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Advice Sought - Estimating Performance

ytene

ytene

ytene

Associate
Joined
10 Dec 2009
Posts
24
Sorry in advance if this gets a bit lengthy.

I'm in the incredibly fortunate position of being in the "build process" for a new gaming machine that will include an i9 7920XE which I will likely run at about 4.4GHz and a pair of 2080Ti's that I will run in SLI on a RoG Rampage Extreme Omega board.

At the moment I have a triple set of Dell U2415W monitors, each 1920x1200, giving me a desktop of 5760x1200. My current machine is based on an MSI Big Bang Power II mobo [sounds weird, gives me great overclocking potential] an i7 4960XE @ 4.3GHz and a single GTX1080.

With this configuration I get perfectly reasonable performance with my smallish collection of games (Elite Dangerous, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Skyrim, Mass Effect Series, various GTA games, etc.) For example, when I run the integrated performance test on SoTR, I get an average frame rate of 57fps and a lowest of about 23.

The reason for the significant up-tick on GPU performance is that I'd love to be able to upgrade my Monitors - and ideally I'd like to go for 3 x 27" screens running at 2560x1440 resolution each... The question I'm trying to answer is whether or not I can predict how my new system will cope with driving games at this resolution. If it's possible, then I would be willing to invest what could be up to £1,650 in a triplet of new monitors.

But that's a lot of money to spend on a punt - if it doesn't work out. Now I can do a simplistic calcualtion... I know the pixel count for my current setup and can calculate for the larger monitor resolution. i can also read reviews and benchmark comparisons of the 2 cards, look at the % improvement, then apply that as an extrapolation. Weird thing is, the results don't look promising "by the numbers", but there are plenty of threads on Reddit to suggest that this should not be a problem. I'm just not willing to bet £1,650 on random posts on Reddit...

Is anyone aware of a resource that may have more data, or can anyone recommend maybe a calculation process that would allow me to (reliably) estimate if this would work? Any/all advice gratefully received...

Thanks in advance.
 
Why would you get a i9 7920XE for gaming?? AMD and Intel have better options nowadays for less money. Did you get it for free,or very cheaply??

Literally in a few months,Zen3 will be launched with upto 16 cores. Nvidia and AMD are launching Ampere and RDNA2 based GPUs from next month onwards.
 
Unsure about your CPU choice - I'd go for something else personally - however the pixel count increase of the 1440p monitors vs your current ones is 60%, and the 2080ti is an approx 50%-70% in performance depending on exact use case/game. With that in mind, you would only need a single card to get similar if not improved performance over your current setup, that's excluding any reduction in AA you might get away with due to the 15% increased pixels per inch.

I realise this calculation is exactly what you have said you can already do based on the data that's out there, but aside from just saying "do more research" I can't see what else anyone here can provide aside from anecdotal evidence of their own similar upgrade paths. The data out there is the best you're going to get really.
 
Not sure why the OP wants to use triple monitors, maybe he should look at one of the new ultra wide single monitors.
 
Thanks for the responses everyone.

CAT-THE-FIFTH: I *also* want to play games; yes, I got it at a good price; I bought all the gear between mid-2018 and March 2019 - the parts have been sitting in boxes because life got in the way. My decision became a triangle of 3 competing objectives: price, thread-based performance [which is important to me for work] and absolute speed [which is important to me for gaming]. I took a *lot* of advice, especially from the system builders here at OcUK and they did an excellent job of showing me that this was the best permutation for my use case.

Zefan: Thank you; most constructive and helpful answer so far.

Kaapstad: I have been looking at the ultra-wide options. The best choice I came up with was the Dell U4919DW, with a 49" screen and 5120x1440 pixel resolution. A triple setup of, say, the Samsung Oddysey 27", would give me 7680x1440 pixel resolution. I have the space to step up, size-wise... I can probably get a good understanding of physical logistics in a retail store... I came here to learn more about the practicalities of driving this theoretical setup.

Danlightbulb: As noted above in my reply to CAT-THE-FIFTH: I went out and bought all the gear for a new PC in late 2018/early 2019. The build has been suspended, so I'm going to go ahead. Instead of thinking about this in terms of "what is the absolute latest and greatest" I'm thinking about it in terms of the relative step-up that I'm going to get from moving from my 4960/GTX1080 to a 7920XE/2xRTX2080... and hoping that the step is sufficiently impressive.( In CPU Terms, I'm hoping to match CPU clock speeds with my current 4960 but on a more throughput-efficient die [7th Gen, not 4th Gen]; I'm also doubling my core count from 6 to 12. We've got the CPU up and running under a Heatkiller IV Pro water block and cooled by a dedicated CE560 radiator fitted with 4x140mm PWM fans @40%. We've run Prime95 in that setup with all cores maxed out at 4.4GHz and temps peak at 80 centigrade... so hopefully not bad and not something I'll hit IRL. To be on the safe side I'm using an Aquero 6XT and I drive fan speeds from temp sensors on the output ports of each of the 5 CE560 radiators I'm running. In GPU Terms, as Zafan points out, a single 2080Ti is 160% of the performance of my GTX1080 - and I'm going with the benefit of SLI... Most of the handful of games I play support SLI).

Tetras: Yes

LeMson: Yes... and if we'd met in August 2018, just before I ordered my Thermaltake WP200 case (first purchased item) and said, "You know... you're going to buy all this gear and then get sent overseas to work and have to leave it all behind for 18 months..." I'd have likely listened and held off the purchase. I didn't choose to keep all this gear sitting in my spare room; I'm just working with what life has left me.


I'm grateful for all your replies. I do appreciate that I'm in an unusual situation and I can understand your collective response of, "Oh, if I was going to do that... I wouldn't choose 'X'... but there are circumstances and reasons I've got this specific configuration. I'm interested in maximising screen real estate because when the PC is "in work mode", having a large number of desktop windows maximised, so I can watch a large number of things happening at the same time without having to move or minimise a window, is *really* important to me. That's a primary design goal for the setup. But I also love to play PC games... and so my question was more along the lines of whether this weird setup would be practical for gaming at extremely high resolution, without things like tearing or low refresh rates.

I'm still reading up on GSync, for example... not sure if that will work in SLI Mode [logic suggests it would, but I don't want to assume].

So thanks again for all your responses...
 
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@ytene its your money...

but if you haven't yet bought the 2080ti's (bit unclear from your post whether you have or not), then, just my opinion, its silly not to wait just 3 weeks and see what comes out, especially when you've already waited 18 months to complete the build.

You want 2x2080ti's - in 3 weeks you might find out you can get 2x3080ti's for the same money.
 
I would wait for the new GPUs if you have bought them already,as Ampere and RDNA2 should be a decent improvement in theory over the current generation.

OK,it makes more sense why you have the Core i7 7920X now,but TBF they still go for between £400~£500. The problem is the HEDT mesh bus CPUs,don't perform as well as consumer socket CPUs in gaming. I would probably sell the whole shebang and wait for Zen3 to come out,or get a Core i9 10900K or Ryzen 9 3900X.
 
Yes, not only have I already purchased the 2080Ti's, but I've replaced the air coolers with EKWB water blocks (did that way back when I bought them). Had I not already done so, I absolutely *would* be waiting for the new generation, even though I don't expect them to ship in volume until next February [because I expect nVidia to use the Christmas sales bubble to discount and shift old stock]. But to repeat: I'm looking at this glass-half-full (i.e. how much more performance am I going to gain over my single GTX1080) and not glass-half-empty (i.e. what could I have bought if I'd waited until now). If all I wanted to do was wait for "the next big thing" I would never build a machine again... ;o)
 
If you've already bought all the components, I'm not sure I understand why you don't just build it and see what the performance is over your current system?

Ah on re-reading your post I think I get it now. You've got all the PC components but not the monitors, is that right? So you're asking how the 2x2080ti's will perform on the monitors you've not bought yet but are thinking about buying?
 
Danlightbulb: yes, you've got it... I'm working on the basis that on paper the system would handle 3x27"/2560x1440 screens, but I thought I'd come here and ask if anyone has any experience of that setup and if so what GPU configuration they were running. I tried to include a bit of information about the rest of the system because invariably someone will ask if it is "balanced" and the like, so thought I could simplify if I gave a bit of context up front.

Unfortunately for me, my explanation wasn't clear and people have jumped off in all directions (and produced lots of interesting side discussion along the way).

So my challenge was that my system is ***way*** to big and bulky to take to a store to test (even if I could find one locally that would indulge me) and therefore if I wanted to "try" the triple 2560x1440 route, my only realistic option would be to make the purchase and try to luck and, well, if it didn't work at least I'd have three shiny monitors. I've no doubt that this machine has the grunt to run them for anything shy of gaming, but I simply couldn't go for a build this extreme and then *not* try and use it for gaming...

VincentHanna: The confusion I've caused with my poorly worded question is that the natural conclusion to draw was that "I want to play games at 7680x1440". Yes, that's on the list, but... it would be more accurate to say, "I use my PC for work + play. When working, I would get extreme value of having 7680x1440 pixels of screen real estate, which would let me put a vast amount of data on the screen at the same time, without having to hunt for a window to find what I want. When playing, if I have all this glorious technology, I'd like to make use of it for gaming purposes. But the fundamental question was: could a pair of 2080Ti's in SLI comfortably drive a triplet of these screens and give good refresh rates? I've got all the (PC Side) hardware already, so now it's just a question of trying to figure out whether the upgrade from 3x24"@1920x1200 to 3x27"@2560x1440 would push the new GPU's too far.

If I understand, the thinking is that on paper it should at the very least be "OK" for non-SLI games, while anything that does support SLI should be no problem at all...


I like the Samsung you link to and reckon it is the best of the ultra-wide single-monitor options... It's certainly on my consideration list. I also like your thinking on VR - up to a point. I have PS/VR on my Playstation 4 and that's OK. I've looked at Oculus Rift as an option and I suspect that it's an "inevitability" at some point. The biggest single reason for *not* going there up until now has been that they were bought out by Facebook, to which I have a pathological aversion. From a VR gaming perspective, I think I would be most interested in using that with Elite Dangerous, combined with "Voice Attack" [ED has *far* too many keys mapped to try and find them all by touch]. But it's a way out yet.

So many toys, so little time...

Thanks again, everyone, for your helpful thoughts and suggestions.
 
ytene said:
VincentHanna: The confusion I've caused with my poorly worded question is that the natural conclusion to draw was that "I want to play games at 7680x1440". Yes, that's on the list, but... it would be more accurate to say, "I use my PC for work + play. When working, I would get extreme value of having 7680x1440 pixels of screen real estate, which would let me put a vast amount of data on the screen at the same time, without having to hunt for a window to find what I want. When playing, if I have all this glorious technology, I'd like to make use of it for gaming purposes. But the fundamental question was: could a pair of 2080Ti's in SLI comfortably drive a triplet of these screens and give good refresh rates? I've got all the (PC Side) hardware already, so now it's just a question of trying to figure out whether the upgrade from 3x24"@1920x1200 to 3x27"@2560x1440 would push the new GPU's too far.

If I understand, the thinking is that on paper it should at the very least be "OK" for non-SLI games, while anything that does support SLI should be no problem at all...
Click to expand...
That sounds about right, if the game supports SLI effectively then you should be okay, without SLI you'll be fine in older, less demanding games. In the newest games with a single 2080 Ti, I think you'll start to struggle, honestly, but I guess it depends on the settings and your expectations.
 
Thanks Tetras.

In some of the newer AAA games - Rise of the Tomb Raider / Shadow of the Tomb Raider, etc - and even some of the older ones (I'm a bit of a fan of Egosoft's X Series of 3D Space Adventure/Sim games) there are built-in frame-rate performance monitors... I'm not entirely sure how to measure performance of games that don't provide that, but as/when I get this monster finished, I'll be able to report back on performance results...
 
I would considering selling the whole lot (especially the 2080tis) while they still command a good price and either going for a 10900k or 3900X with the upcoming 3080ti or even a Titan ampere if you really wanted to push the boat out.
 
If you had to drop down to one 2080Ti, in a very demanding game, you could play on only one monitor. Wish I had that problem :D

Btw you use Afterburner to monitor frame rates and clock speeds etc
 
ytene said:
Thanks Tetras.

In some of the newer AAA games - Rise of the Tomb Raider / Shadow of the Tomb Raider, etc - and even some of the older ones (I'm a bit of a fan of Egosoft's X Series of 3D Space Adventure/Sim games) there are built-in frame-rate performance monitors... I'm not entirely sure how to measure performance of games that don't provide that, but as/when I get this monster finished, I'll be able to report back on performance results...
Click to expand...
If you're playing in steam I think there's an FPS counter in the overlay, I usually use the AMD overlay, but I'd assume nvidia's control panel has one too. With SLI it's also important to measure the general smoothness (like lows/avgs), which I don't think you can use with those tools. Afterburner maybe?
 
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