gpu for 1440p?

[James J]

To throw in a curve ball

2x 580 3gb cards are in your budget in the second hand market and they'll do 60fps at 1440p in BF3 easily.

 

[no_1_dave]

To throw in a curve ball

2x 580 3gb cards are in your budget in the second hand market and they'll do 60fps at 1440p in BF3 easily.

They wont even break a sweat.

 

[Davepen]

Davepen what CPU do you have and what's it running at?

This could be your problem.
2x680s can cut it, just like Davepen has shown.

I'm running an i5 2500k @ 4ghz so not exactly a beast.
I'm about to do a full benchmark on that starting section so bare with me.

 

[Davepen]

Ok the first section, upto and including the ballistia, the archers and the final boss fight. ultra, vsync off:


Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
41919, 497596, 28, 121, 84.243


Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
13700, 166671, 30, 115, 82.198

 

[Besty]

Ok the first section, upto and including the ballistia, the archers and the final boss fight. ultra, vsync off:


Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
41919, 497596, 28, 121, 84.243


Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
13700, 166671, 30, 115, 82.198

That is about 20% better than mine but it now looks right.

We have benchmark threads running on the forum for Crysis2, Metro and Batman Arkham City. Would you be kind enough to drop your results for your setup for those games too?

Cheers.

 

[Besty]

Having had more time to tinker. It looks like the Witcher 2 problems are driver related so lets park that one for now.

I did do another run today with 64 Player Gulf Of Oman on 2 and 3 GPUS with my CPU at 4.5GHZ and the GPU's at stock.

The latest driver set from AMD (12.5) gives almost perfect scaling on 3 GPU at 1440p.

On 64 Player and 1440p, each card seems to be able to pump out a minimum of 23fps. So, the scaling looks something like this

1 x 7970 - 23fps
2 x 7970 - 46fps
3 x 7970 - 70fps

In order to get to get to the magical 60fps with 2 cards, you would need to overclock the two cards by 15% and run them at the ULPS maximums.

I have now tested 2 x 7970 at max ulps clocks of 1125/1575 and voila. 59fps minimum frame rate.

 

[Agnostic]

It comes down to if you want to maxx the settings or not.

I run 3x7970's (watercooled) with both 1080p/120hz and 1440p/60hz displays.

I like to have a minimum frame rate of 50-60fps at 1440p, 30-60fps don't work for me as I get motion sickness.

If you want the settings maxxed at 1440p, you will need 3 cards, 2 cards won't cut.

You need 2 for 1080p in Battlefield 3 in Ultra.

My own experiences with Skyrim and BF3 is that average frame rates mean nothing, you need to be looking at the minimum frame rate and frame draw times and looking at how long they stay at their minimums, that is why sites like Anandtech can't be used for reference points anymore.

So you're effectively trying to invoke your own experience as something which isn't relativistic, but fact. Seriously, how do you consider what YOU think the real answer?

 

[Besty]

Point I was trying to make and have now illustrated is that at stock 2 x 7970 cards can't maintain 60fps in 1440p/Ultra for 64 player on the biggest of maps.

I have produced my own information which demonstrates this and shows what you need to achieve to ace it.

People should not buy dual card setups based purely on hope, especially if air cooled or in a smaller rig such as a M-ATX case.

It's all well and good quoting massive overclocks but the truth is in some cases it takes a large investment in other equipment to get you there.

 

[no_1_dave]

I think most people have realised that it is not worth an extra £350 for a 3rd card simply so when the screen is full of smoke you still get 60fps instead of 53fps.