gtx 690 quad SLI

[shadowrunner85]

hi, I'm new to building SLI, and figured I boost some more life into my rig by adding another gtx 690 on top of my privies 690.


my prim. specs:
- MSI Z87 XPOWER
- Intel Core i7-4770K
- Kingston DDR3 HyperX Beast 32GB
- OCZ SSD RevoDrive 3 240GB
- Chieftec Nitro Series BPS-950C 950W PSU

results with 1xGTX690:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/2725423

results with 2xGTX690
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/2738600

As you can see, the heaviest of the 3 test in 3dmark scored better with 2cards, but the two other test was lower with 2 cards. and several games, wont give any good frame rates, take WOT as an example, between 30-50FPS.

I did notice that one card is running at PCIe x16 and the second at PCIe x8, I think because of the revodrive, could this be the source for my lower performance in some games?

or are there any other typical beginners flaws I have missed? I have the newest graphics, bios and chipsett/motherboards drivers...

any one who has any experience with quad-SLI that would be so kind to spend some time, sending a couple of messages back and fourth getting my system working as it should...

 

[pyr0_m4n]

SLI isn't optimized in some games. Take far cry 3 for example. SLI causes that game to crash after every multiplayer match.

 

[coolcole01]

a pc with two 690's my dream rig from last year

 

[Avocade]

Two 690s is 4 680s why not get slid 780 Ti's and beat that benchmark? Cheaper also

 

[shadowrunner85]

Two 690s is 4 680s why not get slid 780 Ti's and beat that benchmark? Cheaper also

B/c I already had a 690, figured it whould be a cheaper upgrade to add on a second 690 rather than buying new cards.... I may have been wrong? I got one 690 for half the price of 1 780 Ti.

 

[coolcole01]

Two 690s is 4 680s why not get slid 780 Ti's and beat that benchmark? Cheaper also

B/c I already had a 690, figured it whould be a cheaper upgrade to add on a second 690 rather than buying new cards.... I may have been wrong? I got one 690 for half the price of 1 780 Ti.

one 690 for 350 bucks you my friend are killing it

 

[Avocade]

Do as you wish if you sold the 690 for 500 or whatever it would still be cheaper to ski 780 this, overall it would cost you about 1400 to sli them if you bought another 690 that's $1000 alone if you sold the 690 you have for 500 you'd be 100 over cost with better performance

 

[shadowrunner85]

Avocade.

The 690 I allready had is almost 2 years old, not something new. And couldn't sell it for a chewing gum 😛 but say for the sake of arguing that I could sell it for 200-300$ and the new 690 that I manage to dig up at an old warehouse of a hardware shop, could sell for 400-500$ that's a total of 600-800$, now (in Norwegian prices) two 780ti is 1800$... I still find it cheaper to just buy the 690 at 450$ that I did, if I can get it to work properly, that is.

 

[Avocade]

Ydidnt realize you were in a foreign country soery

 

[joselo025]

the gtx 690 can only do doble sli cuz its a dual gpu card and sli is only to 4 way so if you but 4 of them you wont have any result and you will lose your money 😀, if you find this answer helpfull please pick it as the answer of the question 😀

 

[shadowrunner85]

the gtx 690 can only do doble sli cuz its a dual gpu card and sli is only to 4 way so if you but 4 of them you wont have any result and you will lose your money 😀, if you find this answer helpfull please pick it as the answer of the question 😀

I should have specified, it is two cards, but each card has dual GPU, so it reads as quad SLI. the xpower motherbord also has duel lane 16x PCIe, so you can have two cards running at 16x...

but I was wondering if sins I have a revodrive (SSD in a PCIe slot), that it take some of the lanes, one card is at 16x the other 690 is at 8x, could that be an issue?

I was expecting results like this:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/41581-nvidia-geforce-gtx-690-sli-surround/?page=3

as I use triple monitor setup as well, but I dont get close to those results, And I could need some help figuring out what i'm doing wrong...

 

[shadowrunner85]

or is my CPU bottlenecking it? I'm waiting on brackets for my CPU cooler to get some extra out of cpu boost, as the cpu now only use a stock cooler. or is my power supply capped out? It is a 950w PSU, I see other SLI builds use 1000-1200w PSU, my tower supports two PSU's, but I dont want to buy a second one, if it does not help...

or is it just some software setup I'm doing wrong?

 

[shadowrunner85]

anybody?

 

[shadowrunner85]

??

 

[Avocade]

No your 4770k is just fine

 

[Kekoh]

I don't have personal experience with SLI, but you can tell if you have a CPU bottleneck by watching the usage during a benchmark. If the CPU stays at 95%+ then it's probably a bottleneck.

 

[Avocade]

The GPU not CPU the CPU can fluctuate to anything if the GPU doesnt hit 99% during benchmarks its bottlenecked.

 

[shadowrunner85]

The GPU not CPU the CPU can fluctuate to anything if the GPU doesnt hit 99% during benchmarks its bottlenecked.

yeah thats smart, i will do a test and see if the GPU's are bottlenecked or not...

but I cant still explain why I keep getting bad frame rates.. 🙁

 

[Kekoh]

Have you installed the 337.50 beta drivers? Could help.

 

[shadowrunner85]

Have you installed the 337.50 beta drivers? Could help.

yes, and it acutely gave me slightly worse frame rate and scores... which is strange cause I expected better performance based on others reviews...

 

[shadowrunner85]

I kinda found out of it... Vsynk should apparently not be activated with 4 GPUs, and in Nvidia control panel "power management mode" had to be switch to maximum performance, apparently the cards didn't consume as much W as they should. doing these changes gave me over double performance and frame rate in all game I tested so far... but thanks guys for you help

 

[azzazel_99]

you can sell a 690 for way more then 200-300. They go for around 500 used on ebay and other sites. I'd sell it, get a 780ti then pick up a second 780ti (used or new) and be done with it and blow the pants off the 690. I run 2 780ti's and absolutely love them, although i got mine brand new because i like warranties.