Quick question regarding PSU and SLI

**Taxmancometh** · October 29th, 2012, 12:16 AM

I have this PSU Newegg.com - Antec High Current Gamer Series HCG-520 520W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V v2.91 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Is this going to support two GTX 560 TIs? I'm pretty sure it will, but just wanna know for sure.

Thanks!

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 02:08 AM

Tax, whats the CPU you have again?

I doubt it will run 2 560 Ti's in SLI.

you'd probably want a 620W model at least to do so safely.

**Taxmancometh** · October 29th, 2012, 02:21 AM

Well, I currently have a Q6600, but my board doesn't support SLI as it only has one PCI-e slot. My intention is to buy a new MOBO and a CPU. Probably thinking of DDR3 and a new case as well. I thought perhaps since the current PSU I have has 40 amps on the 12 volt rail it would handle SLI. I really don't want to shell out another 80 bucks.

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 02:55 AM

yeah, I used that one PSU Calc I use for other posts, factored in a Q6600, 4 Sticks DDR2, a regular SATA HDD, SSD and DVD Drive, 4x 120mm fans, and Dual 560 Ti's in SLI, and was saying the recommended wattage for a PSU was 523W or so...

if you went with a newer CPU, it'd probably be lower Wattage than the Q6600, but you'd still be pushing it on the PSU.

that High Current Gamer PSU, is the same Wattage Rating, and Specs as the Neo Eco 520W I have, which usually floats around $60 or less. Same 40A Rail as well.

And I think their exactly the same, they have the same exact Amp Ratings for all 3 rails.

Newegg.com - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Plus it currently has a $10 Promo code with it as well.

That's why I've never really recommended the Antec HCG units, their over priced and the same basic units as the Neo Eco's at least in specs and the Neo's are cheaper generally.

620W Neo is less than $70: Newegg.com - Antec NEO ECO 620C 620W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Even less, the 650W Green gets its FULL 650W Rating on the Dual 12V Rails: Newegg.com - Antec EarthWatts EA-650 GREEN 650W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Its probably the cheapest 600W+ model on newegg thats a decent brand.

**Taxmancometh** · October 29th, 2012, 03:55 AM

I'm not looking to upgrade now, but sometime in the summer I may go ahead and buy then parts for a new build. I'm just testing the waters now so I know all of what I need for my future build. And guess what? I will finally go with Windows 7.

I'm using XP 64 on the desktop now. I really don't want to upgrade unless i really have to because I simply have too much invested in my Flight Simulator with well over 20 GB of data. My rig is here. Xfire - gh0stplayer's Profile

I use to be very active in playing Call of duty and BF2 mostly without xfire turned on so it didn't log the hours I have played.

Question: What new CPU from Intel do you see coming out this summer? I'm looking for a good beast. I would like to buy an i7.

**Taxmancometh** · October 29th, 2012, 04:03 AM

Just looked at CPUs on Newegg and wow! 300 bucks for an i7 3820 Sandy bridge. How much did you pay for the i7 940 and what is the difference between that and the i7 3820?

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 04:05 AM

By Summer, you'll be lucky to find a copy of windows 7 to buy, I'm almost certain of that, hoping I can catch a good deal on Win7 64 during Black Friday Sales/week this year.

or would even consider Windows 8 for the HTPC to be honest, but I need another copy or two of Win 7 64 for the other 2 rigs or potential rigs, the 3 Way Crossfire Board/CPU and the Socket 939 Dual Core Opteron rig (so I can load down 3 GPU's on one and 2 on the other for Folding, don't want to mess with linux for that stuff)

By next summer, you should be able to find an Open box or refurb GTX 660 or 660 Ti for pretty cheap, hell maybe even 670, and just go with a single card again, instead of 560 Ti's in SLI.

Haswell should be out by then, but from what everyone has been saying is it won't be that much better than Ivy Bridge Right now, but it will be on a new Socket Platform.

For Socket 2011 like Carl D is running, I think it was Late Summer that the Ivy Bridge E Series should be out for the i7's on 2011 by then, apparently Intel wants to delay those until after Haswell has launched.

Not sure if DDR4 will debut on Haswell, or Intel's Server Platforms first, but that should be out later half of next year as well.

Myself, I'm waiting to see if Intel comes out with any cheaper 6 Cores for 2011, over the next year, though I doubt it, but who knows.

Maybe if they have a 6 core on the new socket design, that might be a worth while investment as well. But only if the core clocks are 3.2GHz or more.

Current 2011 6 cores are stock at 3.2GHz I think, while some of the quad cores go beyond that.

of course if I stumble upon a Socket 1366 Six Core in the next 5 months or so, for cheap enough, I may consider jumping to one of those as well, but cheapest I have seen them is $500+ LOL.

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 04:18 AM

Originally Posted by Taxmancometh

Just looked at CPUs on Newegg and wow! 300 bucks for an i7 3820 Sandy bridge. How much did you pay for the i7 940 and what is the difference between that and the i7 3820?

Don't know about the exact differences, but many of the 2nd and 3rd gen Core series have integrated Graphics.

my i7 940 I bought used for around $130 I think, but my i7 920 when it was new, was just under $300, back in Spring of 09.

Solo ran some 3Dmark 11 benches on his new AMD FX 8 core, and its just barely matching my i7 940 in CPU scores.

My SLI 3Dmark 11 scores: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-940 Processor, EVGA 141-BL-E757 score: P8169 3DMarks

His FX 8 Core and Radeon 7970 Score: AMD Radeon HD 7970 video card benchmark result - AMD FX-8350,ASRock 970 Extreme3 score: P9112 3DMarks

CPU (Physics) score is definitely more, but GPU Score is just barely past my 560 Ti's in SLI.

Still, it took adding the latest 8 core in his rig to break past what I get with my i7 940 at stock speeds.

I'm sure if I were to OC my 940 to 3.2-3.4GHz or so (which isn't much past its 2.93GHz stock), it could probably match or beat his.

You can see a side by side comparison of his and my runs:

Result

their neck and neck, for most tests, and that's with an 8 core at 4.4GHz versus a Quad core (with Hyper Threading which technically is inferior to a true 8 core, or should be) at less than 3GHz.

10GB less RAM, and of course running 2 Video cards instead of his one, but my cards each only have 1GB RAM, vs the 3GB his one has.

and its able to for most part keep pace, even with the CPU test, its only 4-5fps less than his.

**Taxmancometh** · October 29th, 2012, 04:19 AM

God! DDR4 already???? I don't even run DDR3 yet.

Just looked at your CPU with an i7 3820. AnandTech - Bench - CPU

I may just sell off my parts and put the money towards the new system. Or I may give the computer to my parents. Not sure yet. I'll keep the SSD and 500 GB SATA drive and DVD drive though.

As far as Win 7 goes, well I shouldn't say this, but my bro has a pirated copy I can use.

Win 8 is just awful looking. More for tablets.

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 04:34 AM

overall its better, but not really by much when you think about it.

the only bench it did better in was the DivX Encoding, everything else the 3rd gen i7 runs better than.

Downside, is that the Mainstream Platforms still are limited in their PCI Express Controllers Bandwidth, Socket 2011, just like 1366 has superior Bandwidth for that and multiple Cards.

Still stuck with an x16 x8 or x8 x8 bandwidth for Dual Cards, or x8 x8 x8 for Triple.

Whether its 2.0 or 3.0 spec.

1366/2011 can actually run x16 x16 for both 2.0 or 3.0 (Sandy Bridge E's on 2011 are 3.0 capable, before the Ivy Bridge 1155's came out I might add, so if you had socket 2011 and one of those E series, you had PCIe 3.0 before anyone else, even though no cards were out for it yet at the time).

my Mobo has x16 x8 x4 x8 config for its x16 slots, or for 3 cards, x16 x8 x8, all 2.0 spec.

Currently running x16 x4 due to fact I can't fit my 2nd card in the last x8 slot since its too close to the PSU.

but there's little if any impact in performance on x4 Bandwidth at 2.0 spec for the 560 Ti.

my USB 3.0 x1 card is plugged into the 2nd x8 slot next to the x16 slot (funny that, because my one x1 slot I have is next to the x16 slot and the primary card covers it up LOL).

I'm kind of hoping my coworkers CPU is still working, and hoping its an i7 960, or Extreme Edition, if it is, that would be a Sweet Bump in clock speed and performance and would close the gap on the 3rd gen i7's (3.2GHz at least on the 960, or higher on the EE models)

ARK | Intel® Core™ i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition (8M Cache, 3.20 GHz, 6.40 GT/s Intel® QPI)

ARK | Intel® Core™ i7-960 Processor (8M Cache, 3.20 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI)

But won't know for sure till I swap it into my spare board and test it out.

At the very least I would hope its one of those, even a 950, with a slightly higher clock Multi, and maybe even D0 Stepping for cooler running.

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 04:38 AM

If you can, hold on to your 560 Ti, the 600 series cards are shit for CUDA processing and the like, the 500's are much better, but the 600's are better for gaming apparently.

so if your doing any Folding@Home, you might be better off running the 560 Ti for some extra processing, I'm sure the 600's do well, but considering their Gaming performance bump (significant) their GPGPU Processing doesn't scale that well either.

AMD's 7800/7900 is where its at for that stuff right now, and given their almost as good in gaming, aside from the top end Nvidia cards, their almost a better value.

But AMD's drivers updates are still not as indepth with updated game profiles and number of programs tweaked with each update, not to mention frequency of driver updates per year like Nvidia.

**Taxmancometh** · October 29th, 2012, 04:59 AM

What is CUDA processing?

Another question. What is the cheapest graphics card to buy to run ultra settings in BF3?

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 05:22 AM

CUDA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I just used CUDA as an example, Radeon cards don't use it, but many people associate F@H and other DC projects with CUDA, since Nvidia cards were top dogs with those Clients for some time, now AMD/Radeons seem to have taken that back, which is only fitting since it was ATI Radeons that first Pioneered the DC Project Processing for Folding@Home and other projects, before Nvidia got into it (the old Radeon X800 on up to the 1900 series was capable, then Nvidia came out with the GF 8 series, and introduced CUDA and took over as the best GPGPU API for GPU Processing on various projects)

As to the cheapest... More than $300, less than $1200.

depends on the CPU you pair with it. But generally from what I've read, you'd need a GTX 670 or better (Radeon 7950 3GB or better), 660 Ti does pretty well, but don't know if it maxes the game out or not.

Multiplayer is iffy, depends on the server, number of players in game, and size of maps.

but for Single Player, 660 or 660 Ti I think maxes the game out easily.

your 560 Ti should be able to run it pretty high as well, on single player.

Aaron, KK, Solo and some others would be able to better suggest a card for BF3, I still haven't bought it.

Price has dropped to $40 at Walmart, but still not willing to pay that much for that game.

now days for me, a game has to be PRETTY DAMN GOOD, for me to be willing to shell out more than $40 for.

In the past year, Skyrim is the only one I have deemed worthy, but I held off on it for so long and finally bought it on steam for $20 or 30 I think.

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 05:29 AM

Should add, that, the GPU Processing and Folding@Home and Use of CUDA is what my Avatar Image is related to.

The Visual molecular model when using the typical Windows Client for F@H, when running CPU or most Radeon cards at the time, the molecule being worked on, the model would slowly rotate, move, etc, but when Nvidia cards were used, watching the image, the molecule would whip around, shake, tumble, rotate, etc at high speed and violently...

due to the fact it was processing data so fast and so much of it at a time.

So I made a 3D animation of a single Atom in a molecule darting around, then using Photoshop I think, I put the Nvidia logo behind it, and that was how that was created.

**Taxmancometh** · October 29th, 2012, 05:30 AM

Looks like I'll be waiting for EVGA's B stock prices to come down on a 660 then.

Or if I'm felling real cheap I'll just stick with my 560 TI. Which brings me to another question: Does BF3 take advantage of SLI? Would two 560 TIs help?

**Taxmancometh** · October 29th, 2012, 05:37 AM

Originally Posted by ShyguyXPC

Should add, that, the GPU Processing and Folding@Home and Use of CUDA is what my Avatar Image is related to.

The Visual molecular model when using the typical Windows Client for F@H, when running CPU or most Radeon cards at the time, the molecule being worked on, the model would slowly rotate, move, etc, but when Nvidia cards were used, watching the image, the molecule would whip around, shake, tumble, rotate, etc at high speed and violently...

due to the fact it was processing data so fast and so much of it at a time.

So I made a 3D animation of a single Atom in a molecule darting around, then using Photoshop I think, I put the Nvidia logo behind it, and that was how that was created.

I was always wondering about your avatar.

I thought it was some kind of beating heart. What did you use to make it into a gif?

I use to do folding several years ago. I had about 4 computers running it at any given time. But I want to save on the electric bill.

**ShyguyXPC** · October 29th, 2012, 06:36 AM

Originally Posted by Taxmancometh

Looks like I'll be waiting for EVGA's B stock prices to come down on a 660 then.

Or if I'm felling real cheap I'll just stick with my 560 TI. Which brings me to another question: Does BF3 take advantage of SLI? Would two 560 TIs help?

Yep, SLI, Crossfire, etc. would 2 560 Ti's help, sure, but your still running a 1GB frame buffer, unless you have the 2GB models. BF3 really benefits from more than 1GB memory, 1.5-3GB helps with micro stutter and various high end eye candy.

with Skyrim, my cards max out their 1GB memory in usage regularly, wish I had gotten the 2GB Cards instead, but oh well.

But next year, I might move to a single higher end card, if one comes along cheap enough, EVGA B Stock, or Newegg Open Box/Refurbs. Radeon 7950/7970 or GTX 660 Ti/670. Though I would consider a couple 660's in SLI, but those would cost more than a single card right now, of course if they were reduced price might not cost so much.

hard to say really, but have to see how things are next year.

Rumor was AMD was to release their 8000 series end of the year, beginning of next year, and its supposed to have a fairly substantial performance increase as well.

though that was going off rumored/leaked specs, but applying current card performance and tech to the specs I've seen, you could be seeing nearly 50% improvements over current specific model replacements.

Originally Posted by Taxmancometh

I was always wondering about your avatar.

I thought it was some kind of beating heart. What did you use to make it into a gif?

I use to do folding several years ago. I had about 4 computers running it at any given time. But I want to save on the electric bill.

Well for the animation I used Carrara that I play with every now and then, I forget how I got the logo on there, can't remember if it was via Photoshop, or if I made a flat plane vertical behind the molecule or what, but the original file was actually an AVI clip, that I just converted to a GIF file using SUPER to convert it.

Then used ImageReady to load the GIF, change the dimensions and image quality down enough to use as a GIF on here.

But one of the reasons I recently redownloaded (from my account on the Daz Website) and installed Carrara 8 again, was to try out on the newer system and maybe make a new avatar image.

**SoloCamo** · October 30th, 2012, 02:52 AM

Originally Posted by ShyguyXPC

but for Single Player, 660 or 660 Ti I think maxes the game out easily.

your 560 Ti should be able to run it pretty high as well, on single player.

Aaron, KK, Solo and some others would be able to better suggest a card for BF3, I still haven't bought it.

I'd recommend no less than a 660ti for ultra settings at 1080p for BF3 for a guaranteed smooth experience in single player. My gtx480 I had overclocked past gtx580 did fine and that's on par / slightly worse than a stock 660ti on average.

64 player online maps are a different beast though - definitely noticed an improvement from my oc'ed 480 to my now oc'ed 7970GE

**Taxmancometh** · October 30th, 2012, 03:15 AM

Anyone wanna buy a GTX 560 TI?

I just bought the damn thing and now it's outdated.

**ShyguyXPC** · October 30th, 2012, 04:12 AM

if they supported Tri SLI (Only the 448 core versions though), and was cheap enough, I'd consider it LOL.

yeah, up until Nvidia Announced the 660 Ti, which was rumored to be the ONLY and last 600 series to be released before working on 700 series... suddenly at the ass end of the year we now have the 660 Ti, 660, 650 Ti, 650, and 400 series rehashes of the 640/630/620/610 cards.

after the 660 Ti came out, and the 660 wasn't far behind, AMD dropped the 7850 prices even further, eventually 7870 as well, putting the GTX 560 Ti off the recommended list, unless it was to be sold for the 560 prices. sadly, even the 1GB 7850's are in that range now, decimating the Radeon 6850, 6870, GTX 560/560 Ti Sales as none of them can compete really.

there's even some 7870's for $230 range now which used to be the GTX 560 Ti's range after their first or 2nd major price drop from over a year or so ago.

I don't remember where you got your card, but hopefully it was discounted pricing, which is why I was sourcing out online sites like OCN to buy a used card from someone.

but Nvidia DID spring the 660 Ti on me after I spent the money on the 2nd 560 Ti, same shit they pulled when I bought the 470 in 2011, less than 2 weeks later the 560 ti finally was released after repeated delays and leaked release date rumors.

660 Ti and 660 were initially supposed to be back in the spring, but kept getting put off until late summer.