3x 30" Portrait Crossfire Eyefinity vs SLI Surround Showdown

Final8y · 12 Mar 2011 at 02:00

Rossuk89 said:
How much did this system cost? Around £3,000?

And the rest.

Kanifee · 12 Mar 2011 at 02:49

you sir have too much time, too much money and too much to say....... i love it, really nice set up and nice write up too.

I really wish i could make use of a eyefinity set-up, such a bragging point its ridiculous but i cant, unfortunately Fps gaming for the time being ridicules that we call borders!!

Nice though and very relevant :cool:

AWPC · 12 Mar 2011 at 03:17

Wow what an epic pointless waste of money :eek:

considering the vast majority of PC games will not scale very well above 1920x1200 (even if they did/do the low res textures will look even poorer

) it would have been better to buy a massive 60"+ HDTV @ 1080P for the immersion factor which would give you a better gaming experience...............

Final8y · 12 Mar 2011 at 03:34

AWPC said:
Wow what an epic pointless waste of money considering the vast majority of PC games will not scale very well above 1920x1200 (even if they did/do the low res textures will look even poorer) it would have been better to buy a massive 60"+ HDTV @ 1080P for the immersion factor which would give you a better gaming experience...............

Your taking complete rubbish on many levels because 60" @ 1080 will look worse not better & its nothing todo with games scaling.

Another case of someone who doesn't have thinking that they know better.

mountaincow · 12 Mar 2011 at 03:36

This is great stuff to know, not that I could afford anything like this but it is very interesting to read.

Are you planning on adding your quad 580 results? As I would love to see the difference at these resolutions.

AWPC said:
Wow what an epic pointless waste of money considering the vast majority of PC games will not scale very well above 1920x1200 (even if they did/do the low res textures will look even poorer) it would have been better to buy a massive 60"+ HDTV @ 1080P for the immersion factor which would give you a better gaming experience...............

Surely he has already explained himself, also what does it matter how he spends his money (even if he is not minted), if you are an enthusiast there is always reason to spend more on something you love.

Parky · 12 Mar 2011 at 03:52

Hmmmmm the chair costs more than my entire setup.....

Vega · 12 Mar 2011 at 07:58

AWPC said:
Wow what an epic pointless waste of money considering the vast majority of PC games will not scale very well above 1920x1200 (even if they did/do the low res textures will look even poorer) it would have been better to buy a massive 60"+ HDTV @ 1080P for the immersion factor which would give you a better gaming experience...............

lol 1080p. Why would I want to play at such a tiny low resolution? Computer games scale incredibly well at high resolution.

Here is a picture of a pixel perfect 1080p movie on my desktop just to give you a comparison:

Aw, its so cute. Anyone who buys a 1080P TV for computer use is clueless to begin with so I am not surprised.

phill9800 · 12 Mar 2011 at 13:13

Seeing this is a gem find for me!!

I'm in the same situation with 3 30" screens and not being able to find a GPU to run them at the res and detail levels that I wanted!

So let me get this right, your using 2 or 3 3Gb cards for this setup? Reason I ask is that I have the landscape version of this and I want to make sure I get the best I can possible to make sure that I dont have to spend out twice on something.

I've just sold both of my 5970's and I really want to make sure I get the right GPU next. Sadly I have to buy a new PSU as my current one blew up on me yesterday, so I need to get two for each i7 rig.
Then when I've got some spare cash the GPU's will be bought!!

Thank you so much Thug for posting the details and thread up

Final8y · 12 Mar 2011 at 13:15

phill9800 said:
Seeing this is a gem find for me!!

I'm in the same situation with 3 30" screens and not being able to find a GPU to run them at the res and detail levels that I wanted!

So let me get this right, your using 2 or 3 3Gb cards for this setup? Reason I ask is that I have the landscape version of this and I want to make sure I get the best I can possible to make sure that I dont have to spend out twice on something.

I've just sold both of my 5970's and I really want to make sure I get the right GPU next. Sadly I have to buy a new PSU as my current one blew up on me yesterday, so I need to get two for each i7 rig.
Then when I've got some spare cash the GPU's will be bought!!

Thank you so much Thug for posting the details and thread up

Go NV 3GB cards.

phill9800 · 12 Mar 2011 at 13:19

Thats the plan

But having to maybe buy 6 of them, its a little hard to swallow but we'll see

Vega · 12 Mar 2011 at 17:05

phill9800 said:
Thats the plan

But having to maybe buy 6 of them, its a little hard to swallow but we'll see

Using, Quad 3GB 580s. You can read more in the Gigabyte blog:

http://gigabytedaily.blogspot.com/2011/03/dream-pc-that-even-biggest-geeks-envy.html

phill9800 · 12 Mar 2011 at 17:07

Thanks for the reply there Vega

How did you find using TRI SLI for the 3 screens?

What make 580's did you go for?

Vega · 12 Mar 2011 at 17:12

TRI-SLI worked pretty good but at this resolution in games I was still GPU limited. With 4-way, in a lot of games I still max out all 4 GPUs.

I went with the Palit cards. Palit/Gainward (same cards just different air coolers) are the only ones that make 3GB 580s. They are hard to find. Been out of stock in the US for a long time. I had to order one with OK UK and it appears they are out of stock on both version now too.

Final8y · 12 Mar 2011 at 17:29

Vega said:
TRI-SLI worked pretty good but at this resolution in games I was still GPU limited. With 4-way, in a lot of games I still max out all 4 GPUs.

Get an Intel Hexcore.

Ezyryder · 12 Mar 2011 at 17:31

Final8y said:
Get an Intel Hexcore.

I think he has got a 990x overclocked...

Klo · 12 Mar 2011 at 17:41

Vega said:
lol 1080p. Why would I want to play at such a tiny low resolution? Computer games scale incredibly well at high resolution.

Here is a picture of a pixel perfect 1080p movie on my desktop just to give you a comparison:

Aw, its so cute. Anyone who buys a 1080P TV for computer use is clueless to begin with so I am not surprised.

Tbh for me that looks awful. I'd hate that and wouldn't get it, even if I did have the money.

Most computer games don't scale that well, especially when you start hitting higher resolutions that the raw textures are at.

phill9800 · 12 Mar 2011 at 18:00

Vega said:
TRI-SLI worked pretty good but at this resolution in games I was still GPU limited. With 4-way, in a lot of games I still max out all 4 GPUs.

I went with the Palit cards. Palit/Gainward (same cards just different air coolers) are the only ones that make 3GB 580s. They are hard to find. Been out of stock in the US for a long time. I had to order one with OK UK and it appears they are out of stock on both version now too.

I have been asking around a few places but I havent seen any stock at the moment, so I'm just trying to save some cash now

Its a bit difficult for me at the moment to pay out for the cards and having my PSU just go bang on me, wasnt the best thing in the world that could have happened!!

I've just got another two on the way for a replacement and for another rig

Most of the time I'll just use a single screen as people can visit and use a rig each but when its just me I'd like to think I'd get all 3 running

Dirt 2 and COD 4 looked amazing even with my 5970

Running Dirt 2 at anything more than medium just wouldnt work because of the sheer amount of detail on the screen, I went from 55fps to 5fps!! Mind you that was with a single card also, when I tried another 5970, it slowed it down!!

Vega · 12 Mar 2011 at 18:01

Klo said:
Tbh for me that looks awful. I'd hate that and wouldn't get it, even if I did have the money.

Most computer games don't scale that well, especially when you start hitting higher resolutions that the raw textures are at.

Looks awful? In what world does higher resolution = a bad thing? One of the major points of future graphics is to get a higher resolution. Thats why they are working on 4k resolution TV's. Are you one of those people that still uses VHS tapes at 240 lines of resolution for movies instead of Blu-Ray? :eek:

Here is an in-game screenshot of a game on my system. Make sure to click the image when it opens to get it "actual size":

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/056/f/e/dcs_a_10c_by_callsignvega-d3adt3i.jpg

Scales incredibly well.

Rroff · 12 Mar 2011 at 18:54

Meaker said:
BTW just so you know, adding extra cards does not add extra memory, each card must hold a duplicate copy of the data in the first.

3x2GB cards in crossfire would be 2GB total.

GPUs don't map 1:1 into System RAM, each card (even in a multi GPU setup) will have an "aperture" thats used to communicate with that card and the system - usually between 128MB and ~300MB per card - even in SLI/CF individual cards will still need to "talk" to the system for data upload.

Final8y · 12 Mar 2011 at 19:52

Ezyryder said:
I think he has got a 990x overclocked...

i7 920 D0 @ 4.55 GHz
6GB DDR3
Intel SSD
Asus Xonar Essence STX Sound
3x 30" HP ZR30w's in Portrait