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Bitterly disappointed.

gregster said:
Delivery guaranteed by 10am, so I will have the comp apart by then and the EVGA 680 out. I plan to run the Lightning on its own, just to see what it can do (I have pushed my EVGA as far as it will go). Then I will add the EVGA and the other 2 monitors. I expect all to be done by ~12:00 (so long as all goes to plan).

A dedust is in order also and it will be a shame to miss the oportunity to do that.
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Only one more sleep till SURROUND TIME :D:D:D:D:D
 
whyscotty said:
Only one more sleep till SURROUND TIME :D:D:D:D:D
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lol yep. My biggest concern is the distance the far left monitor lead will have to go from the comp. I may have to do a reshuffle of where my comp is. I can get round it easy but I like where my comp sits now.

When I do pics, you will see what I mean.
 
gregster said:
lol yep. My biggest concern is the distance the far left monitor lead will have to go from the comp. I may have to do a reshuffle of where my comp is. I can get round it easy but I like where my comp sits now.

When I do pics, you will see what I mean.
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Longer lead perhaps?
 
Almost finished Gregster :). I forgot that while my WF will roll at 1300 my reference MSI will not. As such my suicide run will be at 1275. :)
 
Here's the results on the doors:

i7 3770k @ 4.4 Ghz
GTX 680 2GB SLI
306.02 beta drivers
Triple Monitor Surround 5760*1080 (5800*1080 bezel corrected)

Operation Swordbreaker (BF3)

All of the results are fully maxed Ultra settings unless otherwise stated (i.e. the last one)

Stock boost - one boosts to 1100 (reference) the other to 1180 so to counteract this I have set a negative offset on the core speed of the Windforce to get them to both run at 1100 Mhz.

GPU speed: 1100 / Memory: stock :-

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
19202, 349707, 35, 95, 54.909

GPU speed: 1175 / Memory: +200 :-

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
20350, 351985, 41, 91, 57.815

GPU speed: 1240 / Memory: +300 :-

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
20493, 342578, 42, 95, 59.820

GPU speed: 1270 / Memory: +450 :-

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
22250, 354372, 46, 98, 62.787

The overclock while fairly decent for a 680 is by no means the highest around. By overclocking you move from what I would call unplayable minimums and quite low averages to bordering on OK minimums and averages and this game is about as tough as it gets on VRAM/GPU grunt combined at the moment.

And now the interesting one (I feel): as you won't have enough GPU grunt to power MSAA x4 in Multiplayer (although my benches reveal with a healthy overclock you can quite easily run it in Single Player) I ran a bench with the 1270/+450 settings on the following settings in game:

Full Ultra - except:
MSAA off
HBAO off

Here was the results:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
37682, 363561, 81, 177, 103.647

By turning MSAA off I noticed my FPS jumping from around 60 (with it on 4x) in the LAV at the beginning of Operation Swordbreaker to around 110! As you can see it is a tremendous resource hog even in Single Player at this resolution.

Any questions let me know mate :).
 
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Nice to see your minimum fps was 35 in any of the tests. That for me would be very acceptable. Average of around 58 fps is good also and very playable. Nice tests Rusty and very helpful. I will not get as high because I am still on 2500K (I know CPU isn't pushed that hard in BF3) and PCI-E 2.0 but it will not be too far off (hopefully).
 
To summarise my wall of text in a nice graph:

bf3bench.png
 
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Very nice Rusty and damned good work :) I can seriously see the benefit of OC and it is giving a massive boost to fps.
 
gregster said:
Very nice Rusty and damned good work :) I can seriously see the benefit of OC and it is giving a massive boost to fps.
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Thanks mate :)

You're right about it not really being needed in single 1080p. It's not bad to have it but it isn't required.

To run a 2 GPU SLI Surround set up I would say it is close to definitely being required. FPS minimums of 35 would be game breaking for me. I'd rather turn settings down than play that low and that says a lot :D. That said, MSAA is the killer at this resolution and needs to be sacrificed in BF3. 2x is just about manageable and you will probably find that you can handle the minimums that it brings. They were borderline OK but I decided to just chop it in the end.

In Multiplayer I run the settings of my last benchmark with the average well over 100. To be fair I couldn't tell the difference when it dropped to 81. It could have been at any point for all I know.
 
Providing benq replace this monitor I'll be going surround too. I'm actually happy to play on a mixture of high and ultra to get better frames. Didn't notice much difference between high and ultra back when I tried it on my 580.
 
As above: Ultra is fine - this hardly dents my FPS - it is literally just MSAA that does it.

If you remove it, you're looking at more than playable FPS.
 
I will happily play (and did when I had my 560TI) on Max settings over 3 screens. In MP, it is so frantic you don't get time to admire the view so I won't be missing anything :)

On a side note, I hate waiting in for things. Computer is apart and it has had a quick de-dusting. Found an SLI bridge (had to hunt for ages) and all ready to go go go :)
 
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