GTX 590 Amazingness

[ramrunner800 10]

This morning I had my first opportunity to do some test flights with my new GTX 590 in surround, and it is a world of difference from my ATI HD 5770. With the 5770 I was unable to fly in weather, with heavy traffic, or in extremely dense autogen (such as Aerosoft's Megacities SFO). Today I cruised around this areas with Traffic X's Airliner and GA both at 100% with overcast sky's, during the day at a smooth 25 FPS (pinned within FSX) and at night w/ UTX night lighting active at about 20 fps. The difference is amazing. I haven't applied too many tweaks to my FSX.cfg yet, so I'm sure that will provide me a few more fps, as will installing the external frame limiter.I know alot of people say stay away from the GTX 590 b/c it has dual GPU's, but if you want to fly in surround it's an excellent option.

[AWACS 12]

I know alot of people say stay away from the GTX 590 b/c it has dual GPU's, but if you want to fly in surround it's an excellent option.

I'm pretty sure it's mostly because it's like an $800 card. But I am glad for you, at the moment I'm just trying to figure what game today would require such a beastly card.Also, I want to ask you, I noticed that you have HT enabled, do you feel it helps FSX any? Mainly, because I just turned mine off, and was wondering if maybe I should put it back on? From what I've heard, FSX and most games do not utilize it, but I was wondering your thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

[ramrunner800 10]

People tend to stay away from the 590 because multiple gpu's tend to have lower performance when using a single monitor. There are tons of users on here who use twin GTX 580's (or even the 3gb VRAM models), which cost alot more than a single 590. I posted because while I was choosing a card (especially one that was such a significant investment), I felt that there was no such thing as too much information, but there weren't many posts on the 590. I hope that somebody looking for such a card can benefit from my experience.Regarding hyperthreading, my computer is a new build, and I'm systematically testing different settings. I haven't gotten to changing my hyperthreading setting yet. The consensus in all the forums is that FSX can only take advantage physical cores, not virtual ones, so hyperthreading is of no benefit. Turning hyperthreading off should have no direct effect on your performance. Turning hyperthreading off should, however, lower your core temps. This will result in an increase in overclocking headroom. I have only been able to get 4.4 GHZ stable with watercooling and hyperthreading on, which is pretty unimpressive for the 2600K. I will soon turn hyperthreading off to see if I can get up to 4.8GHZ.

I'm pretty sure it's mostly because it's like an $800 card. But I am glad for you, at the moment I'm just trying to figure what game today would require such a beastly card.Also, I want to ask you, I noticed that you have HT enabled, do you feel it helps FSX any? Mainly, because I just turned mine off, and was wondering if maybe I should put it back on? From what I've heard, FSX and most games do not utilize it, but I was wondering your thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

[alainneedle1 97]

Here, directly from the horse's mouth, (not comparing Phil to a horse) http://blogs.msdn.co...multi-core.aspx

[dazz 69]

It still looks a better investment to get two GTX560Ti and overclock them. Same or even more performance for cheaper, but I'm curious about something: when using a dual card like the GTX590 I assume it has a full 16x PCIe 2.0 for it, but is it 8x for each GPU or both share the total 16x BW?With a two way SLI (like 2 x GTX560Ti ) each one runs at 8x, but do they share the load? I mean if FSX has both cards working at half the load of a single identical card, then I guess 8x for each is ok, but if it has 1 card doing all the work at 8x there may be a performance hit. Reason why I ask is because I tested my GPU at 16x and at 8x (populating the second PCIe slot so that both worked at 8x) and saw a 10% FPS drop. Not much, but it's there, so I wonder if that can have some sort of impact in these P67/Z68 boards with only 8x8x SLI capabilities

[alainneedle1 97]

It still looks a better investment to get two GTX560Ti and overclock them. Same or even more performance for cheaper, but I'm curious about something: when using a dual card like the GTX590 I assume it has a full 16x PCIe 2.0 for it, but is it 8x for each GPU or both share the total 16x BW?With a two way SLI (like 2 x GTX560Ti ) each one runs at 8x, but do they share the load? I mean if FSX has both cards working at half the load of a single identical card, then I guess 8x for each is ok, but if it has 1 card doing all the work at 8x there may be a performance hit. Reason why I ask is because I tested my GPU at 16x and at 8x (populating the second PCIe slot so that both worked at 8x) and saw a 10% FPS drop. Not much, but it's there, so I wonder if that can have some sort of impact in these P67/Z68 boards with only 8x8x SLI capabilities

Dazz, I'm not sure I'm getting what your saying.... for example, if one as a board like my board with 7 PCI-e slot and you want to run 4 card in SLI (2.0 x16x) one will have to use slot 1-3-5-7 ONLY to run their cards at 2.0 x 16x, 3 way SLI would be slot 1-3-5, will scroll down here to see the 4 way SLI explaination http://www.gigabyte....spx?pid=3434#ov

[dazz 69]

Dazz, I'm not sure I'm getting what your saying.... for example, if one as a board like my board with 7 PCI-e slot and you want to run 4 card in SLI (2.0 x16x) one will have to use slot 1-3-5-7 ONLY to run their cards at 2.0 x 16x, 3 way SLI would be slot 1-3-5, will scroll down here to see the 4 way SLI explaination http://www.gigabyte....spx?pid=3434#ov

X58 boards like yours have 36 lanes and can run a dual SLI at 16x16x as you surely know. Let me try rephrase it.A P67 system with a single card at 8x takes a perf hit compared to default single card at 16xWe know that P67 will only allow 8x8x SLI. Two way GTX5xx SLI (two cards in two different slots) running at 8x8x. High resolution (view spanned through 3 monitors for a typical SLI application) and/or high AA. That should increase the PCIe bus utilisation beyond a single card's setup, but the BW remains the same (8x8x in SLI vs 16 for a single card) I wonder if that can be a limitation when running FSX on 2xSLI setups in P67 considering a single card performs worse at 8x vs 16x even in CPU bound situations, especially if the load is not evenly shared between both cards so one is being pushed but still has only 8 lanes available to it. This is probably stupid, I've never tried SLI and don't know if both cards always work 50 - 50 or what, so thought I would askA Zotac GTX480 here goes for just 215€ ATM, with the reference cooling, perfect for an SLIwith my W3, might just pull the trigger and test it myself hehe. Going by what PT said in his blog about SLI, it should help run 4xSGSS or something crazy like that, but I'm concerned about the "lack" of lanes in this platform for this particular case (SLI + FSX)

[ramrunner800 10]

The 560ti 2gb's were indeed a very tempting option, especially as it seems that vram is the real limiter in running ultrahigh resolutions. In reading overclock.net, while the 590 oveclocks horribly on air, it seems that when the 590 is watercooled it overclocks into the 800-900+ mhz range, and I doubt that a pair of 560's would reach that same performance level. I also really wanted an nvidia single card solution for 3 monitors, which keeps my other PCI-E slot free to be hooked up for additional monitors.

[alainneedle1 97]

X58 boards like yours have 36 lanes and can run a dual SLI at 16x16x as you surely know. Let me try rephrase it.A P67 system with a single card at 8x takes a perf hit compared to default single card at 16xWe know that P67 will only allow 8x8x SLI. Two way GTX5xx SLI (two cards in two different slots) running at 8x8x. High resolution (view spanned through 3 monitors for a typical SLI application) and/or high AA. That should increase the PCIe bus utilisation beyond a single card's setup, but the BW remains the same (8x8x in SLI vs 16 for a single card) I wonder if that can be a limitation when running FSX on 2xSLI setups in P67 considering a single card performs worse at 8x vs 16x even in CPU bound situations, especially if the load is not evenly shared between both cards so one is being pushed but still has only 8 lanes available to it. This is probably stupid, I've never tried SLI and don't know if both cards always work 50 - 50 or what, so thought I would askA Zotac GTX480 here goes for just 215€ ATM, with the reference cooling, perfect for an SLIwith my W3, might just pull the trigger and test it myself hehe. Going by what PT said in his blog about SLI, it should help run 4xSGSS or something crazy like that, but I'm concerned about the "lack" of lanes in this platform for this particular case (SLI + FSX)

I'm learning something new everyday....I did not know that your board with 2 cards can only run 2x 8x....The Big Bang Marshal MSI board with 8 PCI-e slot can't run more than 2 card in SLI (2 x 16x) here scroll down http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130595&cm_re=p67-_-13-130-595-_-Product what's up with that?With your CPU at that speed with 2133MHz rams I'm sure the GTX 480 will be your bottleneck as mine is. As far as your other question...I don't know?

[dazz 69]

The Big Bang Marshal MSI board with 8 PCI-e slot can't run more than 2 card in SLI (2 x 16x) here scroll down http://www.newegg.co...0-595-_-Product what's up with that?

All I7 9xx (Bloomfield, Gulftown - X58) sport 36 PCIe 2.0 lanes. That's in the on-die PCIe controller of the CPU itself, so the max badwidth for all of them is 8x8x8x8x for a quad SLI and 16x16x for dual SLIYour mobo has two nf200 chips that "fools" the system so that it runs at 16x16x16x16x, but it's twice the lanes at half the speed, so it's the same thing (same PCIe BW) as having 8x8x8x8x at full PCIe 2.0 speeds.*EDIT: apparently X58 boards can't run 8x8x8x8x, so they need the NF200 to run quad SLI: *Nf200 makes sense in P55/P67/Z68 where the BW is limited to 16 lanes only for tri-sli setups. For dual SLI, even though the NF200 enables 16x16x operation, it's again at PCIe 1.0 speeds, so the same as the native 8x8x PCIe 2.0 of boards without the NF200 chip.For 3 sli, the NF200 chips allows distributing the bandwidth across 3 slots, otherwise one of them would be running at x1 or something and would severely bottleneck the GPU in that slot

With your CPU at that speed with 2133MHz rams I'm sure the GTX 480 will be your bottleneck as mine is.

In FSX the CPU is the bottleneck at the "normal" settings recommended by Ryan at the PMDG forums or NickN (8xS / 8xSQ, 4xSS, 16xAF). It's when I push my AA that the GTX480 chokes miserably, 2xSGSS is ok, but 4xSGSS, 16xS... all bring it to it's knees.