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The 4K dilema.

waspy88

waspy88

waspy88

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So.. though despite many people warning me, I went and upgraded to 4K. My 780ti is trying its best to spit out 30-40fps on newer games on mixed settings. Its bearable, but not the best.

I have been scouring the internet and have found that 2 x 780ti in Sli yield pretty decent results. So is the next obvious step just another 780ti, or should I go red? Will the extra GB on the AMD cards be better for 4K?

Or is the sensible option, just to wait till nvidia announce their next set of chips? They seem to be milking this Kepler cow a fair bit eh.. I wonder if they'll still release a 790ti and 780ti Black 6GB before releasing the new wave... annoying.
 
If your not in a hurry i'd wait see what is coming up, i think there is supposed to be a 6GB ti and hopefully a 790 coming out , i thought amd were going to release more cards this year aswell but not sure if it will be high end
If your in a hurry and you not hitting the Vram wall on your card then yes the easiest way is to simply add another for more fps
 
Personally, with the Tri-X 290s hitting at less than 300 now I'd go for a pair of those (as in my setup). They offer 90% of the performance of the Ti's at around 60% of the cost! But I must admit I lean more towards AMD due to the better bang-per-buck performance that they tend to offer :cool:

(the cooling is excellent btw, I recently switched from reference cards to these)
 
I could technically get 3 x 290s. When does X-fire start becoming useless? With 3GPUs, would I need to ensure my CPU, a 3770K is replaced too?
 
Scales well with 3 GPU's I gather, the Lieutenant will be in soon to clarify ;) :D

You'll need a highly clocked cpu to take full advantage of it tho, but will give you a good boost as long as your motherboard has the lanes to spare...
 
waspy88 said:
I could technically get 3 x 290s. When does X-fire start becoming useless? With 3GPUs, would I need to ensure my CPU, a 3770K is replaced too?
Click to expand...

JediFragger said:
Scales well with 3 GPU's I gather, the Lieutenant will be in soon to clarify ;) :D

You'll need a highly clocked cpu to take full advantage of it tho, but will give you a good boost as long as your motherboard has the lanes to spare...
Click to expand...

My ears were burning. :D

Thanks to XDMA/512 bit bus crossfire scales very well at 4K, all the way up to four gpu's. It's why the higher res you go, the faster the AMD cards get vs the competition. That said the sweet spot is probably three gpu's, rather than four. You'll be fine at 4K with an overclocked 3770K and 3x290's imo. It's so graphically demanding that it will offset any possible cpu bottleneck through sheer gpu grunt required.
 
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But remember, your mobo and psu have to be capable. I think a quality 1200w minimum, probably get away with a quality 750/850 with a pair. Personally I'd try a pair and go from there (if you don't have the top quality gear)
 
I believe the mobo has 3 x PCie 16 slots that should be fine right?

Yes.. I'll need to upgrade my ageing PSU :P
 
JediFragger said:
But remember, your mobo and psu have to be capable. I think a quality 1200w minimum, probably get away with a quality 750/850 with a pair. Personally I'd try a pair and go from there (if you don't have the top quality gear)
Click to expand...

You could probably use a 1000W platinum superflower PSU ok. I've had mine up at 1300W on 2x290's and had no issues. For everyday use 2x290's with a clocked cpu is only using around 600W. 1200W would give you nice headroom though so might be a better long term idea.
 
Yeah, if buying new I wouldn't get less than a 1200w. My 1000w will last me a good while yet, it's quality. But then again I wasn't silly enough to buy a 4k screen :p :D
 
LtMatt said:
My ears were burning. :D

Thanks to XDMA/512 bit bus crossfire scales very well at 4K, all the way up to four gpu's. It's why the higher res you go, the faster the AMD cards get vs the competition. That said the sweet spot is probably three gpu's, rather than four. You'll be fine at 4K with an overclocked 3770K and 3x290's imo. It's so graphically demanding that it will offset any possible cpu bottleneck through sheer gpu grunt required.
Click to expand...

XDMA is no better than SLI

With 3 or 4 cards at high resolutions big overclocks on the CPU are not really needed provided you are running high settings on the cards.

With 3 cards a minimum of 4gb of VRAM is needed

With 4 cards 6gb of VRAM will cover it.

OP if you are going to use more than 2 cards forget about 780ti's as 3gb will not be enough.

Long term you may want to look at using a IB-E 6 core (or even Haswell-E) as there are 1 or 2 games where the extra threads really help.
 
As I have 4K and 2 x 780's, I just throw my hat in here.

2 x 780 using max settings(ish) with 2 x MSAA handles most games I have without a hitch
and hold 60fps with the odd dip.

Games tried -
BF3 and 4
Titanfall
Batman Origins
BioShock Infinite
Thief
TombRaider

All the above are very playable in my opinion.

Exceptions are
Crysis 3.
Watchdogs- Games borked
Witcher 2
Metro last Light

Hell 3 Titans struggle with these.

One thing I will add is -

If I was buying now,
I wouldn't be getting 2 cards with less than 6GB of vram as the way I see it more and more vram will be req (again my opinion)
 
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i have the same problem too, especially if you want to play DOOM 4 on 4K, it looks like either the best AMD dual card, or the next range of AMD CROSSFIRE

It may be best to build the whole rig first and choose a card at Xmas time, i think i want to stick with AMD though
 
whyscotty said:
As I have 4K and 2 x 780's, I just throw my hat in here.

2 x 780 using max settings(ish) with 2 x MSAA handles most games I have without a hitch
and hold 60fps with the odd dip.

Games tried -
BF3 and 4
Titanfall
Batman Origins
BioShock Infinite
Thief
TombRaider

All the above are very playable in my opinion.

Exceptions are
Crysis 3.
Watchdogs- Games borked
Witcher 2
Metro last Light

Hell 3 Titans struggle with these.

One thing I will add is -

If I was buying now,
I wouldn't be getting 2 cards with less than 6GB of vram as the way I see it more and more vram will be req (again my opinion)
Click to expand...

Good post.
 
yes i think it has to be either a dual card or two cards with no less than 6/8 ram, i dont think my single card is enough nowadays

i should have got crossfire last time too :confused::confused:
 
A whole lot of money and messing about to use 4K. Do you really believe it is worth it?

4K will eventually become viable for high end rigs/hardcore gamers but right now I think 4K for modern titles is right in the cutting 0.1% of extreme hardware configurations.
 
Mal X said:
yes i think it has to be either a dual card or two cards with no less than 6/8 ram, i dont think my single card is enough nowadays

i should have got crossfire last time too :confused::confused:
Click to expand...


And a new CPU, I7 for high end GPU esp 2 of them.
 
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