True Triple SLI with 1155

[bigtreepu]

Hello,
I was looking at new motherboards/cpu combos, as my system is getting antiquated, and I'm wanting to play me some sweet BF3. Anyway, I was looking at getting a Socket 1155 board, and maybe 2 or 3 Radeon 6950's. Do any of the motherboards support true triple PCI-E? I see a lot of them support X16 if using one board, or x8, x8 using two boards. Anybody have any recommendations?

-Matt

 

[itzdanielp]

First off, a single 6950 will run BF3 very easily even on high settings. I dunno why people are so scared of it, the engine is much easier on the computer than Crysis.


Beyond that all MB's can only support a single card running all 16 lanes, so if you go to SLI or xFire you will be dropping down to the slower speeds.

That said even the most powerful cards can not fully saturate a PCIx 2.0 connection.

so, even though you are dropping the lanes down by going to 2 @8x you are significantly increasing the amount of processing cores and memory, and still will not fully saturate the bus.

 

[ko888]

Hello,
I was looking at new motherboards/cpu combos, as my system is getting antiquated, and I'm wanting to play me some sweet BF3. Anyway, I was looking at getting a Socket 1155 board, and maybe 2 or 3 Radeon 6950's. Do any of the motherboards support true triple PCI-E? I see a lot of them support X16 if using one board, or x8, x8 using two boards. Anybody have any recommendations?

-Matt

How many monitors and what display resolution are you planning to use?

 

[bigtreepu]

I've seen the X58 boards that do have true triple SLI at full speed, unless I'm mistaken. It's the EVGA Classified Black edition.

Also, I currently have 3 monitors at 1920X1080 resolution. Will 2 cards at x8 SLI be enough to run full eye candy on BF3? I know that nobody necessarily knows the answer to that, but maybe somebody has some insight.

-Matt

 

[itzdanielp]

Even the board you are talking about http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=131-GT-E767-TR&pwindow=specs&family=Motherboard%20Family&sw=5

drops down to 8x lanes when going to 2 or 3way SLI.

Yes, there should be absolutely no reason 2way xFire at 1920x1080 would have any problem with the game with full eye candy

 

[ko888]

Even the board you are talking about http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=131-GT-E767-TR&pwindow=specs&family=Motherboard%20Family&sw=5

drops down to 8x lanes when going to 2 or 3way SLI.

Yes, there should be absolutely no reason 2way xFire at 1920x1080 would have any problem with the game with full eye candy

The OP is planning to run Eyefinity at a resolution of 5760x1080 where PCI Express bus bandwidth does have some effect on performance when running with more than one graphics card.

 

[jaquith]

Unless you are running Triple HD Monitor (5760x1080) there's no need to 3-WAY, and IF 5760x1080 or greater then only look at GPU's with vRAM > 3000MB {3GB} otherwise you'll get vRAM bottlenecked.

My favorite is the The ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution {perfect PCIe spacing} -> http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8P67_WS_Revolution/#specifications

Other alternatives: 1. Wait for LGA 2011/SB-E, 2. GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 or GA-P67A-UD7-B3.

 

[jaquith]

BE CAREFUL on your selections, it's not a 5 minute decision!

See -> http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/293079-30-asus-maximus-extreme-asus-maximus-extreme I called it right "This setup is going to be another cluster-frack of David"

Next See -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo9B1cnQ-34 but start at the beginning.

At this 'time frame' personally I would hold-off a few weeks for the LGA 2011!!!!!!!!!

 

[bigtreepu]

Even the board you are talking about http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=131-GT-E767-TR&pwindow=specs&family=Motherboard%20Family&sw=5

drops down to 8x lanes when going to 2 or 3way SLI.

Yes, there should be absolutely no reason 2way xFire at 1920x1080 would have any problem with the game with full eye candy

Sorry for not clearing up which board I was talking about. I was looking at this board. It appears it has true x16 SLI up to 4 boards. Am I mistaken?
http://www.evga.com/products/pdf/270-WS-W555.pdf

And yes, the goal is to run in eyefinity with 3 1920X1080 monitors side by side by side. I was looking at the 6950 2GB version for video card. Should I start looking for a 3GB card instead?? Any 1155 boards that support x16 on 3 lanes? I'd hate to wait for LGA2011, and I definitely don't wanna go X58. Thoughts? Suggestions??

-Matt

 

[itzdanielp]

Yes, if you are talking about that board you are correct.

however, my statement still stands, you can't get more than 1 16x or 2 8x on an i series board.

That board uses dual XEONS, so you are getting 2 16x slots per CPU.

 

[jaquith]

An SR-2 built right is going to set you back $10K~$12K+

NO LGA 1155 has x16/x16/x16 and never will, nor will the LGA 2011 it has 32 lanes of PCIe 3.0 and x8 PCIe 3.0 = x16 PCIe 2.x, and there 'should be' LGA 2011 with x8/x8/x8/x8.

YES you should be looking for 3GB GPU's with 5760x1080. Read -> http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/06/28/msi_n580gtx_lightning_xe_3gb_sli_video_card_review note the vRAM bottleneck:

Note the GTX 580 SLI configuration has 1.5GB of RAM on the bottom:

 

[bigtreepu]

Thanks for the help guys. I'm gonna look at the Gigabyte Z68 that can support 2 x16 boards. Thanks for pointing me at the 3GB boards as well. This setup gonna cost me! oh well, such is life.

 

[bigtreepu]

Best answer selected by bigtreepu.

 

[nsin08]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=100006654&isNodeId=1&Description=Asus+Maximus+IV+Extreme-Z+32GB+DDR3+Intel+Motherbo&x=0&y=0

AUSU RoG series have some good stuff

Lucid Virtu + 4 PCIE 2.0 x 16 slots

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600007855&IsNodeId=1&name=PCI%20Express%202.0%20x16

but it will surely burn some deep hole in ur pocket