SLI Phantoms in HAF-X

[Michaeljcox24]

[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]I keep running out of vram and crashing out on Skyrim, so I would like to upgrade my 1.5 580's to 3GB phantoms.[/font]

[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]My questions, for anyone that will hopefully be able to answer them, are:[/font]

[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]1- Can you run Phantoms in SLI on my board, P8Z68 pro Gen3, or do they take up too many slots ?[/font]

[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]2- would I be able to fit the fan and black plastic ducting that fits on the side window of the Haf-X if I had SLI phantoms installed?[/font]

[font=verdana, geneva, lucida,]Thanks in advance[/font]

 

[Azurite]

Yes imo you can use two phantoms on that board. The phantoms need two slots+.

You see the picture below. 3 first slots for first card and then you get second pcie(big slot) for second phantom. Q#2 i dont know since i dont own phantoms cards nor a Haf-x. But you see the picture right. The second card wont go more down then last slot so if the duct is below the MB edge you be able to use it. You could easely find this out by yourself btw, but np

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Thanks dude

 

[I Hunta x]

What mods are you using? are you running a single screen or multiple? and whats your res?

With around 35-40 visual mods adjusting everything from textures to lights to scenery and on top of that a few ini tweaks my single 580 maxes out the vram 95% of the time yet never drops bellow 50 FPS and rarely drops below the 60fps vsync cap for more than a second or 2 from time to time, and im yet to have a crash other than once when i upped the grass/tree render distances STUPID far to see how far it would physicaly load and even then it took 15 mins of no clipping around for it to crash.

Before you spend any money on an (In my opinion, pointless) upgrade try these to see if they fix your crashing problem:

Are you sure its maxing vram? if not get the MSI Afterburner on screen display showing VRAM usage and gpu usage to check if it is actually maxing your vram.

Try lowering the quality to medium or high.

Disable any mods you have running.

If running a multiple screen setup try running it on 1 screen.

Try disabling SLI

Try the latest driver or current beta driver/if your on the latest or beta try a previous version. <---- Pre skyrim release drivers had big problems with SLI in skyrim for some people so 100% try this before you spend any money.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

I use a 120Hz monitor, with 3D Vision enabled in Skyrim, so I need SLI 580's to run anything close to acceptable.

I'm using all the mods high res textures but only crash when I have boosts for outside areas (verts flora overhaul, lush grass, lush trees, and 2K Landscape textures).

If I take all them off, and just have 2K textures, it looks pants (imo)

Vram usage is frequently 1520 odd MB 90% of the time, and I don't like skating so close to the top limit all the time.

Also, the cards I have are Gigabyte, blue PCB, one is longer than the other, and in a black and red colour scheme Haf-X they look a bit silly.

 

[killablade]

Why not go 4GB GTX 680 Phantoms?

 

[I Hunta x]

Its pointless swapping them out for 3gb cards if the crashing isnt caused by vram issues other than the looks side of things tho tbh if it isnt that whats causing it and your getting good enough performance atm. Atleast try with different drivers to see if that fixes your problem first.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

I've run every single driver update from nvidia since christmas (beta and whql), the crashes happen all the time with different drivers.

 

[I Hunta x]

Fair enough does it crash with 3d disabled at all?, im still leaning towards it not being a vram issue tho as Bethesda have been pushing out realy sloppy games recently (ie FO:3 WET, FO:NV, Brink and rage AND skyrim) and taking an age to fix them up properly so i wouldnt realy be suprised if it was a vram issue.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

I got the cards at a very good price, and will selling my old ones on the bay along with an old 27" monitor, I reckon the money I've had to put down for the upgrade is 150 if I can shift them

And the crashing has stopped. Vram usage (for exactly the same settings) is 1.9GB.

 

[jackjack]

[font=comic sans ms,cursive]SLI Phantoms....that's sound yummy

[/font]

PLease review it bro off course after you have it

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Performance wise on skyrim they thrash the daylights out of my old cards. Only thing bad i can say about them is they are a lot louder than i expected them to be