Nvidia Surround on 3 displays build

Jared2606

Commendable
Feb 22, 2016
131
0
1,710
Hi fellow Tom's.
I saw a video on YouTube on LinusTechTips channel where he plays in what he said was Nvidia Surround. I did some research on it and, well, I want to have that.

If you guys could recommend a build for me and tell me if I need to overclock or do something to a part. I don't have a budget, so go all in if you want.

I would like to play games like GTA V, Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Minecraft (yes I know), and Far Cry on my multiple displays using the Nvidia Surround at high to max settings. If this is not possible, could you anyway make a build to be able to play those games at as high settings as possible at 60+fps at 1080p (As my monitors are only 1080p)

All help will be much appreciated, thanks in advance.
 
Solution


Actually you can run current games at ultra on a 3 x 1080p setup with two 980 ti cards in SLI. It is true that if you want to go with an SLI setup, I would normally go with an 850 watt power supply when using GeForce 980 ti cards. It all depends on how far you want to go.

Keep in mind that a 3 x 1080p setup only has 75% of the pixels of a single 4k display.

The Titan cards have a pretty poor...
The most difficult part about running a 3 monitor setup is having all of the displays stay in sync when playing a game across all of them. On modern NVIDIA video cards this means that all of the monitors should use DisplayPort or the same kind of adapter from a DisplayPort port.

If you are fine with running at high settings, a single GeForce GTX 970 will do a good job on current titles. There are a couple of drawbacks, though. Most 970 cards do not have 3 display plugs that are of the same type. A few do have 3 DisplayPort connectors, though. Also, the 970 suffers a significant performance drop if more than 3.5GB of video memory is used - even though the cards have 4GB.

From my perspective, this would be the minimum setup for 3 x 1080p gaming:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($238.89 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-AR ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($154.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: Kingston FURY 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.49 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($323.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer ($16.89 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($87.37 @ Amazon)
Total: $1125.09
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-21 11:53 EDT-0400

For better gaming and a longer time before upgrading, I would go with a better video card, an SSD drive and 16GB of memory:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($238.89 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-AR ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($154.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: Kingston FURY 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($322.57 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 4GB WINDFORCE 3X Video Card ($477.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer ($16.89 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($87.37 @ Amazon)
Total: $1603.17
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-21 12:03 EDT-0400

The systems that I priced out do come with an Intel K series CPU. You don't have to overclock them, but doing so will make the system perform better and make them last longer before you need to upgrade the CPU and usually the motherboard as well.

If you examine my computer system in my signature below, you can see that I am running an older CPU with a GeForce GTX 970 video card. I am running an NVIDIA surround setup, with 3 1080p IPS monitors (Dell UltraSharp u2311h). It works pretty well at high video settings on modern titles that do support the extra wide display, like Star Wars Battlefront, Fallout 4, and Elder Scrolls Online.

Of course I did not go the extra mile and price out a GeForce GTX 980 ti system, though :)

Good luck!
 


Are you serious? I was expecting to have to buy i7s and 4 titan x's for what i want. I just want to know, is that really all I need? And also, shouldn't I go for a more powerful power supply? Also, could this build maybe max out the settings on Nvidia Surround or does that mean I would have to add another 980 or just put in 2 980 ti's?
 


Actually you can run current games at ultra on a 3 x 1080p setup with two 980 ti cards in SLI. It is true that if you want to go with an SLI setup, I would normally go with an 850 watt power supply when using GeForce 980 ti cards. It all depends on how far you want to go.

Keep in mind that a 3 x 1080p setup only has 75% of the pixels of a single 4k display.

The Titan cards have a pretty poor return on investment for video games. Most of what you are paying for is extra video memory. They do have a slightly higher boost clock and are about 3% more power efficient than the 980 ti cards, but this doesn't normally matter.

If you want to go all in, I would go with this myself (my personal dream system):

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($369.95 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-WS ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($349.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston FURY 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($322.57 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($292.89 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB WINDFORCE 3X Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($599.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB WINDFORCE 3X Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($599.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($129.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer ($16.89 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($87.37 @ Amazon)
Total: $2974.11
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-21 12:27 EDT-0400

Running an ASUS high end motherboard with a PCIE multiplexer, an i7 6700K CPU, two SSDs with the operating system on a PCIE M2 drive and regular storage on a 1TB SATA SSD, with two GeForce GTX 980 ti video cards in SLI. This system would do well in 4K (almost all settings at ultra in any game) and laugh at 3 x 1080p gaming :)
 
Solution


That's what I was expecting. Could I also use this build with 3 1440p monitors on Nvidia Surround?

Also I see that you have selected the optical drive that you have in your pc, so I;m guessing it is a good one?
 


Well, that increases the pixel count by quite a bit (11 million pixels for 3 x 1440p). It is actually higher than the 8.3 million pixels that are used by a 4k display. Not only that, but the resolution increase also impacts how much video memory is used when gaming. Some games will actually run out of video memory if you try and turn on high settings on a 3 x 1440p setup on GeForce GTX 980 ti systems. I have seen this happen on Ashes of the Singularity, and future games may have even more issues.

Basically, 3 x 1080p is doable - but for now 3 x 1440p has trouble. That is a case where GeForce GTX Titan cards would help. They still would get bogged down by the sheer number of pixels, though. Maybe the Pascal release will be fast enough and have enough memory to solve this. The latest rumor mill shows that at least one of the Pascal cards should have 8GB of video memory, but they are not out yet.

As far as the DVD drive goes, they all work - but Lite On is one of the few actual manufacturers out there. Many optical drives are sent out from their factories with other labels on them, so I figure "why pay for something to be relabeled?". They are one of the quickest and quietest drives available, so I stick with them.

Good luck!
 


Awesome. Thanks, I was just wondering for if i get 1440p monitors. But as I said I have 1080p monitors, so will be sticking with them. And again, thanks a bunch.