Will this overclock configurations play games at 4K at Ultra Settings

Vector Sigma · 16 Oct 2016 at 01:50

Hi all.

I am in the process of purchasing a new Desktop with the intention of being able to play 4K (60Mhz) games at Ultra settings, and to 60fps.

I'm going to get a 6800k pushed up to 4.5Ghz, 980ti (ZOTAC GTX 980Ti AMP) in SLI mode, and 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4/3200mhz Quad Channel Memory.

Will this be enough to play all 4K games available today at maximum settings over 60fps.

The 1080GTX cards don't interest me, as I have no desire to play games at 120Mhz when that becomes standardised. I believe that's what the 10 series is geared towards.

Vector Sigma · 16 Oct 2016 at 01:53

The Nvidia SLI bridges are not compatible with the 900 series are they?

Radox-0 · 16 Oct 2016 at 02:18

Not every game maxed out, some have settings that tank FPS hard, but on the whole, you will manage to have most of the eye candy cranked up with a pair of 980Ti's

10 Series is not geared towards anything in particular, just gives Extra horsepower (1080) and at 4k is a nice option and does have some additional functions baked in. Also may want to take a look at the GTX 1070's, unless the price you can get the 980Ti's for much lower then the 1070's would rather opt for them.

Another option to consider is a single GTX 1080 with solid aftermarket cooler. Will boost high and with a few minor visual tweaks to some games, will perform pretty nicely, even at 4k.

Yes the Nvidia SLI bridges, both the new HB bridge and old style bridge are fine with 9xx cards.

Also if its gaming only, a 6700k is a nice CPU.

Vector Sigma · 16 Oct 2016 at 03:47

Radox-0 said:
Not every game maxed out, some have settings that tank FPS hard, but on the whole, you will manage to have most of the eye candy cranked up with a pair of 980Ti's

10 Series is not geared towards anything in particular, just gives Extra horsepower (1080) and at 4k is a nice option and does have some additional functions baked in. Also may want to take a look at the GTX 1070's, unless the price you can get the 980Ti's for much lower then the 1070's would rather opt for them.

Another option to consider is a single GTX 1080 with solid aftermarket cooler. Will boost high and with a few minor visual tweaks to some games, will perform pretty nicely, even at 4k.

Yes the Nvidia SLI bridges, both the new HB bridge and old style bridge are fine with 9xx cards.

Also if its gaming only, a 6700k is a nice CPU.

Hi Radox-0,

Thanks for your input.

I take it for 4k gaming 6/8/10 core CPUs don't make much of a difference unless one is interested in overclocking? I'm also going to get into the VR gaming, and in general, so I want to make sure I get the CPU right too.

Would there be any advantages using the SLI bridges (High) with a pair of 980ti since they were released afterwards?

Radox-0 · 16 Oct 2016 at 11:57

Vector Sigma said:
Hi Radox-0,

Thanks for your input.

I take it for 4k gaming 6/8/10 core CPUs don't make much of a difference unless one is interested in overclocking? I'm also going to get into the VR gaming, and in general, so I want to make sure I get the CPU right too.

Would there be any advantages using the SLI bridges (High) with a pair of 980ti since they were released afterwards?

Out the box the 6700k will trash the 6/8/10 cores also, until you overclock. There will be a few titles which can utalise the extra cores, but if you get into a CPU bound situation, the Extra IPC improvements and typical higher speed the 6700k can clock to over the Haswell-E and Broadwell-E chips will put it ahead. Having said that, the difference will typically not be massive but the whole z170 + 6700k platform is a tad cheaper, but either z170+6700k or X99+6800k combo would work fine.

Personally I did not see a difference plugging my HB bridge on the my Titan X's (maxwell) which are the same generation as the 980Ti's over the LED EVGA bridge and gather at 4k most of the older LED bridges on Pascal will even do fine. Sadly do not have the Ribbon style cables that come with the boards to check for you, but think if there is any difference, it will be very minor.

abui1806 · 16 Oct 2016 at 12:06

I personally haven't tried HB SLI but a friend of mine told me that it helps reduce tearing by quite a bit compared to the old bridge.

Radox-0 · 16 Oct 2016 at 13:17

abui1806 said:
I personally haven't tried HB SLI but a friend of mine told me that it helps reduce tearing by quite a bit compared to the old bridge.

Got to try this without G-Sync now me thinks

Do you know which one out of curiosity, have most the bridges aside from the flexi ribbon ones and would love to give it a try to sate my curiosity.

Vector Sigma · 16 Oct 2016 at 20:45

Radox-0 said:
Out the box the 6700k will trash the 6/8/10 cores also, until you overclock. There will be a few titles which can utalise the extra cores, but if you get into a CPU bound situation, the Extra IPC improvements and typical higher speed the 6700k can clock to over the Haswell-E and Broadwell-E chips will put it ahead. Having said that, the difference will typically not be massive but the whole z170 + 6700k platform is a tad cheaper, but either z170+6700k or X99+6800k combo would work fine.

Personally I did not see a difference plugging my HB bridge on the my Titan X's (maxwell) which are the same generation as the 980Ti's over the LED EVGA bridge and gather at 4k most of the older LED bridges on Pascal will even do fine. Sadly do not have the Ribbon style cables that come with the boards to check for you, but think if there is any difference, it will be very minor.

Which, games can use up to 6/8 cores?

Radox-0 · 16 Oct 2016 at 21:13

Vector Sigma said:
Which, games can use up to 6/8 cores?

Recent titles I have played that use the additional cores are Crysis 3, Ash's of the singularity (infact I use the CPU bench test as a form of stress test as it puts a solid load on all the cores) and BF4.

I gather Cry engine 3 games and Frostbite based games can utilize the more cores, through being honest for most games I can barely tell the difference between the 5960x and 4790k when both are OC'd with the same GPU, bar Crysis and Ashs's. 6700k's per core improvements will be more beneficial to games as most will still really only scale up to 4 cores.

Of course what the future hold and if games can use more cores is a diffrent matter thus as mentioned above either option of 6700k or 6800k are solid options for gaming, can't go to wrong with either.

abui1806 · 16 Oct 2016 at 21:19

Radox-0 said:
Got to try this without G-Sync now me thinks Do you know which one out of curiosity, have most the bridges aside from the flexi ribbon ones and would love to give it a try to sate my curiosity.

don't ask me about SLI man I have no idea

BluD · 16 Oct 2016 at 21:22

With my setup in sig i've been playing most games on high settings, can rarely max out games at 4k. A few games ive had to even to go down to medium to get a solid FPS but the best thing to do is change a few settings to make it look pretty still, like max out textures and reflections and stuff like that, but just cut down on spawn distances and amounts of objects been shown for example.

Makes for an nice experience still but it just takes a bit of tweaking from game to game.

Vector Sigma · 17 Oct 2016 at 02:08

Radox-0 said:
Recent titles I have played that use the additional cores are Crysis 3, Ash's of the singularity (infact I use the CPU bench test as a form of stress test as it puts a solid load on all the cores) and BF4.

I gather Cry engine 3 games and Frostbite based games can utilize the more cores, through being honest for most games I can barely tell the difference between the 5960x and 4790k when both are OC'd with the same GPU, bar Crysis and Ashs's. 6700k's per core improvements will be more beneficial to games as most will still really only scale up to 4 cores.

Of course what the future hold and if games can use more cores is a diffrent matter thus as mentioned above either option of 6700k or 6800k are solid options for gaming, can't go to wrong with either.

Thanks for that insight.

I might just go for that CPU, and perhaps 3 way SLI of 980 ti. Perhaps that might give me the extra juice I need to play 4k games at Ultra settings.

Heisenberg · 17 Oct 2016 at 05:56

Vector Sigma said:
Thanks for that insight.

I might just go for that CPU, and perhaps 3 way SLI of 980 ti. Perhaps that might give me the extra juice I need to play 4k games at Ultra settings.

I would stay away from the 980ti tbh. For 4K gaming you will want the fastest card available. At present that is the 1080. Add to that the poor SLI support in some games.

Radox-0 · 17 Oct 2016 at 10:06

Vector Sigma said:
Thanks for that insight.

I might just go for that CPU, and perhaps 3 way SLI of 980 ti. Perhaps that might give me the extra juice I need to play 4k games at Ultra settings.

Definitely avoid 3 Way SLI! Scaling sucks for most the part I have found past 2 way when I had Triple Titan X (maxwell) and with that sort of money a pair of 1080's could be had that would be much quicker. As mentioned in my inital post, I would eschew looking at the 980Ti now and opt for the 1070's or better yet solid aftermarket cooler 1080 that will get you most of the way there. Can add another 1080 down the line if need be.

Vector Sigma · 23 Oct 2016 at 00:08

Radox-0 said:
Definitely avoid 3 Way SLI! Scaling sucks for most the part I have found past 2 way when I had Triple Titan X (maxwell) and with that sort of money a pair of 1080's could be had that would be much quicker. As mentioned in my inital post, I would eschew looking at the 980Ti now and opt for the 1070's or better yet solid aftermarket cooler 1080 that will get you most of the way there. Can add another 1080 down the line if need be.

Thanks, I might do just that.

I had a question regarding these new Nvidia bridges.

When you have two 1080 cards in SLI mode working in conjunction with this bridge does it enable 100% performance from the second card? Where as before with SLI configuration each card that was added the amount of performance it would deliver would be less.

BluD · 23 Oct 2016 at 01:10

In some games ya can gain a few FPS at 4k from the HB bridge over the flexi bridges from what ive seen with reviews. If your gonna spend that amount of money on two 1080s then another £40 to gain a few FPS might be worth it if your playing the games that benefit from it. For example Witcher and Division it can make quite a big difference, where as dirty rally no difference at all.

Gaining a few FPS at 4k is a lot harder than 1080 or 1440 so i would take it where ever you can get it.

spoffle · 23 Oct 2016 at 01:47

UHD! Not 4K!

It depends entirely on the game you want to play. There are reasons beyond straight up horse power for why you might not get adequate FPS.

BluD · 27 Oct 2016 at 16:14

Lol spoffle, just that fact that its annoying you would be enough to make most people call UHD 4k.