4-way sli NVIDIA GTX 780 ti

[rexusforte]

Hi guys, i'm planning to build a hardcore PC rig. I'm just wondering if 1 (or 2) Xeon E5-2697 v2 will be totally enough to handle 4 NVIDIA GTX 780 ti cards in SLI mode. Thank you in advance. Hoping to see your replies
P/s: budget is not my problem. So... it won't be my problem

 

[Mr Delirious]

Hi guys, i'm planning to build a hardcore PC rig. I'm just wondering if 1 (or 2) Xeon E5-2697 v2 will be totally enough to handle 4 NVIDIA GTX 780 ti cards in SLI mode. Thank you in advance. Hoping to see your replies
P/s: budget is not my problem. So... it won't be my problem

i will go with 3 780ti but remember you still need a powerful cpu and a motherboard thats supports that and plus 4 way sli like come on you might as well wait for the new gtx 790 or the titan ultra. i cant wait to get the titan ultra i hope its got like 6gb-8gb

 

[wshinn]

If your going to spend that much money just wait a few more months for the new 790 or titan ultra. Either that or give me your money my fancy pants.

 

[klepp0906]

I'm going to hate saying this because im a HUGE Nivida fan, but if your going 12k gaming (3, 4k monitoirs or 11,520 x 2,160 pixels) it is better to use AMD GPU's.

The reason why they are using AMD GPUs instead of NVIDIA GPUs is simple, at the time of writing this post, the PN-K321 (best 4k screen in the currently in the market) does not work with NVIDIA GPUs at 4K @ 60 Hz due to NVIDIA's artificially crippled driver.

In a pointless attempt to protect the revenues of their very expensive professional Quardro GPUs, NVIDIA artifically cripples their Windows (assuming this is your OS) driver to prevent users from using features like Surround 2x1, 2x2 configurations, 10-bit color and multiple display stereoscopic 3D in OpenGL (Quad Buffer Stereo). All Geforce cards are capable of these features and they are accessible when using the Linux GeForce driver but they are artificially disabled in the Windows driver.

Due to silicon limitations, this display requires DisplayPort MST to operate at 4K @ 60 Hz. The display actually appears as two tiled 1920x2160 monitors which is why this monitor is capable of doing 4K @ 60 Hz over 2 HDMI cables.

With the introduction of this monitor, NVIDIA was left with a choice, either support Surround 2x1, 2x2 configurations properly so anyone with any pair of monitors could play a 3D game with any variety of 2 or 4 monitors or they could write some sort of hack in the driver to support these types of monitors specifically while avoiding giving Windows users 2x1 and 2x2 Surround support.

NVIDIA is the lone GPU maker without 2x1 and 2x2 monitor configuration support. AMD has supported it forever with Eyefinity and now even Intel supports these configurations with their integrated GPUs using their Collage feature.

So you can probably guess what NVIDIA decided to do, instead of supporting Surround 2x1 properly, they decided to hack their drivers. They created an EDID white-list so they could detect these kinds of monitors and support their unique 2x1 capability while still disabling general Surround 2x1 support with any pair of monitors.

NVIDIA had an pre-production version of this display and updated their driver based on that. However when Sharp finally shipped this monitor, they changed the EDID data from the pre-production display. This change caused the display to fail the NVIDIA EDID whitelist check and not allow it to operate at 4K @ 60 Hz. So now NVIDIA is in the process of adding the correct EDID data to the white-list in the driver and soon the monitor will finally work with NVIDIA GPUs.

NVIDIA could have avoided all this by just giving everyone proper 2x1 and 2x2 surround support.

This comment is a summary of the following massive 9 page thread with comments directly from NVIDIA confirming the above:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/539645/nvidia-surround/2-monitor-gaming-/1

So, I said it, sorry to ruin your dreams, but its fact and i can't fight that :/

if your going 3x4k monitors A) your rich and B) wait because no gpu's out can handle that. Also with that many pixels your ONLY option would be titan. You would run out of vram on many many more games than otherwise. I game at 4680x2560 which is >4k and most games struggle to hold 60fps on max with 4 titans. That's real talk from someone who actually HAS the hardware theyre talking about. (and this is overclocked to the gills)

try running 3x that resolution and you get the picture. Impossibility with todays hardware. Sorry.

 

[cst1992]

Maybe, he could do with the quadro's? I think the k6000 has 12GB of RAM, but it's not that powerful to be able to hold 60 fps at 3x4k.

 

[h20deli]

The Xeon is just not a gaming CPU. It is slower than an i7 and doesn't OC like the i7. Games rarely use more than 4 cores, and when they do, 6 is about the limit anyways. All the cores on the Xeon will go to waste. On top of that, games are not optimized with a Xeon in mind.

Now you also must realize that the use of that much power is tied up in the resolution you plan to play at. At 1080p, you'd be bottlenecked in pretty much any game with just 2 780ti's, but with a 4k screen, you'd rarely bottleneck an i5.

That last unknown is will the 780ti even work in 4-way SLI? Officially, Nvidia cards, other than their dual cards (like the 590 or 690) do not support 4-way SLI, though the Titan does unofficially, but many of their cards are artificially blocked from 4-way SLI.

Ok now this is going to sound mad - how about a 4k 3d surround. I have that in mind, that is when I have 4 780 ti cards in my mind.

Anyways, I currenty run a surround 1080 on 2 780s, with and 4770k, no bottlenecks whatsoever in my experiences , so even a 4930x would be a bit overkill for that of 2 780s, maybe will hit 30% load max? I dont know, but maybe if you are as rich as hell, and planning to swap to the newest cards on release, and cant be bothered to swap mobo and cpu, then maybe 4970x, so please (to the original question-guy) consider where your sepending your hard earned money.

Also here is my build now.
-4770k
-16 GB Corsair Vengeance Pro
-2x 780 SLI (ASUS)
-Asus maximus vi formula
-Corsair ax1200i
-Corsair 900d
-1x Evo 1TB
-2x 4tb black drives (no raid)
-1x Blu-Ray Drive
-Corsair H100i

And a little tips on custom watercooling that would help a tonne, thanks.

 

[bystander]

Ok now this is going to sound mad - how about a 4k 3d surround. I have that in mind, that is when I have 4 780 ti cards in my mind.

I do not believe there are any 3D monitors beyond 1080p. There are a couple 1440p 120hz TN displays with the necessary speeds to handle 3D coming this spring, but apparently they aren't 3D Vision capable.

If you meant 2D surround, then that may be possible now, but only if it isn't one of these monitors that handles 4k by putting 2 monitors into a single frame.

 

[h20deli]

Ok now this is going to sound mad - how about a 4k 3d surround. I have that in mind, that is when I have 4 780 ti cards in my mind.

I do not believe there are any 3D monitors beyond 1080p. There are a couple 1440p 120hz TN displays with the necessary speeds to handle 3D coming this spring, but apparently they aren't 3D Vision capable.

If you meant 2D surround, then that may be possible now, but only if it isn't one of these monitors that handles 4k by putting 2 monitors into a single frame.

Yes that is true, but the idea of over-spending is basically trying to future-proof your next system, so that you dont have to keep buying parts on the way. So basically when 4k 3d Displays come out, then you can probably plug and play (probs via display port) if dp cant handle the data stream, then a tri 4k display should be able to start kicking the system over 60% load

 

[Shinster]

I am a little worried about the per core performance. You might actually be better off for gaming just running a 4960X for example. The hex core clocked properly should be able to handle things just because there is a bit of a limitation on how many threads games run.

Ummm... actually i have thought about that. But it seems like 4960X (even overclocked) will bottleneck 4-way SLI cards.

The processing capability of the best CPU is dwarfed by the massive processing power of the GPU. A extra CPU will significantly inceease the cost and hardly make any difference in porcessing ability. To optimize a system for processing or gaming concetrate on a good motherboard with fast buses and a fast set of GPUs.

Example, my 2011 custom built PC with extremely fast multiple memory channels clearly beats my 2014 low end mother board PC build. And if its raw processing power you want multiple GPUs each with their own memory is better than a single GPU of approx equiv power, but if its for gaming a single GPU with the same power as multiple GPUs in SLI is faster.

My 4 core i7 beats my 6 core extreme. Games are not optimized for many CPU cores. So don't waste money on multiple CPUs or extra cores for the sake of gaiming. For scientific apps designed for it, its different.

For the fastest system for the buck concentrate on the fastest single GPU, fast multiple channel memory, fast PCIe buses motherboard.

 

[cst1992]

Please don't bump posts.