Thinking of grabbing a 6990 , DP port question.

[trigen]

Wondering if anyone here owns a 6990 as i'm thinking of bying one and information isnt always easy to get, found that out when i grabbed the 5770 without a dp adapter.

 

I've seen for 3 monitor support 1 monitor has to be dp capable one the product pages , the monitor itself or is a adapter enough?, seeing as its 4 dp and one dvi its difficult to know for sure, any insight on this would be much appreciated.

 

And if your thinking man bying that card is crazy due to the price one may aswell buy a great one and upgrade in 4 years instead of bying 1-2 new a year... my 2 cents ;)

 

Anyways, thanks for any answer and i know its a bit of a stupid one.

 

Trigen

[Rainmaker]

If you thank that buying that card will put you ahead for the next four years...I think you are crazy! :megalol: As an example, I bought a a 1900xt, which was at the time hot tech, payed over $400 for it too. Where do you see that card taday? But...to each their own. If that's what you want, I say go for it.

 

With that being said, onto more important things. A DP to DVI cable adapter will be all you need. You can get them for about $30 US on newegg or else where. They were going for over $100 a year ago because they had a USB power connecter tied to them. Since, they have become self-powered and prices have come down a lot. I have one myself in the mail that will be here tomorrow to complete my Eyefinity setup. Your monitor does not have to have a displayport, but you can go that route if you so choose.

[trigen]

Thanks , and as for the card nope probably not with moore's law and all but will sure put my mind to ease ;)

 

and i got a nvidia 7800gtx a 9800 gt 2x 2900 xts 2x 4870s 2x 5770 and a few more so i know how fast it goes lol.

[EtherealN]

GeForce 590 - triple DVI output. :)

[Rainmaker]

GeForce 590 - triple DVI output. :)

 

From my understanding, NVIDIA will not do three monitors without dual cards? Even with SoftTH, I could only conclude that you had to have a second as ATI was the only way to output three different outputs from one card?

 

I was leaning to NVIDIA because my last ATI card gave me tons of artifacts whenever it got hot. I was prime to end up getting a 560, but went back to ATI mainly because of their triple monitor support.

 

Edit...

 

Just read up on that, I guess since it has 2 GPU's, it can SLI within itself. So I guess there is an exception to NVIDIA's rule...a $700 exception :)

Edited April 1, 2011 by Rainmaker

[EtherealN]

Three monitors is no problem at all. The difference with Eyefinity is that three physical monitors will be presented to applications as a single logical monitor. (That's what the TH hardware did as well - it presented itself as a single screen.)

 

But as far as simply using three monitors simultaneously, that's no problem at all. You just can't have them pretend to be the same extra-wide monitor.

[trigen]

Its interesting that one guys work with softth hands down beats nvidia and amd in the surround department. My opinion atleast

 

All hail Kegetys

[EtherealN]

Just read up on that, I guess since it has 2 GPU's, it can SLI within itself. So I guess there is an exception to NVIDIA's rule...a $700 exception :)

 

Yeah, and personally I don't feel it's worth it (but I'm the type of person that have only once in my life spent more than ~250 dollars on a graphics card, and that was a 512MB 7800 back when they were new, to replace an ageing 6600, which then promptly proceeded to cause my PSU to explode; that was the specific point in time when I really learned not to skimp on PSU's :D ), but in this context we are comparing two ultra-expensive cards anyhow.

 

And yes, dual-GPU cards are technically speaking SLI/crossfire setups with the advantages and caveats that go with it. In the case of the 590 I'd probably propose going dual 570 or dual 580 instead for that reason: the cores in the 590 are underclocked due to thermal concerns, and since it's a SLI setup anyway you might as well do a regular SLI to ensure you have the advantage of extra cooling surfaces. In my own opinion that applies to the 6990 too, but I'm not as familiar with the specific there to really make a hard judgement call - but I suspect that as long as space in the computer chassis isn't an issue I would assume that two 6970 in Crossfire would be just as good or better. (My opinion being that if you are sinking that amount of money into graphics cards for your rig, you might as well choose to pursue OC's on them to really get your money's worth, and both 590 and 6990 doesn't OC terribly well due to the limited surface area on the heatsink assemblies compared to dual-card SLI/Crossfire.)

Edited April 1, 2011 by EtherealN

[Cibit]

GeForce 590 - triple DVI output. :)

 

Or 2x 560's in sli :P

 

Doh memo to myself. Dont post from the phone, you get sniped everytime

Edited April 1, 2011 by Cibit

[trigen]

looking more and more like a 6970 with 4 dp 2 dvi is a better choice here, especially since the 6990 essentially is a 2gb card and its really the vram that worries me in a large eyefinity setup

[RSharpe]

looking more and more like a 6970 with 4 dp 2 dvi is a better choice here, especially since the 6990 essentially is a 2gb card and its really the vram that worries me in a large eyefinity setup

 

What are you talking about? Both the 6970 and the 6990 are 2GB per GPU designs. The two 6970s should be slightly faster and less noisy though.

[trigen]

what i meant is that the 6990 is 2gb mirrored on 1 card and essentially a crossfire in 1 slot so the 6970 is a better choice for me as it was mainly the 4gb that i was interested in, hence i can grab the 6970.

[jctrnacty]

I would recommend to wait half a year and you ll get the 6990 performance on one GPU.

 

Problem od dual GPUs are drivers, youll have a lot of problems in many games.

the only reason i see in dual gpu is huge monitor over 30 inches where youll need that performance right now.

[zakobi]

If you want the 6970 performance, buy a 6950 and swap its BIOS for the 70's one. :)

[*Rage*]

I would recommend to wait half a year and you ll get the 6990 performance on one GPU.

 

??

 

GTX 680?

 

HD 7970?

[BHawthorne]

I've seen for 3 monitor support 1 monitor has to be dp capable one the product pages , the monitor itself or is a adapter enough?, seeing as its 4 dp and one dvi its difficult to know for sure, any insight on this would be much appreciated.

 

 

And if your thinking man bying that card is crazy due to the price one may aswell buy a great one and upgrade in 4 years instead of bying 1-2 new a year... my 2 cents ;)

 

 

For uniformity sake, I suggest all ports out DP and use the $30 mini-DP to single-link DVI ACTIVE adapters. My reaosning is that the adapters introduce latency and a small bit of tearing into use. With all of them using the same setup though there will be no marked difference between how the displays look though.

 

If you're buying the 6990 to be future proof, you're in for a rude awakening. The card will be EOL in under a year and will be eclipsed by better cards annually. The card will be aniquated in about 2 years. Two years from now the performanace of the card will be equivalent to a $150 mid-range card.

 

With that being said, onto more important things. A DP to DVI cable adapter will be all you need. You can get them for about $30 US on newegg or else where. They were going for over $100 a year ago because they had a USB power connecter tied to them. Since, they have become self-powered and prices have come down a lot.

 

That's inacurate, both the $100 and the $30 active adapters still exist. The $30 only has single-link DVI bandwidth and the $100 one has dual-link DVI bandwidth. You only need single-link for up to 1920x1200. The dual-link is only needed for a 30" 2560x1600 display.

 

My particular setup uses 6 of the single-link active adapters.

 

From my understanding, NVIDIA will not do three monitors without dual cards? Even with SoftTH, I could only conclude that you had to have a second as ATI was the only way to output three different outputs from one card?

 

I was leaning to NVIDIA because my last ATI card gave me tons of artifacts whenever it got hot. I was prime to end up getting a 560, but went back to ATI mainly because of their triple monitor support.

 

Edit...

 

Just read up on that, I guess since it has 2 GPU's, it can SLI within itself. So I guess there is an exception to NVIDIA's rule...a $700 exception :)

 

Incorrect, NVIDIA won't do NVIDIA Surround without two GPUs in SLI mode. NVIDIA dual GPU cards do SLI mode on a single card, therefore can do NVIDIA Surround. The GTX590 has been a lemon of a card though. I suggest if you do go NVIDIA, go with two GTX570 or GTX580 over their single card solution.

 

The problem with NVIDIA is they don't give anywhere near the options that AMD cards give. NVIDIA is only 3x1, while AMD can do 2x1, 3x1, 4x1, 5x1, 2x2 and 3x2 in both landscape and portrait modes. Also AMD can do extended displays on the extra ports while NVIDIA is stuck dedicated to NVIDIA Surround on the two cards while in use.

 

What are you talking about? Both the 6970 and the 6990 are 2GB per GPU designs. The two 6970s should be slightly faster and less noisy though.

 

One thing AMD does better than NVIDIA is offer more video ram on cards. You really need 2GB minimum to do 5760x1080 right. The more video ram the better, or it'll bottleneck with higher settings. My 5x1P system is significantly bottlenecked because of only the 2GB of video ram when running at 6000x1920. there is no real solution out yet to account for 5x1P and high settings, but with 3x1 you're in a lot better shape with 2GB.

Edited April 3, 2011 by BHawthorne

[RSharpe]

If you want the 6970 performance, buy a 6950 and swap its BIOS for the 70's one. :)

 

Except that a 6950 will never clock as well either in the core or the memory as a real 6970.

[Santana]

6990 oc quite well; i am getting 1050 on the core and 1300 in the menory and that's is solid and with temps in the high 70's on air !!

oh and one more thing the 6990 can run as fast or faster than 2X6970. To run as fast as 6990 combo push the bios switch to one and voila; to run faster just tweek a little with for exemple MSI Afterburner.

Edited May 11, 2011 by Santana