GTX 570 + dual monitors

[senaiboy]

Case COOLERMASTER CM STORM SNIPER - NEXT GEN GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5-2500k Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO: USB 3.0, SATA 6GB/s, NVIDIA®SLI™, ATI®CrossFireX™
Memory (RAM) 4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Change to: 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card 1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
2nd Graphics Card NONE
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 500GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD5002AALX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st Hard Disk Partitions 200GB, 300GB
2nd Hard Disk NONE
RAID NONE
SSD CACHE DRIVE NONE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Change to: 12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£45)
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NONE
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply CORSAIR 650W TX SERIES (TX650) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£72)
Processor Cooling COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£49)
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities ONBOARD GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£19)

That's the specs of my build above, already in pre-production but I just read some discussions online about using the nVidia GTX GPUs with dual monitors. Apparently nVidia cards will not automatically downclock itself when idle while using 2 monitors? The heat and power consumption were said to remain high as if it's running at max even at idle. I'm using dual 24" Samsung LED monitors.

Should I change it to Radeon instead before my PC gets to the building stage?

 

[Rakk]

That's the specs of my build above, already in pre-production but I just read some discussions online about using the nVidia GTX GPUs with dual monitors. Apparently nVidia cards will not automatically downclock itself when idle while using 2 monitors? The heat and power consumption were said to remain high as if it's running at max even at idle.

Really?
I'm sure the temperature on my NVidia GPU drops considerably when I go from gaming to not gaming - and that would suggest it's not still running at full wack, and I always use dual-monitors.

 

[senaiboy]

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=187662&st=20

An nVidia forum admin said:

- Pretty much all recent GeForce cards (including GTX 500/400/200 products) have a single monitor idle mode where clocks run at lower than 3D levels to save power.
- By default, a GeForce GPU driving multiple monitors will run in 3D mode (full clocks).
- In driver release R256, we introduced a new SW feature whereby the GPU can drive multiple displays while running in idle mode *IF* the displays are running at the same resolution and timing (I recommend using matching displays to ensure all timings are the same, but different displays can work as well if resolution/timings are the same)
- If you have SLI, just plug one display into each card and you will run into idle mode regardless of resolution.

We set our default fan curves to optimize both temperatures and acoustics across single display idle, multi-mon idle, and 3D. However, you can use 3rd party tools like MSI Afterburner to customize fan settings to your liking (i.e. trade off temperature vs. acoustics).

Is there any significant difference between idling using one monitor and idling using two monitors? Most of the posts I read on the internet advised to go for Radeon if using multiple monitors, but as it's the internet it's hardly reliable :wacko: