What setup would you choose from the following?

[Anusha]

Exchange rate is US$1 ~ JPY80, but that is not really relevant because I have to get a card from Japan anyways. Out of these setups, what would you suggest for a 2600k @ 4.5 + Z68 Extreme 4 + Corsair TX850 + 1080p screen? (i cannot tolerate noise and would overclock the cards as much as reasonable)

[MultiGPU setups]

Gigabyte GTX560 GV-N560OC-1GI (2 in SLI) - used, costs 16.5k yen per card
Gigabyte HD6950 GV-R695OC-1GD (1GB) (2 in CF) - brand new, costs 21k yen per card
Asus GTX560 Ti DirectCU II (2 in SLI) - brand new, costs 22k yen per card
Asus GTX560 Ti DirectCU II TOP (2 in SLI) - brand new, costs 23.5k yen per card
HD6950 IceQ X H695QN2G2M 2GB (2 in CF) - brand new, 26k yen per card
Asus HD6950 DirectCU II (2 in CF) - brand new, 28k per card

[Single GPU setups]

Afox GTX570 - second hand, 23k yen
Zotac GTX580 ZT-50101-10P - second hand 34k yen
Asus GTX580 DirectCU II - brand new, 46k yen

*second hand means, no warranty. maybe just 1 week's checking warranty. brand new must be 3 years or so.

my only issue with SLI/CF is microstuttering. otherwise i wouldn't even consider the GTX580

 

[theeldest]

For a single screen do a 570 or 580. If you think you'd like to do more than one monitor down the road or higher than 1080 then AMD/ATI will shine.

http://www.techspot.com/review/448-battlefield-3-beta-performance/page5.html

 

[theeldest]

Also, this article has some of the best testing and information comparing dual-gpu solutions to single. It's pretty long but quite fantastic. I highly recommend.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516

 

[John Doe]

That Afox looks to be a nice vanilla card. If you're not going to OC as far as it goes, you can pick the 570 up (since it's limited by VRM). Otherwise, I'd try to find a reference 6950/6970 or a Twin-Frozr, which has a solid custom cooler on top of it. Or a pair to CF. BTW, you don't need to worry about microstuttering.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6950/32.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_6950_Twin_Frozr_II/31.html

 

[Anusha]

Bought a couple of HD6950s.

 

[John Doe]

Great. Microstutter is a common myth, well at least for dual-GPU setups. "Microstutter" can only refer to skipping frames. People misinterpret it with CrossFire Scaling. As the second GPU will give more power, your frametime will decrease, which equates to more FPS, and less stuttering. So a dual-GPU setup is in fact likely to encounter less stutter than a single card. However, since you won't get perfect scaling in games, there'll be times the CF setup will underperform against a more powerful, single GPU. On the other times, you'll get good scaling and a constant, smooth action.

 

[Anusha]

Well all I know is, there is some sort of stuttering related to multiGPUs because there doesn't seem to be a way to synchronize the frames. i.e. if one GPU lags for some reason, frames that should come later might come earlier and that constitutes stutter.

I just hope I won't see it in the games I play. I saw a lag while playing Crysis 2 maxed out with the high res texture pack. But it was not microstuttering IMO. Looked like the GPUs were running out of RAM as these cards are 1GB. (would have got the 2GB models I they were not expensive. Diff was like $40 per card)

 

[John Doe]

Yeah, but that's only the situation with triple, and importantly Quad-GPU setups. It's a case of skipping frames between carrying the info overhead along each GPU. Other hand, if you go out of vRAM, it just lags down. And yep, Crysis 2 needs more vRAM with the DX11 patch. Have a look at this

www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1093015&mpage=1