3 x 4K Worth a try ? - Tri SLI Titan X's or Tri-fire R9-390x (after reviews)

africanos23 · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:10

I have been a previous Nvidia Surround user (6040x1080 bezel corrected - SLI GTX680s 2GB vanillas) and I'm currently running 4K with 2xR9-290s (I've used 3 in the past as well as 2xGTX970s *RMAed those).

One thing that I'm bothered with is mainly VRAM and ofcourse that extra umphh *horsepower* to push those pixels.

Looking at benchies for the Titan X ( that has just been released ) to be roughly the performance of the R9-295X2 but without the hassle of CFX profiles. Grabbing 3 of them looks like hexacrossfire performance (made the word up) and losing a few % due to scaling.

It looks like the Tri-SLI Titan X's might be able to pull off 3x4K smoothly (50-60FPS ish) with very little or no AA if my math is correct.

One of my concerns though is VRAM usage, even 12GB might not be enough for the future as I have run into a few scenarios were 4GB on 4K wasn't enough when pushing a lot of AA.

We also have the SLI-Scaling problem and the memory bus (384bit), from what we hear from AMD HBMs bit bus might be able to push the resolution far better but we haven't heard anything over the 8GB mark and that might not come to fruition.

I know for some this might seem overly crazy but I like testing things and love eye candy.

Game support for 3x4K I guess will be low but there's software that can help run higher resolutions.

For reference - These will be running on a i7 3930K PCIE 3.0 16x16x8

I guess we might see this be possible in 2-3 years but I would like a few opinions on it as of now.

VincentHanna · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:15

3x 4k screens is not "12k".

In the same way 3x 1080p screens is not 6k.

If you have £3000 sitting around, try it and see, i'd be interested how that pans out though!

Do they do 4k monitors with thin bezels?

triss · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:15

For the resolution your looking at i'd go with 12gb Titans , i can see 8gb being limiting at that resolution especially since you like eye candy

ALXAndy · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:18

VincentHanna said:
3x 4k screens is not "12k".

In the same way 3x 1080p screens is not 6k.

If you have £3000 sitting around, try it and see, i'd be interested how that pans out though!

Do they do 4k monitors with thin bezels?

4k was named because the resoultion of the width was nearly 4000. Hence, 4k. Triple that and you pretty much have 12k.

Whilst it may not technically be 12k it's close enough in pixels.

africanos23 · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:20

VincentHanna said:
3x 4k screens is not "12k".

In the same way 3x 1080p screens is not 6k.

If you have £3000 sitting around, try it and see, i'd be interested how that pans out though!

Do they do 4k monitors with thin bezels?

Stupid mistake from me with that, Cheers for the correction.

Bezel correction helps a lot so I don't really mind (using black tape with black frame on previous monitors made it feel universal)

Doubt I can find anything with thin bezels unless I remove them outright. ( or find something that is way to expensive).

I can flip the Asus PB287Q (thats what I have atm) to portrait but I prefer landscape.

I haven't measured the bezels to be honest but the lower one is a lot thinner top is slightly thicker? not 100% sure.

africanos23 · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:25

Just for reference

1920x1080 = 2073600 pixels
5760x1080 = 6220800 pixels
3840x2160 = 8294400 pixels
11520x2160 = 24883200 pixels

Asus PB287Q ~1.5cm from all sides of what I can see online so its not that bad

Spit · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:25

Can you run 3 G-sync monitors?

Mei · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:27

lol how can any1 answer this
we dont even have 390 specs yet!
theyve told us next to nothing about it ><
...ive never tried 3 card sli but apparently its a bad idea in a lot of games

Gregster · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:29

I was also a surround gamer with 5860x1080 and whilst it was a wow factor, I found I spent no time looking at the side screens, fish eye was very meh and very common. I would sooner take a bigger single screen personally but horses for courses.

africanos23 · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:30

Mei said:
lol how can any1 answer this
we dont even have 390 specs yet!
theyve told us next to nothing about it ><
...ive never tried 3 card sli but apparently its a bad idea in a lot of games

I actually mentioned why AMD might be a no-no (8GB) and thats probably the max we will see anyway.

It's more of a crazy mans (womans) thread than anything else. But as a compulsive buyer it's not the first time I do random stuff worth a few grand

africanos23 · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:32

Gregster said:
I was also a surround gamer with 5860x1080 and whilst it was a wow factor, I found I spent no time looking at the side screens, fish eye was very meh and very common. I would sooner take a bigger single screen personally but horses for courses.

Simulators (plane car etc) are pretty nice, FPS and third person games are kind of meh.... very hard and I got pwned often.

You also need a good mouse (high dpi) + a huge mouse mat. Your hand gets tired very fast and your eyes hurt if you don't do breaks every now and then.

Gregster · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:34

Spot on and I was big into FSX back then which looked and played very nice.

VincentHanna · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:35

africanos23 said:
Just for reference

1920x1080 = 2073600 pixels
5760x1080 = 6220800 pixels
3840x2160 = 8294400 pixels
11520x2160 = 24883200 pixels

Asus PB287Q ~1.5cm from all sides of what I can see online so its not that bad

Yeah, it's a lot.

But 8k FUHD is
7680 × 4320 = 33177600 pixels

So true 12k would be even higher

ALXAndy · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:35

Gregster said:
I was also a surround gamer with 5860x1080 and whilst it was a wow factor, I found I spent no time looking at the side screens, fish eye was very meh and very common. I would sooner take a bigger single screen personally but horses for courses.

Yeah I found the same. I bought three cheap 19" screens for £35 each and gave it a go and whilst it was fun (and very impressive as a by stander) when you game you usually focus on the middle screen only.

Not something I would entertain again. As usual I've been there, seen it etc and whilst it was fun it certainly wasn't worth all the aggro (plus some games looked downright stupid, like Fallout 3).

africanos23 · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:38

ALXAndy said:
Yeah I found the same. I bought three cheap 19" screens for £35 each and gave it a go and whilst it was fun (and very impressive as a by stander) when you game you usually focus on the middle screen only.

Not something I would entertain again. As usual I've been there, seen it etc and whilst it was fun it certainly wasn't worth all the aggro (plus some games looked downright stupid, like Fallout 3).

With no native support there's also that strange blur-stretching, so you only use peripheral vision when looking at the side monitors. Simulators don't due that as much because your view is pegged just wider "more immersive".

Would like to see some console peasants hop on this thread, would be really funny :cool:

Mei · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:40

africanos23 said:
I actually mentioned why AMD might be a no-no (8GB) and thats probably the max we will see anyway.

It's more of a crazy mans (womans) thread than anything else. But as a compulsive buyer it's not the first time I do random stuff worth a few grand

lol ok
well assuming the 390 & tx are the same speed, you could debate if 8gb is enough for 3x4k screens i guess or if 12gb comes in handy

but (and im going to say this as a question i dont want nvidia ppl to lock me up in a dungeon) amd cards scale better in games? meaning quadfire is a thing but more than 2 in sli is for badies?

ALXAndy · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:42

africanos23 said:
With no native support there's also that strange blur-stretching, so you only use peripheral vision when looking at the side monitors. Simulators don't due that as much because your view is pegged just wider "more immersive".

Would like to see some console peasants hop on this thread would be really funny

Yup that's the stuff. In Fallout 3 the Deathclaws looked like they were right on you on the side monitors but were actually miles away.

Surround = 3D, Quadfire, Quad SLI and ETC. All sound good on paper, not so good when you actually try them.

It's just another way for manus to try and create a new must have killer APP that will sell and make them tons of money. Same sorta thing as Physx and so on. All of them are a selling point but none of them caught on.

africanos23 · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:44

Mei said:
lol ok
well assuming the 390 & tx are the same speed, you could debate if 8gb is enough for 3x4k screens i guess or if 12gb comes in handy
but (and im going to say this as a question i dont want nvidia ppl to lock me up in a dungeon) amd cards scale better in games? meaning quadfire is a thing but more than 2 in sli is for badies?

Yeah true dat especially when pushing 4K. That's my opinion, ofcourse Kaaps has also mentioned this with four cards AMD has the scaling lead.

I prefer 2 cards but when talking about uber *2025* resolutions, ahead of time basically you don't have a lot of options.

AllBodies · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:46

Remember the Titan X is only ~31% faster than the GTX 980 at 4K (source), so I HIGHLY doubt 3 of them will run 3x4K well at all (especially looking forward to newer games).

If you want very immersive gaming, I'm with greg on principle here, I don't think you'll actually look at the outside screens much (particularly if you were going to go with a big ~32" 4K screen in the middle).

With those 2 points said, I'd say you should try this LG super-wide 34" screen:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-120-LG&groupid=17&catid=2898

That thing is MASSIVE, and curved into your vision, and the pixels are still smaller than a 24" 1920x1080 monitor, so it's going to be super-sharp. And with that you'd probably only need 1 Titan X or R9 390X to run it well, and two of each would keep you going at max eye-candy for quite some time.

ALXAndy · 18 Mar 2015 at 10:48

Mei said:
lol ok
well assuming the 390 & tx are the same speed, you could debate if 8gb is enough for 3x4k screens i guess or if 12gb comes in handy
but (and im going to say this as a question i dont want nvidia ppl to lock me up in a dungeon) amd cards scale better in games? meaning quadfire is a thing but more than 2 in sli is for badies?

That would only become an issue if a game was solely designed to run 12k and had full on full fat 12k textures being thrown around.

That won't happen, because then you have to create a full on set of textures for anything below.

It's kinda like quad GPU support, 3d and so on. Unless it's exclusively designed to actually run something like that it'll always be a bodge.

Right now some 1080p games ring in at 40gb and more with the fat ass textures they have. A true 12k game? you'd be looking three times that. Ain't gonna happen..

These frivolous things are designed for people to try and find out they're a bit crap. They don't catch on and they never become mainstream as they always have inexcusable caveats.

Kinda like 3D. Some people can't even see it...

4k will catch on sooner than anything else, but it'll take years before we see proper true 4k games and not just crappy textures being upscaled.