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

[africanos23]

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.

 

[africanos23]

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]

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

 

[africanos23]

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]

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.

 

[africanos23]

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

 

[africanos23]

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.

 

[africanos23]

Can you run 3 G-sync monitors?

I guess that would be an option as I doubt I would have 60 FPS mins. The total would be 3x Gsync Monitors and 3 GPUs.

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

I'm running 4K (3840x2160) so it would be back peddling unless you mean 3 of those, not sure how that would feel with curved monitors.

 

[africanos23]

Getting deeper into the topic what levels of DSR @ 4K would be the equivalent for testings sake?

And would the CPU and pci-e lanes be a bottleneck ? (Sandy-Bridge E i7 3930K, clocks to 4.7Ghz 1.33v on air). PCI-E 3.0 *16x,x16x16,x16x16x8*

 

[africanos23]

I'm sorry Africanos but you have to live up to your sig.



4 TitanXs and just to let you know unofficially, Gibbo approves this message.

The wife is currently "shopping around" for a wedding dress so I guess I'm allowed to burn some cash lol.

I'm getting official married in June and this is a wedding expense , that's how I like to see it anyway

Mobo only does 3 way SLI/CFX

Would need to use the 4770K which would struggle with the bandwidth imo.

 

[africanos23]

lol wth dood!
....no words

erm if she see's this and you say no to anything...
wow haha

She started off telling me (with her brides maid) a few months ago that the prices are roughly 7K euros for something normal and the nicer ones go for 10K euros.

They basically shocked me so I would actually think anything lower than that was a bargain.

Reminds me of Nvidia somewhat

Congratulations, on both fronts.

I was only joking regarding 4 way but tbh, wouldn't a 5960X be needed to drive 4 TitanXs?. If you do get three then I reckon you'll be fine. If you already had the cards then all it is a little more expenditure further down the line to rectify the situation.

Thing is though, is TRI-SLI improved?. Gregster had minimal gains from his third Titan so if you are getting anything, maybe start at two and then see what review sites say unless you're going to be performing a review of your own.

If 2 way SLI was capable I wouldn't even blink to be honest, 4K or lower would be a nice experience for that . Anything more and your looking at other complications so that's the reason I posted. VRAM, CPU bottleneck , PCI-E struggling etc.

 

[africanos23]

Can you send me some money please, ta?

My girlfriend will be getting something for about £500 if she's lucky!

Welcome to Cyprus, 1300 people wedding roughly and that's on the low side hehehe.

Photographer Cost - 3 Titan X's

Wedding Dress Cost - TBA awaiting the shocker on that, probably roughly 4 Titan X's (maybe an extra X99 system with mobo and ram)

Dinner - Roughly the GPU stock of OCUK

as long as you dont make her get marred in a bright green dress and you in a leather jacket lol

Nah I'm not a fanboy of any sorts ( at least that's what I think)

 

[africanos23]

Probably just hold on for now then and I'm sure SLI+ results will be shown and you can make a better guesstimate from there. I've seen one video of TRI-SLI and the gains seem less with the third card but there was nothing indicating what settings were used. Also, there weren't many tests ran.

As it's 4K plus, you may have to be the guinea pig unless you ask Kaap to use DSR as I'm sure he'll be getting a few.

Already have asked in the Titan X owners thread for 4K DSR

Why do I have to get these crazy ideas whenever a new GPU gets released! A well... hehehe

what about the ocuk invites cost with 1st class plane & accommodation!

Im not rich let alone Bill Gates

Just your normal GPU degen

 

[africanos23]

In what World does Crysis 3 run faster at 4k than Bioshock Infinite?

Looking at 3DMark I can't find any official results searching on the site for anything Titan X related... Strange when some sites have benchmark results listed.

 

[africanos23]

Vega has probably given it a go. He's not that active on these forums though. He's probably on [H]ard OCP though.

Vegas is UK based ?

He use to do the best vids on PCI-E and crazy resolutions back in the day

 

[africanos23]

Looking at 3600 euros minimum without shipping for the cards (Titan X) I need time to think LOL