Triple 1080p with 980 2-Way SLI?

[Ninjamilez]

I start working full time next month and will therefore have more money than I know what to do with so, as a PC enthusiast, I naturally began thinking about hardware upgrades.

Unfortunately, I bought this system only a few months before I realized that I would be able to get this job. My budget was based on my savings from my minimum-wage part-time job (yeah, I was saving for a while...). I was fully expecting to stay at university for another year...

My current setup is as follows:

GTX 980 2-way SLI (Single 1080p display)
i5-4690K
8GB RAM

I would like to get three 144Hz screens and push frames as close to that as possible.

The only point of reference I have is JaysTwoCents who uses three BIOS hacked, overclocked and water-cooled 980s and claims to achieve around 140 FPS in Battlefield 4, although I'm not sure what his settings are.

I'm no longer a graphics-whore so medium to high settings is what I'm after (no motion blur, possibly no PhysX, no DoF and very little AA, probably none). how would I fair at reaching this goal with modern titles?

I've considered selling my 980s and going for two 980 Ti cards when they're released since it's rumoured that they will have a 384-bit memory bus and a 6GB frame buffer. Would this be a pointless upgrade?

Thanks,
Miles.

 

[spentshells]

frankly 1 970 will do plenty, If you do have the loot go with 1 980 or a new AMD 390 or 390x for 1 1080 screen that will be plenty.

 

[Ninjamilez]

frankly 1 970 will do plenty, If you do have the loot go with 1 980 or a new AMD 390 or 390x for 1 1080 screen that will be plenty.

I should clarify that I wanted to do triple 1080p gaming.

 

[filippi]

I think we need to wait a little while to know what the new flagship of both AMD and NVIDIA will be capable of.

3x 1080p - 120Hz w/ SLI / crossfire? I think so.

 

[Ninjamilez]

I think we need to wait a little while to know what the new flagship of both AMD and NVIDIA will be capable of.

3x 1080p - 120Hz w/ SLI / crossfire? I think so.

True. Any idea how my current setup would fair?

 

[spentshells]

I unselected best answer, um well the 980ti or cut down titan x is bound to come out soon, you will save a few hundred dollars and offer good performance on the 3 screens. try a 390 or 390x

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I find Jay's 2 cents is overpriced.

The general wisdom is it's not worth the upgrade unless you are jumping 3 tiers, you're doing just one and we don't even know yet how significant the jump will be.

I'd normally send you to techpowerup and ukhardware.info but testing at 5760 x 1080 is falling outta fashion.

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/5623/3/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-sli--3-way-sli--4-way-sli-review-benchmarks-battlefield-4
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980_SLI/3.html

You could get a rough estimate by taking the 3840 x 2160 numbers and multiplying by 1.33

Leaked performance tests show the 980 Ti at about 22% faster than the 980 and the 390x even faster (at 4k) ... but both may turn out to be as reliable as a palm reader's prediction

 

[Ninjamilez]

I unselected best answer, um well the 980ti or cut down titan x is bound to come out soon, you will save a few hundred dollars and offer good performance on the 3 screens. try a 390 or 390x

Thanks, I didn't mean to select yours as best. :L

I was thinking about going AMD because of the higher bandwidth. I quickly got over my dumb phase of nVidia fanboyism...

 

[Ninjamilez]

I find Jay's 2 cents is overpriced.

The general wisdom is it's not worth the upgrade unless you are jumping 3 tiers, you're doing just one and we don't even know yet how significant the jump will be.

I'd normally send you to techpowerup and ukhardware.info but testing at 5760 x 1080 is falling outta fashion.

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/5623/3/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-sli--3-way-sli--4-way-sli-review-benchmarks-battlefield-4
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980_SLI/3.html

You could get a rough estimate by taking the 3840 x 2160 numbers and multiplying by 1.33

Yeah, 3-way isn't something I'd want to do. Not enough gains for the price.

Thanks for the insight.

 

[filippi]

I recommend you test the other upgrade path:

A single ASUS ROG PG278Q Black 27" 1ms(GTG) WQHD G-SYNC 144Hz Refresh Rate Widescreen.

Some people think it is really worth the price tag.

And your GTX 980 2-way SLI will love it

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The Asus has been eclipsed by the Asus Predator..... 144 Hz, G-Sync and ULMB technology have given us the 1st IPS monitor that from a lag and ghosting standpoint is as good or better than the Asus Swift.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Yeah, 3-way isn't something I'd want to do. Not enough gains for the price.

Thanks for the insight.

I wasn't suggesting 3-way SLI ..... I was talking about 2 x 980 SLI versus 2 x 980 Ti SLI @ 5760 x 1080 or 3 x 1080 from the original post.

Most sites have stopped giving test results for 5760 x 1080 and instead are doing 4k (3840 x 2160) which has about 33% more pixels than 5760 x 1080.....so..... to get a rough estimate of fps at 5760 x 1080, you can multiply the published benchmarks from 3840 x 216 times 1.33 It will vary by game tho that should get you in the neighborhood when you can't find numbers for 5860 x 1080.... Could be less than 20% tho as we see here:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980_SLI/6.html

or even reverse sometimes

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980_SLI/16.html

 

[Ninjamilez]

I recommend you test the other upgrade path:

A single ASUS ROG PG278Q Black 27" 1ms(GTG) WQHD G-SYNC 144Hz Refresh Rate Widescreen.

Some people think it is really worth the price tag.

And your GTX 980 2-way SLI will love it

They do look like nice monitors. I don't think I can justify the price. It's like £1800+ for those!

 

[Ninjamilez]

The Asus has been eclipsed by the Asus Predator..... 144 Hz, G-Sync and ULMB technology have given us the 1st IPS monitor that from a lag and ghosting standpoint is as good or better than the Asus Swift.

I didn't even know that monitor existed. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Wow only $800 here ~ 536.673 GBP .... BTW, was not suggesting 3 x 2560 x 1440 .... no cards exist that can drive that

 

[Ninjamilez]

Wow only $800 here ~ 536.673 GBP .... BTW, was not suggesting 3 x 2560 x 1440 .... no cards exist that can drive that

Yeah, I wasn't going to. They do a 1080p version, though.

 

[filippi]

I recommend you test the other upgrade path:

A single ASUS ROG PG278Q Black 27" 1ms(GTG) WQHD G-SYNC 144Hz Refresh Rate Widescreen.

Some people think it is really worth the price tag.

And your GTX 980 2-way SLI will love it

They do look like nice monitors. I don't think I can justify the price. It's like £1800+ for those!

I was just suggesting that you should at least test a big g-sync 1440p state-of-the-art gaming screen before upgrade your rig.

Maybe this setup could satiate your gaming hunger

 

[Ninjamilez]

I recommend you test the other upgrade path:

A single ASUS ROG PG278Q Black 27" 1ms(GTG) WQHD G-SYNC 144Hz Refresh Rate Widescreen.

Some people think it is really worth the price tag.

And your GTX 980 2-way SLI will love it

They do look like nice monitors. I don't think I can justify the price. It's like £1800+ for those!

I was just suggesting that you should at least test a big g-sync 1440p state-of-the-art gaming screen before upgrade your rig.

Maybe this setup could satiate your gaming hunger

You know, I'm trying to find reasons to justify the price.

The only thing I can think of is that they would last me for a very, very long time...