EVGA Z77 FTW is a nice looking board. I hadn't looked at it yet. I wasn't really planning on getting Z77 so I hadn't looked at many boards. I've always wanted to try an EVGA board so it would definitely be an option. In fact, if Micro Center carried EVGA boards I'd probably go grab one today and try it.
 
I'm having major issues with this machine. I have yet to even get into Window's since putting the cards on water. I tried to reformat and I can't even get all the way through installing Windows. Last night it got to 35% on expanding Windows files and then sat on 35% for about 90 minutes before I finally shut it off. I'd say the entire installation process when operating normally took about 20-25 minutes when I did it back in January.
 
I'm honestly kind of at a loss for what to do. This build has just been a nightmare. I had major problems with the motherboard and my water pump, ultimately having to RMA both when I built the first part of it, and now it appears the graphics cards are giving me major problems as well.
 
I just don't know what to do. The cards are fine when ran individually, but refuse to go into Windows when in 3-way SLI. At this point I don't know how it is not the cards. Last night I unplugged everything from all USB ports and all SATA devices other than my SSD ... crash. I was having no issues whatsoever and had not seen a Blue Screen on this machine since back in January when I was trying to set my overclock. Since last Friday morning (a mere 12 hours after I decide I'm keeping the cards and order waterblocks for them I might add) this thing has been nothing but blue screens and freezes and I don't know how it's not the cards. Nothing else has changed.
 
I'm taking suggestions for what to do. I'm at a loss. Cards are fine individually and completely worthless in 3-way. I've never ran 3-way on this board so I can't verify that it works with another set of cards or anything.
 
I'll obviously be trying to get this pile of crap loaded into Windows for probably the majority of the day, so if anyone has any pointers on what to try or at least steps to take I'd be appreciative. I didn't feel this lost or helpless when I put my very first PC together .
 
I've spent $1600+ on graphics cards and cooling for this pc in the past three weeks and I can't even use the machine in any capacity. It also looks like I'm going to have to spend more just to figure out what the problem is. Man, this hobby is beating me and my pocket book down right now .

Well I did a full format in the second machine and to my surprise was able to install Windows normally with only one card active. By that I mean only one card was connected with power and I had all but one of the PCI-E jumper switches on my mobo off.
 
I installed mobo drivers, updates, and then graphics drivers. It is booting ok, but still doing weird things. I cannot enable surround. I have reinstalled the 301.42 drivers 3 or 4 times already, but it's doing weird stuff.
 
Here's a screenshot:

 
Like, what the hell is it doing? There's only 3 cards and only 3 displays, but it's showing card #3 twice as well as display 2 twice. It has also suggested to me several times to install an SLI connector to use an SLI ready setup when the SLI connector has been on there the whole time. Just baffling.

Interested in parting with those 570's?

OK, so I'm very happy and relieved to report that after a full format of my drive and fresh install of everything, it appears that things are working properly.
 
I played BF3 for a while and it seemed good and now I'm stress testing a +50 Mhz OC on all the GPU's along with my 4.7 CPU OC just to see what the  max temps will be.
 
Incredible results... I clearly got better at putting the blocks and paste on as I put them on in order of card 1, 2, and 3, but with the GPU's running at 1278, 1228, 1228 and the CPU at 4.7 I'm seeing max temps of 43, 41, and 35 on the GPU's and 56, 64, 63, 58 on the four cores of the CPU. This is after about 45 minutes of all running 100& via AIDA64 Extreme Edition stress test. I'd say it's about 68F in my basement right now, and all 10 Yate Loons are running the full 2000RPM. Still not near as loud as the GPU's were!
 
Here's a little peak at what the rig looks like now

 
I'm probably going to order a Z77 FTW soon and give it a try. I'm going to RMA my MIVE-Z because it's still shoddy on the USB connections. My mouse cuts out a lot and it's pretty annoying. I can deal with that as long as it isn't blue screening all the time.
 
Z77 FTW looks like a sweet board and I've been wanting to try an EVGA board. Hopefully PCI-E 3.0 x8 across all 4 PCI slots will unlock the full potential of this beast!

Afterburner
 Hey keys... Are you saying the 2G card is just fine and you are not needing a 4G card?  I am asking for clarification, not challenge... I am not yet with a 4G in hand to try myself. But from day one with the 2G been thinking and offering info along these lines... http://forums.evga.com/fb.ashx?m=1595288

 
I have been testing 670 4GB Tri-SLI with my 3770K in a Z77 G1 Sniper 3 all day today using 5760x1080.
 
Everything that I posted previously in this thread is pretty much what I am seeing, and even with THREE 670 4GB GPU's I still can't use 4xMSAA in BF3 and stay above 60fps the majority of the time on Caspian Border 64.  However it's not quite what I expected exactly because I am also seeing wildly varied GPU load across the three cards like thebski.  
 
With two 670's in SLI they are high 90% range almost all the time in multi-player BF3, but with three GPU's I am seeing between 40-70% typically.  I tried out some single player campaign missions and there I am seeing the higher 90%+ usage, and this is what thebski had reported earlier with his setup as well.
 
The other thing that I am not liking one bit is that I am seeing what I would call "microstutter" in pretty much every game I play.  45fps on only two cards feels smoother to me and my eyes than 60fps or higher on tri-sli.  I also loaded up Crysis 2 and again even with three 670 4GB's I still can't play the game on Ultra / DX11 / HQ-Textures and maintain 60fps... it's dropping into the 40's quite regularly.
 
So after just one day of using Tri-SLI I have to say that I am not impressed so far... but I will give it a few more days.

Just curious how I am doing so far, here's just one quick comparison run I just did before I'm logging off for the evening.  I used the same settings thebski did on page one of this thread.
 

 
Those numbers look great, but it's not nearly as smooth as just regular SLI... it's a lot more noticeable during the Heaven bench because it's "on rails" and I'm just watching everything closely.
 
At first I suspected the new motherboard, G1 Sniper 3, but I took out one of the 4GB 670's and just ran some games with two in SLI and it's smooth as usual just like it was on my ASUS Z77 Deluxe.

This G1 Sniper 3 runs PCI-E 3.0 at 16/16 or 16/8/8 or 8/8/8/8
 
I'm sure you would net a gain but how much is questionable.  If you have any specific benchmarks you want to compare let me know... AvP DX11 is a good one, especially because it scales with SLI so well.
 
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Aliens-vs.-Predator-DirectX-11-Benchmark-Tool-download-2553.html
 
Try that, leave it on default settings, and use 5760x1080 so we don't have any variance with bezel correction etc.
 
Then if you create a custom .exe you can crank it up to the max as well, it explains how to do this in the results from the bench.
 
 

I hear ya, I'll get some numbers together on that over next few days.
 
I have to figure out what I am doing by Wednesday so I have time to ship back my 670 FTW's if I decide to stay with 670 4GB's.

ikeyes
I will say that I've seen 2500MB+ of VRAM when using the Ultra preset and having Aero enabled while in multi-player 64 Caspian Border, etc... but the real issue for me is that the gameplay just is not smooth at all, and it's definitely not staying at 60fps either.

The gameplay is like butter on two GPU's be they 2GB or 4GB so for me, the highest possible settings I can run is FXAA, AO=Off, Blur=Off.  If I do that with the 4GB Tri-SLI my gameplay experience still sucks... the FPS is higher sure but I do not like the stuttery feeling.

When you run the Heaven benchmark using Tri-SLI do you see any type of stuttering or minor like millisecond pauses as it goes through the bench?  Same settings with just SLI that benchmark plays like watching a movie.

The fact that both sets of cards stutter and chug when you enable AO just gives me the impression that the RAM amount isn't that relevant. It just seems like we still have not hit the point where the GPU's have enough horsepower OR the textures aren't large enough to make the extra RAM show a performance increase. I'm happy with my 2GB FTW SLI, I run with AO on on a 1080p display and it flies like a bat out of hell with it's wings on fire. 

I will continue to rationalize 2GB > 4GB until at least the 700 series cards so I don't feel any regret about my purchase 

New 304.48 Beta out today... I'm downloading now to test:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/45970
 
@raw2dogmeat - I find that if I use any MSAA or HBAO I don't like the lag it introduces, and that goes for 670 2GB or 4GB.  So for me to play with no MSAA, no blur, and no AO enabled = smoothest FPS even though it obviously looks a little worse, especially without the AO enabled.

crazyrob

As for slot bandwidth in sli, I'm pretty sure enabling sli limts all the cards to lowest common denominator.  So in a 4x/8x/8x situation, you'd essentially be running all the cards at 4x even though it's electrically capable of more, due to sli limitations.  This may be old information, or just flat out wrong, but I thought I read that somewhere...

 
If that is true then that would change things quite a bit. If that's the case, then there would be a huge difference between my MIVE-Z @ x8/x16/x16 PCI 2.0 (effective 3.0 rate of x4/x4/x4) and the Z77 @ x8/x8/x8 PCI 3.0.
 
It would also help clear up why the GPU usages vary evenly. By that I mean that none of them run near 99% all the time. I wondered why my two cards in the x16 slots were ever limited by PCI-E, but that would make sense. It would make sense that it's not the individual cards, rather the total amount of data being passed over the PCI-E bus. 
 
On a side note, I thought the 304.48 beta drivers helped my usage issues tremendously. Before, there was more going on than PCI-E 2.0. I would sometimes see usages down in the 40's, and I was thinking to myself even if I double bandwidth I still won't be at 100% usage, so I knew something else was up.
 
Now, with 304.48 beta drivers if I'm looking at the sky, asphalt of a runway, or water in BF3 the usages across all three will be 95%+ like they're suppose to. Flying over the battlefield they drop somewhere between the 60's and 80's, but it's dramatically improved over what it was before. The usages I'm seeing short of 95%+ now I can believe are mostly all related to PCI bandwidth. We're talking 20% short on the usage at times. That I can believe PCI is responsible for. When I was seeing 60% short on the usages there was more going on than PCI bandwidth. Luckily, 304.48 has seemed to help a lot of that and I'm ok with where it performs now. It spends a lot of time over 100 FPS and almost all of it's time above 60 FPS. I don't get the drops into the 40's I was seeing before.
 
That said, Z77 or X79 is still on the horizon for me. I don't like wasting expensive GPU horsepower that I've paid for, and my motherboard still likes to kick USB devices off at times. I'm just going to take my time a little bit, let Asus get their full Maximus V line out so I have all the options laid out in front of me, and try to make a decision that isn't going to lead me to having a buggy motherboard like I have now.
 
Part of me says it isn't worth the upgrade to Z77. I just don't know that I'm gaining enough. Also, part of me says if you're serious about running more than 2-way SLI then you're better off having the full PCI solution that X79 offers.
 
Honestly what's probably going to make the decision for me is whatever chipset is less buggy. I'm going to browse X79 and Z77 forums and read about peoples problems. I don't know a lot about either platform, but I don't want to buy either one without knowing what to expect as far as bugs or issues go. Really sucks to spend a pretty stupid amount of money on a PC with all of the highest end components and have some nagging little bug just ruin everything.

I have been testing multiple setups to alleviate the low GPU utilization on BF3; pci-e 2.0 vs 3.0, SB vs IB. Im making some headway. I will post my results later.

sent PMs to OP and ikeyes regarding some basic 2d surround/vram questions on the 670 ftw sli setup..TIA!

The 670 FTW air coolers are very quiet at idle, the 670 SC 4GB were definitely louder at idle though because of the different heatsink / fan design.
 
This is accurate of what I heard with the 670 SC 4GB cards I had... http://youtu.be/UysDJc_820Y
 
The 670 FTW's don't have that "grind" to them as they use the 680 reference cooling but of course when you are in games the fans ramp up and then they move a lot of air but it ramps right back down to basically silent.
 
Here's how I setup my fan profile:

 
My last build had my GPU's and CPU on water and the sound of these 670 FTW's at idle is quieter than the whir of my water pump adjusted to the lowest speed if that gives you an idea...
 
I am not sure yet if I will bother putting these cards on water.  Not because they are so quiet there is no need, it's just not high on my priority list of things to spend money on right now. 
 
As far as trading the 690 for Tri-SLI I would have to ask what resolution are you gaming at?  And why specifically do you feel the need to move to a third card?

Thanks bunches thebski, very nice data set, and enjoy it or not a lot of hard work.
 
;)