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

[goochinbuda]

Gentlemen,

I'm torn between 'upgrading' my current system to either 780ti's or R290X's. I currently have 3 Titans all underwater driving 3 monitors giving 7680x1600 which if my quick calculations are correct is approx 35% more than a single 4K screen.

Since I'll be putting them underwater, the cooler noise of the 290x's wont be an issue. All the graphics cards are on a 480 + 280 rad. The CPU and mobo is on a separate loop so there is plenty of cooling capacity for the GPU's.

The main issue I have is that the Titans I have dont overclock as well as I'd like due to whatever reason. My brother will happily take two of the Titans off me so that's giving me the itch to upgrade *if* it gets me worthwhile performance gains.

I'm leaning more towards the 290x's as the few SLI/CF reviews Ive seen so far would suggest that the 290x's in CF pull ahead of the 780ti's at 4K resolutions.

VFM is not really a priority. I'm looking for whatever will give me better performance at my current resolution.

Yes....I know I'm insane but I've gone past caring about that long ago!

I should probably wait for non-ref 290x's but if the improvements there are only on the cooler then there probably isnt any point in waiting.

Cheers.

 

[Silent_Scone]

That's a tough one to call mate. Unless someone has done similar to give you a rough idea, performance will vary from game to game. Not only that but the Titan might even possibly come out ahead in a few scenarios with the extra memory.

So on that basis alone I would either suggest sticking with what you have or going with the 290Xs. The 290X is only going to get quicker as well as drivers mature - and under water they'll fly along. Great tinker toys

 

[Gregster]

3 X Titan. You will need the extra VRAM for 12 million pixels
or 3x290X and turn settings down.

 

[MooMoo444]

Yep.. 3GB is already close to not enough for some games at 1600p, having three of them will just be suicide. You'll need Titans as above.

 

[whyscotty]

I would stay with your Titans

 

[Silent_Scone]

I'm willing to go with what Kaap predicted in another thread, give it 3 or 4 months and everyone will be after Titans with the requirements of next gen games . Although there's a high chance of 6GB 780Ti's coming along too.

 

[shadow_boxer]

Stick with what you have.

 

[Andrew Moore]

Id say stay with Titans tbh.. if not then a triplicate of 290s are more than enough.

 

[nuzik]

i suggest you just give some of your cash to me! Im jealous

 

[Bodom]

If money is no object you could always just get another Titan and go quad SLI.

 

[goochinbuda]

Thanks for all the suggestions folks. Much appreciated. I think I'll wait and see if and when 6GB versions of the 780ti's come along and I'll re-evaluate then.

If money is no object you could always just get another Titan and go quad SLI.

Would that not push the bottleneck back onto the CPU though, if it cannot feed 4 GPU's quickly enough? I though I read this back in the early reviews of the Titans.
The CPU is an i7 3930K oc'ed to around 4.8GHz. Think I can get it closer to 5.

 

[Gregster]

^^ Yes. IIRC, you would need a clock of about 7Ghz on a 4930K (or similar) to eliminate the bottleneck.

 

[JediFragger]

With the great crossfire scaling that the 290x's offer I'd say it was a no-brainer personally

 

[pgi947]

Stick with titans until 20nm and hw-e

 

[LtMatt]

I advise the OP to have a good read of this review and see what you think. Posting this is not going to win me any friends but what can you do. The 780TI is excluded here as it only has 3gb of vram. When mantle arrives for AMD users, in games that support it you can expect the performance difference to increase even further.

AMD Eyefinity vs. NV Surround and 4K

We feel that AMD Eyefinity better properly configures the 4K panel automatically when launching games for the first time. For example, when we launched each game it duplicated the image, since the panel is natively two displays of 1920x2160 stitched together. All we had to do was go into the game menu, set the resolution, apply settings and it worked with no issues what-so-ever. However, we had some issues with NVIDIA Surround on the 4K display.

When we started up Windows on GTX TITAN SLI or GTX 780 SLI on the 4K display, it did properly boot up at the right resolution of 3840x2160. When we went to enable SLI, sometimes the screen would go black and stay black, with the display going into power save mode. It would take a reboot, and trying again, and then it would come around just fine with SLI enabled. It didn't always work the first time though. Whereas, with AMD R9 290X CrossFire we could disable and enable it at will on the 4K display, and it never got stuck. We did not have to reboot to see the changes, we could do it all on the fly. It just worked without issue.

When we started some games on GTX TITAN SLI and GTX 780 SLI some of the games had issues at initial launch on the 4K display. When we started up Crysis 3 the game would show partly on the screen for a few seconds, then just quit to desktop. This happened over and over and over again with the TITAN SLI and GTX 780 SLI. After many tries we finally got it to work.

In Far Cry 3 on the GTX TITAN SLI and GTX 780 SLI on the 4K display every time we tried to change to the resolution of the display the display would go black, and stay black. In order to get that game to work we had to switch the game to windowed mode, then we had to set the proper resolution, then we had to go back to full screen mode.

We had none of these issues in any game tested on the AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration on the 4K display. Every game worked the first time, we never had any hang ups or display going into power save mode issues. It may just be the placebo effect, but we swear that 2D performance on the Windows desktop felt faster on R9 290X CrossFire Eyefinity versus TITAN SLI NV Surround.

Smoothness, Frame Time, Frame Pacing, and all that Jazz

So much talk about smoothness, frametime, and the actual experience of multi-GPU video cards while gaming has been discussed lately. In the past, AMD has been highly criticized of having a sub-par CrossFire experience, and rightly so. There were major issues with smoothness where games would stutter or feel choppy, even though the framerates looked good. We've been telling our readers for years that CrossFire just didn't feel as good as SLI while gaming.

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.

It is safe to say, from a real-world gaming perspective, stuttering is no longer an issue one has to worry about. Low framerates don't feel "stuttery" anymore, you no longer have to achieve the highest framerates to get a smooth experience. We were pleasantly surprised how smooth the gameplay was on the 4K panel with CrossFire. We can only hope this technology evolves to future products, and AMD stays on its feet and never lets a bad CrossFire experience happen again.

The Bottom Line

We saw from 20-40% performance advantages with R9 290X CrossFire over GTX 780 SLI. These are real, large increases, in performance. That extra money spent, is more than going into more performance delivered and a better gameplay experience.

We are simply impressed with the dominance that Radeon R9 290X CrossFire is showing over the GTX TITAN SLI and GTX 780 SLI.

Source
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/11/01/amd_radeon_r9_290x_crossfire_video_card_review/1


After writing this im going into the witness protection program before i get lynched by titan users. I joke, but its going to happen.

 

[Silent_Scone]

That's a 4K review, Matt. This isn't 4K!

At 7680x1600 people are right to tell him to think long and hard about investing in 4GB or less cards...


That run-down by HardOCP seems to be in the minority as well?


Just a random review I picked up from KitGuru regarding the Ti.

Nvidia have reclaimed the top performance spot with their GTX 780 Ti, knocking AMD’s just released R9 290X comfortably into second place. The performance of the GTX780 Ti at both 1600p and Ultra HD 4K resolutions is simply remarkable, especially when we factor in the modest heat output and low noise emissions.
If you are a regular KitGuru reader you will know that AMD’s R9 290X is an extremely powerful graphics card which outclasses both GTX 780 and GTX Titan in the majority of situations at 1600p and 4K. Sadly this has been met with a rather substantial caveat – based around the ill performing reference cooler.
AMD clearly have had issues getting the R9 290X to maintain the full 1GHZ clock speed at all times, they even created a new software algorithm to hold core temperatures at 95c under load. While this is user adjustable, the only real option to improve the situation is to increase the maximum fan speed, and therefore noise emissions. If you drop the acceptable temperature below 95c without increasing fan speeds then more core throttling and performance penalties will occur.
I commented about this in my AMD launch articles, and it was particularly disappointing because the new AMD hardware is really impressive. AMD’s biggest issue is keeping the hardware running within non throttling, safe, long term parameters. We are still waiting on custom third party cooling solutions from the likes of Sapphire which will hopefully redress the sad state of affairs for loyal AMD gamers. They may have gotten the pricing right, but without an improved cooler we have concerns about these cards long term.
As we explained earlier in the review, the GTX 780 Ti doesn’t suffer from the same thermal density issues. The R9 290X draws more power per square millimeter which is partly responsible for the noted cooling concerns.
When we directly compare the reference Nvidia GTX 780 Ti against the reference R9 290X the temperature variable is 12-15c in favour of the Nvidia card at all times. Not only does the GTX 780 Ti refrain from core throttling under load, but it radiates less heat inside a chassis and won’t burn your hand if you try to remove it immediately when powering down after a gaming session.
The Nvidia GTX780 Ti is an excellent choice if you have just bought a new Ultra HD 4K screen, such as the £3,000 ASUS PQ321QE 31.5 inch 4K monitor which we added into our labs this month. Playing the latest Batman Arkham Origins or Battlefield 4 at 3,840×2,160 on the GTX 780 Ti is the reason why the PC platform will always lead the way when it comes to cutting edge gaming. We initially had some concerns that Nvidia had outfitted the new board with 3GB of GDDR5 and not 4GB, but it doesn’t seem to have a negative effect at Ultra HD 4K, even with high image quality settings selected in the latest Direct X 11 titles.
Another remarkable facet of the GTX 780 Ti is the core overclocking headroom. Nvidia are keen to promote their new power balancing feature, which seems to work wonders. The GPU gets power from three sources, the 6 pin and 8 pin connector and the PCI Express interface. When a user overclocks the hardware the power delivery can be unbalanced with power drawn from one source more than the others, potentially maxing out the clock speeds.
Nvidia say the new feature can direct power from one input to another, meaning that if you max out a single power source then the algorithm will take more power from others to compensate. In real world terms we managed to increase the core clock speed on our sample from 876mhz to 1,122mhz … an almost 30 percent increase. Obviously all samples will overclock slightly differently, but there is clearly plenty of room for Nvidia partners to release greatly enhanced versions of the GTX780 Ti in the coming months.
At time of publication we have been told that UK pricing of the GTX 780 Ti will be around the £550 inc vat mark. The older GTX780 has dropped in price recently to make way for this new, more powerful model.
AMD’s reference R9 290X is hitting retail for around £450-£470, making it around £80-£100 less expensive than the GTX 780 Ti. There is no doubt in my mind that it beats the AMD R9 290X on a performance level, while emitting less heat and noise. The overclocking potential from the new Nvidia part is also staggering. At the end of the day only you can decide if the extra cost is worth it over the R9 290X, but even with the price premium we find Nvidia’s GTX 780 Ti very difficult to ignore.
Nvidia have a ‘where to buy list’ for the GTX 780 Ti – over here.
Discuss on Facebook – over here.
Pros:
Better reference cooler than the R9 290X.
quieter than the R9 290X.
cooler than the R9 290X.
faster than the R9 290X.
Ultra HD 4K leader.
massive overclocking headroom.

Also Hexus:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/61629-amd-radeon-r9-290x-vs-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-4k/

 

[LtMatt]

That's a 4K review, Matt. This isn't 4K!

At 7680x1600 people are right to tell him to think long and hard about investing in 4GB or less cards...

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

 

[andybird123]

not lynched no, just confused as to why you are talking about 4K when the OP is asking about triple screen 1600

he already has tri-titan... please show a tri-290X at 7680x1600p review to compare?
oh, you can't

and since when did HardOCP fall back in to favour, I thought you only trusted russian sites these days?

for me, single digit improvements to FPS and no improvement to minimum FPS would totally not be worth sidegrading to a lower VRAM card for

 

[4737Joker]

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

 

[LtMatt]

That's a 4K review, Matt. This isn't 4K!

At 7680x1600 people are right to tell him to think long and hard about investing in 4GB or less cards...

Not just 4k Frosty.

and to do this, we must run at Eyefinity resolutions on three displays in a 3x1 configuration at no less than 5760x1200.