Your thoughts please... 680 SLI and Surround or wait for GK110

[Rusty0611]

What sort of temperatures are you getting in SLI? Is the WF at the top? What reference card do you have running as well?

Below 60c although as I said the 680's weren't 100% in usage in BF3. In Heaven 3.0 they were but I do have an aggressive fan curve so they kept under 70c allbeit quite loud.

The reference card is just a bog standard MSI card. The one made by nVidia but boxed and stickered by MSI. And yes, Windforce at the top.

You know you can do an in place non destructive reinstall of Windows7 that gives you a clean install but doesn't lose all your software & settings

Works a treat.

Never knew that. Cheers.

Will keep that in mind for future!

 

[Rusty0611]

That sounds rather promising for when mine are delivered later

Let me know how you get on

What speed you running your 690 at?

 

[Rusty0611]

Stock at the minute, but i'll be OCing once I'm setup again.

It'll do 1180 on both cores + 7GHz memory

What time is your delivery coming? It took me a long time with my limited space to get the monitors at the correct angles!

I rememeber you saying you have a stand coming as well so you'll probably be OK.

It was the rebuild which took my enthusiasm away. Had re-do all my cabling as I needed to plug in the other two PCI-E cables and the PSU wires are hidden by a box which while being aesthetically pleasing is a pain to remove as you need to re-do the wiring which comes out the top of it.

It took hours as I ballsed it up twice due to impatience!

On a separate note - all those people in GH who say you need 850W to run an overclocked SLI/crossfire set up - nonsense!

I'm not even close to the limit on the 12V.

 

[Rusty0611]

What have you got crinkleshoes? Another 690 for sli?

690 *is* SLI

But I got your point

 

[Rusty0611]

Nah - not yet - I'm going to see how well just the 1 performs... from Rusty's reports, it sounds like I might be ok with 1 - will see how I get on.

It's the 2 extra monitors + stand that arrived this morning - just unpacking now

Yeah... more than enough.

My 110 FPS average was Ultra 1080p (SLI)
I had 58 FPS average on High 5780*1080 (single card)

There was plenty more available to give in the 1080p run. Both cards weren't 100% utilised.

The true testing will come when I get round to SLI testing in Surround after work tonight.

I think we'll perform around the same.

You have PCI-E 3.0 - I have a larger overclock on the cards.

My very rough calculation says they should offset each other (maybe!).

 

[Rusty0611]

Same problems here. The annoying this is you can't set a profile to switch so if you go back to separate resolutions on each and run extended desktop, you have to re-do the Bezel correction.

Which reminds me - I need to get Cleeecooo's attention. Rumour has it, he's a master on this subject!

 

[Rusty0611]

Crappy nvidia drivers
(Joke)

It's true though. If AMD allow you to do it properly then nVidia should implement something similar. There's 3 users on this forum alone in this thread who want it... scale it up across all Surround users? Probably a lot of them are similar.

Edit: Now 4 users!

(below)

 

[Rusty0611]

whyscotty will be your man for the 3D surround question!

 

[Rusty0611]

3D BF3 is not good IMO....

 

[Rusty0611]

Did you succumb to the 7970 Tommy?

I ordered another fan at 2pm today as the one I bought was just far too loud and it hasn't shipped . It's all the buggers clogging up the order system pillaging AMD cards from the shelves

Edit: What on earth are these links appearing when typing brands/product names?

 

[Rusty0611]

Right into BF3 surround and SLI enabled we go

 

[Rusty0611]

PC porn and benchmarks incoming....

Settings:

Grand Bazaar 64 - SLI 680 @ 5780*1080 (5840*1080 with bezel correction)

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
75669, 979234, 45, 133, 77.274

PC porn (excuse the mess I've only just finished!):

 

[Rusty0611]

What 3D games would you recommend?

L4D2 is superb in 3D. The Witcher 2 is also very good. Somebody (maybe Tommy?!) did a pretty good round up of games in 3D.

 

[Rusty0611]

Some tank action in MP:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
86807, 1396614, 25, 161, 62.155

Tank battles aren't playable with these settings. The smoke destroys the FPS...

 

[Rusty0611]

Much, much smoother without any MSAA. I wonder if High and MSAAx2 is a better compromise. It ain't VRAM limiting me it's GPU grunt...

 

[Rusty0611]

I was in a Havok at the end of the round!

 

[Rusty0611]

I enjoyed it more tonight. I still need to adjust. I'm used to leaning left slightly as that was where monitor was before. That then throws the whole balance out!

Overall, the performance is where I'd expect although the MSAA 2x was a little bit of a shock. I need to find out what the utilisation is like in Surround though as I'm wondering whether PCI-E 3.0 could benefit that a little.

My BF3 playing performance has hit the floor. I don't know if it's because I'm playing rubbish or whether the set-up ain't helping. Time will tell!

 

[Rusty0611]

more grunt than a 690?!

Why not add a 680?

Does it work? 690 and 680?

2 GPU's ain't enough for surround in 2D never mind 3D. And that is with my good clockers.

Would need to get PCI-E 3.0 and tri-SLI to really be in the business.

 

[Rusty0611]

Did you tone down MSAA crinkleshoes? That''s the killer for me.

 

[Rusty0611]

Right I'm keeping it. I'm converted - I love it . The key is to not use the two screens as main screens. I almost felt like I had to, to get my money's worth (they're pricey screens!) and that was definitely exacerbating the stretching.