my CPU to a quadcore, so it seems even that old tech was being bottlenecked a lot back when it was made. I was just going to stick with the 8800 until at least the ATI 7000 series comes along, or maybe later, but I got the 4890 for free.

In general, the market isn't moving a lot right now outside of the rare PC exclusive, and some badly optimized console ports here and there which require a lot more power than they rightfully should.

[Blaze13]

Originally Posted by KelsieKatt

As it is, one of the major downsides is that a lot of games still even to this day launch with various bugs related to Multi-GPU set ups, which requires you to disable the second one anyway just so you can play the game.

I will disagree, So far i have never disabled my second card for a launch day game.

As for Sli not being necessary its nice to have from the start if your gonna go Nvidia surround with 3 1080p moniters.

[KelsieKatt]

Originally Posted by Blaze13

I will disagree, So far i have never disabled my second card for a launch day game.

And a number of friends who use multiple GPUs would also disagree with you as well.

Originally Posted by Blaze13

As for Sli not being necessary its nice to have from the start if your gonna go Nvidia surround with 3 1080p moniters.

Yeah, that's one of the few scenarios where it actually would benefit.

[riotranger]

Do you think one 580 can handle decent fps in some of the more graphically intense games like rage/the witcher 2 in ultra settings? I'm also planning on making a few videos w/ fraps so I would appreciate at least > 50.

[KelsieKatt]

Originally Posted by riotranger

Do you think one 580 can handle decent fps in some of the more graphically intense games like rage/the witcher 2 in ultra settings? I'm also planning on making a few videos w/ fraps so I would appreciate at least > 50.

I can't comment on The Witcher 2 as I haven't played it, but Rage is very easy to max out.

Although... I warn you, contrary to the marketing hype Rage is one of the worst examples of a lazy console port. Even after tweaking the ini settings to achieve the best settings, it's only a marginal improvement over the Xbox 360 version, which is kind of depressing.

Main thing you have to worry about with Rage is whether it will actually work bug free or not as the launch was atrocious and even after patches, they still haven't ironed everything out. If you can get past that part, running the graphics is easy. (As a side note, the PC version also has almost no graphics options because it was built to scale automatically with your computer, so the only way to adjust it is with ini tweaking. It's major bullshit.)

As for Fraps, that's primarily going to impact your CPU and RAM. The graphics card does very little processing in relation to that and having a second one will make little difference if any at all.

Edit: I would probably say the best approach might be to just try the single 580 by itself and if you feel it isn't getting as much performance as you like from various games, buy a second. Otherwise, there's no real rush is there if you're uncertain?