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GTX 970 SLI + Surround + G-Sync? Am I crazy?

Associate
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25 Feb 2015
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So, I have an ASUS GTX 970 Turbo and an unused Strix GTX970 DC2OC (and a Prime X370 Pro motherboard).

I'm currently using a Dell 2716DG, and fancied possibly upgrading to one of the new 5120x1440 monitors, but thought it might actually be far cheaper to get a couple of second hand 2716DG's and run triple monitor surround.

Would this actually work? I accept that framerates might suck, and I'm OK with turning down the quality (in the interests of not having to pay for a 1080 Ti).

I'm assuming that I'd have to sacrifice G-Sync, as the cards only have a single DP output each - would that be the only downside?
 
Soldato
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Short answer-Don't spend a penny hoping 970 SLi is going to perform@5120x1440p.



Best trying 970@1440p in SLi before spending any cash, when mgpu works it's rewarding, but it can drive you up the wall seeking a hammer when it doesn't work or it works but it shimmers/stutters/runs like poo!

SLi/CrossFire support is generally poor now imo, for example, Anthem has just got SLi support the other day(considering these days that's pretty quick), through experience, that's a very frustrating wait for multi gpu support, plenty titles don't get support anymore.

The 970 3.5+.5gb Vram configuration was an issue for poor performance(stuttering) in SLi for some, other users said they were fine.

4Gb imo is very restrictive these days@1440p.

Maxwell is fair down the pecking line for support too, so even though there is SLi support in a title there could be architecture specific bugs that Pascal/Turing run fine.

970 Sli best case scenario will run a little bit higher fps than a 1070 but I'd imagine that's not very many titles, but average fps and more so minimums could be lower than the single solution 1070, there is no chance I'd take 970 SLi over a single 1070.

I never ran my 970@1440p, but my 1070 was great@1440p(close to max/max settings ~60fps+, multiplying that to 5120x1440p, I'd say while technically doable fps, it's going to be low running low settings.
 
Associate
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I had 970s in SLI once for 3440x1440 @ 60 hz and I wasn't impressed with having to hack games like Rise of the Tomb Raider to get it utilising the second card, and even then it was glitchy and had microstutter.

As you say you have a second 970 lying around, you can always see for yourself how it might work on your current monitor. My impression though is GTX 970s in SLI with 3 x 1440p monitors is a very ugly 2014-style hack-together compared with one decent single card and a new Ultrawide or super ultrawide in a sleek setup.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
25 Feb 2015
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1,389
Thanks both for sharing. It seems like it's worth trying the 970 SLI for my current screen, but almost certainly not worth buying additional screens to run on that config given that I'm stacking potential conflicts.

I agree that the 3.5GB aspect did make me a bit nervous, since triple 1440p would be a fair few more pixels than 4K.

If I was going to add the extra screens, the best option I'm seeing out there seems to be the RTX 2060 - does that seem fair or is the 6GB still likely to be an issue?

As much as I would like a new ultrawide they're just way, way more than I'm willing to spend.
 
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