Thank you for the detailed reply.  I still have to learn a lot to be able to maximize the Octane use in my system.  My motherboard is the sabertooth x79 from Asus and I currently have the two top PCIE x16 slots populated with the GTX 580 cards.  I have the last PCIe 3.0 x16 slot free so I'm guessing I couls stick my third graphic card there and use it for my monitor and the OS.  Problem is that third PCI slot says in the motherboard manual that it gets used at x8 mode instead of x16 mode so I'm wondering if my system performance will diminish.  Right now Windows 7 gives me a 7.8 rate because my i7 3930K CPU is being ran at stock, I know if I overclock just a little it can get to 7.9 but if I use a weaker card for my system and in x8 performance may dip in OpenGL viewports I guess, unless the two GTX 580's keep being used even though they don't connect to a monitor.  Many questions, like I said I still have a lot to learn.