980ti sli - which cpu/motherboard?

dave2110

dave2110

dave2110

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I have one 980ti and hope to eventually have two in sli.

any suggestions for mobo and cpu, which will allow a second 980ti to be added later without bottlenecks. bit worried about the size of the 980ti's and fitting two on a mobo, will buy a big case (prob another Corsair).
 
5820k gives you 28 pci lanes on a x99 platform that would be my choice for dual gpu and because of cost. Unless you want the full 40 lanes then its the 5930k.
 
* Four cores

Skylake i5-6600K, TDP: 75 watts, £200, 16 pci-e lanes

* Six cores

i7-5820K xeon x99, TDP: 140 watts, £300, 28 pci-e lanes
 
thx,
excuse my ignorance but how does that relate to real world experience for say a gamer, ie big diff in fps, stability or is it mainly top trumps down the pub?
 
Ahem. Well a 6-core CPU will only be noticed during long-running multithreaded tasks. Which typically would be *non-accelerated* video transcoding (which is a bad idea anyways, but sometimes not avoidable). Compiling (although not really if it happens to be disk-bound, *depends what you're compiling / only sometimes*). Video editing e.g. running a filter on many frames of video in one go. Same deal with photoshop but not really as you're only doing 1 frame.

For gaming you are only better off with the Skylake part in the sense it has a lower TDP, meaning less fan noise / more system power left to put towards graphics. Which isn't that important to most people. However the Skylake part is also proportionally cheaper meaning that the extra money can go towards GPUs. Which is always eternally helpful for gaming...

Having said that you could instead view the Xeon as a configurable part. In the sense that if you were to disable 2 of the cores you'd have a 4-core machine with a similar TDP to any 4-core haswell (e.g. aboout 85 watts). Yet also the capability to run those extra 2 cores if you need them. So long as you can sink enough / the max TDP... that's not something which is going to affect typical gaming though / general desktop usage. Just those specific multithreaded usage.

The other 'real world experience' is also having enough PCI-e lanes to plug stuff into, or alternatively having an m.2 slot to plug something into. Or a USB 3.1 / Type C port to plug stuff into. Which matters also but isn't really so much gaming related. Unless you want to do triple / quad SLI. Which is very expensive just merely for the graphics cards so the extra cost of Xeon isn't really a concern (for those people).
 
Great summary dreamcat - thing is a 980Ti single card can pretty much handle evrything at the moment including 4k so unless the OP is going for multiple monitors at 4k, I would say best to stick with a single card (less hassel & expense) and go for the m/b platform that fits your needs - either Z170 or X99 - personally, I'm waiting for E-Sylake to see what it produces in terms of motherboard features!
 
Yeah. The way I understand it the 980ti will only give high frame rates for 1440p. To get high framerate 4k you need two of them...

And for VR, that's 2 eyes = 2x2 --> the reason for quad 980ti in SLI.

Or some eyefinity-type setup yet it seems to be the case that multi-monitor gaming isn't deemed to be as nice an experience as some curved 2:1 ratio ultra-widescreen 1440p or 4k~ish gaming (single monitor).

Like you I don't believe in SLI as being such a good idea either, with single GPU gaming being the preference wherever possible.

Building on that scenario, the ideal situation would then be some Pascal GPU to drive 4k ultra-widescreen at high frame rates. And presumably just 2 of them in SLI for VR. That may be possible with the current gen Skylake pci-e lanes. Guess we won't know until the new GPUs come out.

We already know the basic details for Skylake-E. And you can bet it's also going to have all the same other new features of consumer Skylake too. e.g. m.2 x4, and USB 3.1 / Type C. The enhanced power management etc.
 
thx again,

I use the PC for occasional photo editing (Lightroom) and gaming, so sounds like Skylake/Z170 will be fine/cheaper/X99 wouldn't be noticeably quicker.

want to run a 4k screen (for photo and gaming) hence SLI option if framerate is not high enough but will give it a go with single card.
 
If you're thinking SLI 980ti's I'd want something a bit more beefier than a 6600k, either a 6700k or 5820k.

The X99 will bring out some extra juice of those cards and will there's no chance of a bottleneck, I'd not worry about the TDP, most coolers will handle that without issues and if I were you I'd plan ahead and grab something decent to get the CPU ready for a tasty overclock to match those cards. It's also cheaper than the 6700k currently. :)

If you do a decent bit of photo work, an i7 will be quicker over an i5.
 
SimBoy said:
Great summary dreamcat - thing is a 980Ti single card can pretty much handle evrything at the moment including 4k so unless the OP is going for multiple monitors at 4k, I would say best to stick with a single card (less hassel & expense) and go for the m/b platform that fits your needs - either Z170 or X99 - personally, I'm waiting for E-Sylake to see what it produces in terms of motherboard features!
Click to expand...



same here, im holding out until skylake-e or broadwell-e unless black friday produces some cheap deals (hint hint ocuk) then i'll grab a cheap x99

my 2600k still boss's everything
 
Sorry to Hijack the threat but due to a misshape with a certain company i was sent an extra 980ti by mistake and currently got them SLI .

I am looking to upgrade my self and was looking at the X99 route

current setup

i5-2500K
ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3
Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB
OCZ ZX Series 850W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply
Silverstone Raven 3 Full Tower
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
LG CH10LS20 10x BluRay-ROM / 16x DVDRW Lightscribe Drive - Black (Retail)

Willing to take options - Looking for Case Mobo CPU Ram new SSD have around £1000 to spend
 
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Big T said:
Sorry to Hijack the threat but due to a misshape with a certain company i was sent an extra 980ti by mistake and currently got them SLI .

I am looking to upgrade my self and was looking at the X99 route
Click to expand...

Lucky you - I wish OCUK had done the same when I just purchased my MSI 980 Ti Lightning - lol

Anyways, if you're going SLI and upgrading from that 2500K, then X99 would be the way to go to recognise the full performance from 980 Ti SLI at the moment. (you would see a big increase in performance)

As for which to go for rather depends on what you intend to use the rig for! - gaming or benching?

Me being a gamer, personally I would go for MSI X99A Gaming 7 USB 3.1 Motherboard @ around £200, but that's purely because I like all the usb connectors on the back and like what MSI have done recently on their boards. (I currently have the Z170A MSI Gaming 7 and find it excellent for my single card in games)

I'm sure others would recommend Gigabyte or Asus boards instead (personal preference really) - as for CPU if you can stretch to a 5930K @ about £450 then you get 6 cores and 40 PCI lanes to cover you for future needs as the 5820K only offer 28 PCI lanes.

Your 850W PSU should be good for this setup (just) and you will need 16GB ram - personally I would go for :
16GB (4x4GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black PC3-24000 (3000), CAS 15-15-15-36 @ about £120 - fast but low timings and I've never had issues with Corsair memory.

You can use your current SSD but I would prefer the Samsung 256GB 850 PRO to finish off @ at about £105

For a new case, I would choose the Corsair Graphite Series 780T

Hope this helps
 
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