Your thoughts please... 680 SLI and Surround or wait for GK110

Rusty0611 · 29 Jul 2012 at 18:31

whyscotty said:
u can't stop till u pass 4000

psychodil said:
Think that puts you at no.10 on the multi GPU table

Haha! I know - very disappointed with 2 short

. I could run it again and probably get it but I'm not a big fan of benchmarking. I use it to see that I'm running where I should be. Then I game like hell!

The worst bit about formatting is the installation and patching of everything. Takes so long and I only have a 7MB connection.

whyscotty · 29 Jul 2012 at 18:38

It will be worth it once its done.
Hows the fisheyed effect going?

Rusty0611 · 29 Jul 2012 at 18:41

whyscotty said:
It will be worth it once its done.
Hows the fisheyed effect going?

Don't know as been re-installing stuff all day and messing around getting the overclocks set again.

Just finishing patching BF3 now...

psychodil · 29 Jul 2012 at 19:00

I feel sorry for you doing the whole reinstallation, I've been putting that off for months, still got drivers and leftover stuff from my gtx 570 but can't be arsed to reinstall windows and all games

I download at about 2.8mb/s

Rusty0611 · 29 Jul 2012 at 21:45

2.8MB/s? I get around 800kb/s!

Or you mean you get 2.8MB down?

Benchmark of 1080p multiplayer BF3 full Ultra except motion blur and HBAO which were both off - Caspian Border 64. SLI 680's at 1260 core:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
135471, 1221020, 38, 185, 110.949

No idea what the minimum of 38 was. Game just shuddered and I died. Probably a game/server problem

The 680's weren't fully utilised. It was like "this is too easy" and kicked back with the feet up. Ha ha.

Rusty0611 · 29 Jul 2012 at 21:55

Oh and no microstuttering!

Biffa · 30 Jul 2012 at 01:25

You know you can do an in place non destructive reinstall of Windows7 that gives you a clean install but doesn't lose all your software & settings

Works a treat.

palaw · 30 Jul 2012 at 02:58

What sort of temperatures are you getting in SLI? Is the WF at the top? What reference card do you have running as well?

Rusty0611 · 30 Jul 2012 at 07:46

palaw said:
What sort of temperatures are you getting in SLI? Is the WF at the top? What reference card do you have running as well?

Below 60c although as I said the 680's weren't 100% in usage in BF3. In Heaven 3.0 they were but I do have an aggressive fan curve so they kept under 70c allbeit quite loud.

The reference card is just a bog standard MSI card. The one made by nVidia but boxed and stickered by MSI. And yes, Windforce at the top.

Biffa said:
You know you can do an in place non destructive reinstall of Windows7 that gives you a clean install but doesn't lose all your software & settings

Works a treat.

Never knew that. Cheers.

Will keep that in mind for future!

oweneades · 30 Jul 2012 at 09:30

Rusty0611 said:
Thanks. Mine was in multiplayer though (couple of tanks being repair tooled by me as well!) - yours is the single player start isn't it? It's a shame there isn't a 64 man set benchmark because any benchmark I do is going to be different .

I am going to try portrait to see how I get on although I think I'll struggle with the bezels being relatively close to each other.

Have to say, no MSAA isn't as bad as I thought on three screens. It's kind of artificially reduced because there's SO much to look at you don't focus on it. But I did still notice it. 2x was nice (as you say, the difference between 2x and 4x is minimal and the hit is huge).

Yes my benchmarks are a 5 minute run through of Operation Swordbreaker. I did try to benchmark multiplayer but the runs are so inconsistant it is basically impossible to do so properly (outside of say Metro 64 player camping at B...).

Portrait mode is my preference as I do more than just game on the system. I find having the monitors (LG IPS321P in my case) in landscape mode makes working a pain as the span is too wide. I would prefer reduced bezel sizes for portrait mode but I have found once I am in game I don't notice them (very hard to explain but you might have noticed the same thing, the bezels just seem to dissappear after a while).

crinkleshoes · 30 Jul 2012 at 10:18

Rusty0611 said:
2.8MB/s? I get around 800kb/s! Or you mean you get 2.8MB down?

Benchmark of 1080p multiplayer BF3 full Ultra except motion blur and HBAO which were both off - Caspian Border 64. SLI 680's at 1260 core:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
135471, 1221020, 38, 185, 110.949

No idea what the minimum of 38 was. Game just shuddered and I died. Probably a game/server problem

The 680's weren't fully utilised. It was like "this is too easy" and kicked back with the feet up. Ha ha.

That sounds rather promising for when mine are delivered later

Rusty0611 · 30 Jul 2012 at 10:45

crinkleshoes said:
That sounds rather promising for when mine are delivered later

Let me know how you get on

What speed you running your 690 at?

crinkleshoes · 30 Jul 2012 at 10:48

Stock at the minute, but i'll be OCing once I'm setup again.

It'll do 1180 on both cores + 7GHz memory

Rusty0611 · 30 Jul 2012 at 11:43

crinkleshoes said:
Stock at the minute, but i'll be OCing once I'm setup again.

It'll do 1180 on both cores + 7GHz memory

What time is your delivery coming? It took me a long time with my limited space to get the monitors at the correct angles!

I rememeber you saying you have a stand coming as well so you'll probably be OK.

It was the rebuild which took my enthusiasm away. Had re-do all my cabling as I needed to plug in the other two PCI-E cables and the PSU wires are hidden by a box which while being aesthetically pleasing is a pain to remove as you need to re-do the wiring which comes out the top of it.

It took hours as I ballsed it up twice due to impatience!

On a separate note - all those people in GH who say you need 850W to run an overclocked SLI/crossfire set up - nonsense!

I'm not even close to the limit on the 12V.

crinkleshoes · 30 Jul 2012 at 13:15

It's already here - I'm just too busy with work to get them setup right now - hopefully not too long.

Yeah, I have a triple monitor stand, the same one mentioned earlier in the thread - so i'll have them setup together quite easily

psychodil · 30 Jul 2012 at 13:18

What have you got crinkleshoes? Another 690 for sli?

Rusty0611 · 30 Jul 2012 at 13:24

psychodil said:
What have you got crinkleshoes? Another 690 for sli?

690 *is* SLI

But I got your point

crinkleshoes · 30 Jul 2012 at 13:27

psychodil said:
What have you got crinkleshoes? Another 690 for sli?

Nah - not yet - I'm going to see how well just the 1 performs... from Rusty's reports, it sounds like I might be ok with 1 - will see how I get on.

It's the 2 extra monitors + stand that arrived this morning - just unpacking now

Rusty0611 · 30 Jul 2012 at 13:50

crinkleshoes said:
Nah - not yet - I'm going to see how well just the 1 performs... from Rusty's reports, it sounds like I might be ok with 1 - will see how I get on.

It's the 2 extra monitors + stand that arrived this morning - just unpacking now

Yeah... more than enough.

My 110 FPS average was Ultra 1080p (SLI)
I had 58 FPS average on High 5780*1080 (single card)

There was plenty more available to give in the 1080p run. Both cards weren't 100% utilised.

The true testing will come when I get round to SLI testing in Surround after work tonight.

I think we'll perform around the same.

You have PCI-E 3.0 - I have a larger overclock on the cards.

My very rough calculation says they should offset each other (maybe!).

crinkleshoes · 30 Jul 2012 at 14:44

Damn... this spanned resolution is INCREDIBLY annoying to work with... I can't get remote desktop sessions to go fullscreen on any monitor

Is there any way to switch back and forth between spanned resolution and normal, separate monitor, resolutions?

I only want the spanned res for games... never any other time.

Silly ultramon can't understand it either - so I've lost taskbar on the side monitors too!

Rather frustrated and I haven't played any games yet...