Maybe try an older driver set.

gutcheck

Yea I thought of that too.  I thought maybe it was just because my resolution went up sky high and I was hitting a VRAM wall, but I have to say now that I have really dug into things, 2 x sli is pretty good, but as CraptacularOne has pointed out you start to feel the pain with AA.  He has 3xsli with those 3GB Palit cards.  I'd be currious to know if his system performs any worse (or better) with only 2 cards.  All my fps results are at the huge res of 7680x1600, except SC2 which is at 2560x1600.  This game also performs better with only 2 cards.

 
Performance is definitely better with 3 cards than 2 in my set up. I don't have exact numbers off hand, but if you ask REALLY nice I may be persuaded into pulling a card and run a few tests for you
 
What games would you like to see?

If I cannot step up my 580s to the 590s I was hoping to get a 3rd 580 and a 2560x1600 monitor. Does the 3rd card scale that bad with only 1.5gb vram @ 2560x1600?

Ok Crap.   Pretty pretty please with sugar on top?  I dunno.  Usually when I'm beggin my kid to eat or something I sing a song to him I made up about washing because he likes to take a bath.  I don't think this would work on you.  So.... Lets do:  Crysis WH, HL2 or Portal, L4D2, Dirt2 and maybe some SC2 if you have it?  This is kinda freaking me out.  With these two cards I am almost outta step up time, but TBH most things with 2 cards run "OK".  Granted, I just threw up some really old titles, but it's what I have.  The really weird thing is Vantage SCREAMED with 3 cards.  54k ish.  With 2 ist's in the high 40's.

Awesome!

OK, I'm back. (what a pain to remove hardware while under the desk) I couldn't test Crysis WH, I forgot that EA thinks I'm a pirate and wants me to buy another license for the game despite it being purchased through Steam...... Anyway, I substituted it with BFBC2. I'm keeping it brief but here we go:
 
Driver = 266.58
CPU = 4Ghz i7 970
Cards @ 850/1700/4200
 
Battlefield BC2: Map = Oasis on an empty server
3x SLI = 115fps
2x SLI = 84fps
 
Dirt 2 (in game benchmark)
3x SLI = 108.8 avg, 89.8 min
2x SLI = 78.2 avg, 63.3 min
 
HL2: Route Kanal
3x SLI = 184fps
2x SLI = 233fps
 
So as you can see that 2 of the games benefited greatly from 3 way SLI. The older game Half Life 2 did not, in fact performance was hurt by it. Not surprising really, that game was released in 2004 when Nvidia SLI was only just begun with the 6 series of cards and way before 3 way SLI would see the light of day. The newer games rocked with 3x SLI.

daveyd007

Hey Crap, I see you have tons of games...how do you have your storage setup if you don't mind my asking?

 
I have my OS and a few games and programs on my 2x Intel X25 160GB RAID 0 array and my Steam games on one of two 1TB HDD's I have for bulk storage. One of the TB drives is just for my Steam games and the other is for all my media like movies, music, pictures...ect.

daveyd007

Nice layout, makes complete sense as I wouldn't raid0 my music movies and pics. It's too much of a risk. I put those items on an external storage E-Sata, and have a shortcut to it on my desktop. 2 x25-M's 80GB's in raid 0 for the OS only. 4 others in raid 0 for games and programs. 2 WD Blacks for VMWare Workstation OSes from Win 95 - win XP.
Don't ask why...but I like to go back in time once in a while. lol

Thanks for the quick reply Crap! :)

Exactly why I don't store anything I don't want to lose on my RAID 0 array. One drive goes down and you're SOL for whatever data you had on them. The only thing I have on them are things I can easily reinstall like the OS of course and some programs and games for which I have physical discs of. Putting my Steam games on a 2nd HDD was one of the best things I did for them. Once you have them downloaded you never have to actually download them again even if you have to reinstall the OS or if you move them to another build. I got so tired of having to download them again and again as I moved from build to build.
 
If you don't know how to do this it's extremely simple. If you have your steam games on a 2nd HDD all you have to do is keep the "steamapps" folder and the "steam.exe" you delete everything else. Then when you reinstall Windows all you have to do is run the steam.exe and it updates for a minute and after you sign into your Steam account all your games are ready to play again. No download required. If you have games that don't save in the Steam cloud, just make a copy of your "my documents" folder under your user name on your primary drive before you reinstall Windows. And after the reinstall, just copy and replace the "my documents" folder with the one you saved and your save games will be intact too.
 
You can do the same thing even if you have your steam games installed on your primary drive. Just copy the "steamapps" folder and the steam.exe on another drive along with your "my documents" folder. Then you can either keep them there or move them back to your primary drive after you install your OS by simply running the steam.exe and letting it update. Just note that what ever drive it's on when it updates is where all your future Steam games will be downloaded to.

daveyd007

Awesome tips bud!  I will look into applying them from here on out, now I have to redownload my Steam apps for one last time as I had just finished a complete OS install after SP1 came out for windows 7.

Glad to hear how you got it all sorted. Pretty nifty! Muchos gracias! ;)

How come you don't at least use the Steam back up feature? I'm thinking of just copying the steam apps file though because while it works backing up almost 200GB of game files takes awhile and restoring them isn't that quick either.

daveyd007

As for the steam back up feature, it hadn't really dawned on me. What I got on steam is mostly older games like from the HL2 era. lol

I'll look that up and see which is best. But Craps idea seems logical and perhaps a little easier to do. Either way, it works. Thanks Hemi. ;)

 
Since I last posted, I moved it all over to my other drive and all updated and works fine including save games. It still uses your save files on your OS drive so don't worry about those unless you're doing to do an OS reinstall then you'll need to save them as cited above. Steam folder is now gone from the C: drive. The games actually seem to load quicker when off of the OS drive. 
 
BTW you've got to try Dirt 2. Looks fantastic and runs great and most importantly it's FUN.

Moving the steamapps folder is great and easy. If space is a concern for where you are offloading your steam games, the steam backup feature will compress the games for you. CD option being the highest compression versus the DVD option.
Dirt2 is awesome :)

Thanks Crap for doing that for Gutcheck, really nice of you.

HeavyHemi

daveyd007

As for the steam back up feature, it hadn't really dawned on me. What I got on steam is mostly older games like from the HL2 era. lol

I'll look that up and see which is best. But Craps idea seems logical and perhaps a little easier to do. Either way, it works. Thanks Hemi. ;)

Since I last posted, I moved it all over to my other drive and all updated and works fine including save games. It still uses your save files on your OS drive so don't worry about those unless you're doing to do an OS reinstall then you'll need to save them as cited above. Steam folder is now gone from the C: drive. The games actually seem to load quicker when off of the OS drive. 

BTW you've got to try Dirt 2. Looks fantastic and runs great and most importantly it's FUN.

 
+1 , yep that game is very addicting! :)

Dirt2 is peanuts even on a single GTX 480 like 580 @ 1920 x 1200 heck a mate of mine has two HD 4870 1024MB's and is running 2x 1920 x 1200 without issues on a 4Ghz i7 860 on a MSI P55 GD65, I don't see the issue with such an old game, the only part that is DX11 is the water for the rst it's more like DX9.0c patched with DX11 for only the water effects.
 
a 3072 MB VGA card is only useful in games that really eat the ram like GTA4, M2033 or Anno 1404 or Civ5, these games on 2x to 3x 1920x  1200P or greater? Then yes! The 3072MB VGA cards are useful, but for the rest? Don't even worry about it.
 
You don't need 3072MB cards to run a simplified rendered game such as Dirt 2 rofl, heck even a pair 9800 GT 1024MB's rip through it @ 2x 1920 x 1200 x32 in max ingame settings.
 

CraptacularOne

gutcheck

Crap thanks for that.  I have to say those FPS are really good.  So the 3GB must help too.  With two cards in Dirt2 I get about the same average, but way way lower min fps.  Thanks for the sanity check.  As for WH, I had the same thing.  Just fill out the form here and they will fix it.  Stupid DRM:

http://support.ea.com/

I've done it twice actually and it usually takes them about 48hrs and you should be good for another 5 installs.

What settings are you using in your games? And what settings do you have your system at? Also, did you set your PCI-E payload size to 512 or higher? If not I suggest doing so, it does help a little with 3 way SLI. I have mine set at 4096 or the maximum payload size.

+1  PCI Device:  should be set on PCI-EX for multiple GPUs
Also, how about Memory Gap: ?   Have you played with this setting CraptacularOne and see any performance difference?