3 x 1600p Monitors: Tri 780ti's or Tri R290X's?

MrMarvelous · 8 Nov 2013 at 13:12

Stick with what you have. The 6GB VRAM will deffo get used here.

Silent_Scone · 8 Nov 2013 at 13:13

LtMatt said:
Fair enough, i didn't realise 3gb would be enough at that res. My mistake.

I was referring more to the performance aspect. The stuttering that seems to be prevalent in Hard-OCP review but no where else.

3GB isn't enough for 4K, but 6GB most definitely is.

If you look at Crysis in Hexus test, which uses in excess of 3.5GB at 4K. Add 35% onto that and you're already looking at nearing a cap out on a game which is already almost a year old.

7680x1600 is definitely Titans domain.

LtMatt · 8 Nov 2013 at 13:17

MjFrosty said:
I was referring more to the performance aspect. The stuttering that seems to be prevalent in Hard-OCP review but no where else.

3GB isn't enough for 4K, but 6GB most definitely is.

Ive been looking through a load of their reviews, present and previous and they only seem to use actual gameplay footage for collecting results. No canned benchmarks at all so i don't know if that has anything to do with it or not. Either way they seem to say the 290X provides the better experience all round. OP and yourself welcome to take it or leave it of course. Just feel it was worth pointing out to the OP based on his questions.

Those times have changed, at least on the new Radeon R9 290/X series. The new CrossFire technology has improved upon the CrossFire experience in a vastly positive way. Playing games on the Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration was a smooth experience. In fact, it was smoother than SLI in some games. It was also smoother on the 4K display at 3840x2160 gaming, and it was noticeably smoother in Eyefinity at 5760x1200.

AMD is using its Frame Pacing technology, but that is a software technology. That, combined with the evolved CrossFire technology is providing a noticeable benefit to the gameplay experience compared to the previous generation cards. Once you've gamed at a large resolution on CrossFire with R9 290X, you likely won't go back.

Silent_Scone · 8 Nov 2013 at 13:21

Even if there is currently a few issues with SLI at 4K for arguments sake, this isn't 4K. 4GB will be cutting a fine edge at 7680x1600. Not sure how you can disagree with that.

LtMatt · 8 Nov 2013 at 13:25

MjFrosty said:
Even if there is currently a few issues with SLI at 4K for arguments sake, this isn't 4K. 4GB will be cutting a fine edge at 7680x1600. Not sure how you can disagree with that.

That review said the issues were mainly at 5760x1200 rather than 4k, for what its worth.

Is 7680x1600 more pixels than 4k? I don't know so i believe you that 4gb might be cutting it fine.

oweneades · 8 Nov 2013 at 13:26

LtMatt said:
That review said the issues were mainly at 5760x1200 rather than 4k, for what its worth.

Is 7680x1600 more pixels than 4k? I don't know so i believe you that 4gb might be cutting it fine.

Yes a lot more:

7680x1600 = 12.3m

4K = ~8.5m

5760x1200 = 6.9m

Tri SLI Titans / 290x CFX will offer enough GPU performance at 7680x1600 that 4GB of VRAM could be a real issue in certain games.

whyscotty · 8 Nov 2013 at 13:27

Can the 290/290X even do trifire as can't find a single review?

LtMatt · 8 Nov 2013 at 13:28

Fair enough. I saw some people advising 290X's and some people advising titans that was why i posted the link. Not realising that was using more pixels than 4k.

goochinbuda · 8 Nov 2013 at 14:15

4737Joker said:
Do your Titans struggle and are you able to play everything you want at reasonable fps?

If your not having any problems i'd just not bother. Or wait a bit for more reviews to emerge at those kind of resolutions.

Unless your game for buying them and doing the reviews for everyone else

On games like Crysis 3, yes they would struggle a little bit with very high settings and AA switched on. But dialing back to high and lowering the AA to low and I've got very playable framerates. With 1600p I probably dont need as much AA anyway. Nearly all current games are more than fine, I'm just concerned with the next gen games coming soon. Its all well and good having a huge vram capacity but if it cant be pushed around fast enough well then....
No doubt I underestimated just what a load a 7680x1600 res would place on the system. I didnt quite realise how much of that 6GB would be consumed at this resolution!
The only reason why I considered the newer cards was due to the higher memory throughput as oppossed to the capacity.
Is it straightforward to see how much mem is being used while gaming? I've never actually done it.

On a side issue most of the problems I have would seem to be driver related and I've had to switch back to the 314 drivers several times. 320.xx were unusable. However I've been travelling for the last 2 months so this weekend I'll update the drivers to the latest and see how things go.

Once again, thank you everybody for your input.

oweneades · 8 Nov 2013 at 14:21

goochinbuda said:
On games like Crysis 3, yes they would struggle a little bit with very high settings and AA switched on. But dialing back to high and lowering the AA to low and I've got very playable framerates. With 1600p I probably dont need as much AA anyway. Nearly all current games are more than fine, I'm just concerned with the next gen games coming soon. Its all well and good having a huge vram capacity but if it cant be pushed around fast enough well then....
No doubt I underestimated just what a load a 7680x1600 res would place on the system. I didnt quite realise how much of that 6GB would be consumed at this resolution!
The only reason why I considered the newer cards was due to the higher memory throughput as oppossed to the capacity.
Is it straightforward to see how much mem is being used while gaming? I've never actually done it.

On a side issue most of the problems I have would seem to be driver related and I've had to switch back to the 314 drivers several times. 320.xx were unusable. However I've been travelling for the last 2 months so this weekend I'll update the drivers to the latest and see how things go.

Once again, thank you everybody for your input.

Yes you can monitor many aspects of your card with MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision. You simply go to settings and then the monitoring tab (I think) and then select the ones you want to see in your game overview. When gaming you will be able to see in real time the memory usage etc of your GPU's. You can also view the graphs in either program but this would require a quick alt tab.

You will need to ensure you install Rivatuner Stats Server when installing either Afterburner / Precision as this is what provides the monitoring (it is included in the afterburner download itself, I am not sure about Precision).

LtMatt · 8 Nov 2013 at 14:24

whyscotty said:
Can the 290/290X even do trifire as can't find a single review?

Yes up to Quad fire and no bridge required with hardware and software frame pacing.

Couldn't find any reviews either, but i did find this.

whyscotty · 8 Nov 2013 at 14:30

LtMatt said:
Yes up to Quad fire and no bridge required with hardware and software frame pacing.

Couldn't find any reviews either, but i did find this.

Thanks

Kaapstad · 8 Nov 2013 at 16:09

OP go for another Titan and go quad sli, at your resolution there is no bottleneck on the CPU. The problem with 4 way sli is the same as 3 way sli, sometimes the support is not there.

The 290X regardless of what AMD would like us to think is not a 4K card, if you were to run them in Quad CF @4K with the settings maxed out you are going to run out of vram.

Some times there are reviews where there is a single or two 290Xs running a 4K screen but this will not be on max settings. The 290X is not a genuine 4K card.

Silent_Scone · 8 Nov 2013 at 16:28

There has been way too much coverage on 4K this time round and it's most likely confused a lot of potential buyers. It's not something people should be considering when buying a 780/290X at all.

Kaapstad · 8 Nov 2013 at 16:40

MjFrosty said:
There has been way too much coverage on 4K this time round and it's most likely confused a lot of potential buyers. It's not something people should be considering when buying a 780/290X at all.

+1

goochinbuda · 8 Nov 2013 at 16:57

Kaapstad said:
OP go for another Titan and go quad sli, at your resolution there is no bottleneck on the CPU. The problem with 4 way sli is the same as 3 way sli, sometimes the support is not there.

I'll give it some thought. I've seen in some instances that 4-way can have a negative impact in some games over 3 -way. I guessing this down to lack of proper support ingame as opposed to CPU bottlenecking?

Thanks

jakspyder · 8 Nov 2013 at 17:03

This is a question i've been asking myself (1440p screens though)

I've held off thus far on splashing out as i wanted to see the Ti come out. Now i'm certainly wanting a 6GB Ti if they're coming. hopefully by Christmas they'll be here, or we'll know solid details. a 6GB 780Ti would be the absolute sweet spot for 4k+ gaming.

Kaapstad · 8 Nov 2013 at 17:06

goochinbuda said:
I'll give it some thought. I've seen in some instances that 4-way can have a negative impact in some games over 3 -way. I guessing this down to lack of proper support ingame as opposed to CPU bottlenecking?

Thanks

It is sometimes down to CPU bottlenecking but at your resolution this is not likely to happen. The other problem as I say above is the poor SLI 3 and 4 way support some games have.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 8 Nov 2013 at 17:06

Why would you want to ditch 3 Geforce Titans?? The only way I could think it would make sense if you can make some extra dosh on top if you get 3 newer cards.

I would think the best upgrade would be three 20NM high end cards next year.

jakspyder · 8 Nov 2013 at 17:09

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Why would you want to ditch 3 Geforce Titans?? The only way I could think it would make sense if you can make some extra dosh on top if you get 3 newer cards.

I would think the best upgrade would be three 20NM high end cards next year.

Would be nice to sell 3 titans, buy 3 Ti's and have spare change for beer!

That would be the worlds best upgrade.