Would like a vet's input on possible gaming rig.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
onewayrun

onewayrun

Honorable
Mar 5, 2013
22
0
10,520
I'm thinking of putting together this computer:

Corsair 750w power supply (already owned)

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128509&Tpk=gigabyte%20ga-990fx-ud5

AMD FX-8350 4.0 GHZ CPU (Have a Noctua Heatsink already to put on it)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113284

16GB G Skill 1866 Ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231611

EVGA 4GB GTX 690 single (maybe dual later when they're not so pricey.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130781

256 Samsung SSD (Already owned)

In my brand spankin new Rosewill Thor case.


Thoughts? Any foreseen issues before I go blast 1k on a ridiculous GPU?

Thanks much.
 
Will be gaming a bit (Crysis 3 if I can get it outside Origin, random other games.)

SLI is a possibility down the road but I don't want to drop an extra grand on a performance bump

I have 3 x 23" Samsung monitors (1920 x 1200)so I'd like to try out a surround setup.

I'm not very comfortable overclocking but if I learn more about it I might carefully play with it a bit.

Also I am a US Soldier living in Italy so I prefer to stick with Newegg or Amazon because they ship well to APO, which can sometimes be a real hassle.




 
I'm an addict so I don't count jk 😛

I would take an 3570k (3570 if not oc) for pure gaming
put in a 2 7970's for your triple screen (crysis will do better on nvidia cards until amd get better drivers in 1-2 months)

for mb I would get an asus z77 v lk
 
I've only ever used nvidia, stick with what has worked in the past kind of guy.

Maybe I will mix it up this time around! This is my first AMD CPU also, I didn't realize when I bought an intel that it was locked and my ram was nearly worthless, so I feel a bit scorned.

what brands are good for 7970's?
Thanks for the advice, time to research!
 
AMD's crossfire tend to have much more microstuttering than SLI especially in a Dual GPU like the 690 which is almost single card smoothness.

I'd say it was a good build but an i5 3570k would give your GPU more room to breathe.
 
The more I look into this the more I'm leaning towards dual 670s or dual 7970s. It seems the 690 is a power hog and not truly a 4gb card- just realizing that the 4gb is split between the 2 gpus.
Am I wrong in thinking the 690 sounds like you're just putting one card in your computer with the effects of dual cards? It sounds like dual 670s would be faster and cheaper.

Everything I'm finding says crossfire/amd cards in general are better, but only with support that is often slow and lacking. With the lack of support they sound very frustrating.

"when the drivers work, 7970 CF is the fastest setup available. You just have to deal with the fact that there are more cases where the drivers don't work than there are with 680 SLI / 690."
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/371063-15-dual-7970
 
That looks like a nice build! I'd echo what others have said here and recommend going for an Intel setup...the cost is comparative, and the performance is better. You can Google around for corroboration of that.

As for a multi-GPU setup, here's my £0.02 worth (having looked into it recently). What I've established is that multi-screen can be tricky sometimes, and that multi-GPU can be tricky sometimes (but to a lesser extent due to the relative maturity of Crossfire/SLI). However, combining the two can make things even trickier! I guess this isn't true in a lot of cases, but basically you have to be prepared to tweak settings and have things 'broken' on driver/game updates...triple monitor gaming is still niche (but hopefully will become more and more mainstream!).

You also need to look at the VRAM on your GPU...as you probably know, it doesn't combine so for example 2 2GB 670s will only have 2GB of VRAM to share between them. You want 2GB minimum (again, from my own research) as triple screen resolutions push your hardware and the VRAM requirements to store textures increase. This would push me towards ATI as they offer 3GB cards...someone may comment on this and say that 2GB is fine, but in response when I got my 560Ti I got the 1GB version as this was considered sufficient 2 years ago. Now 2GB is the norm...it creeps up slowly, but worth bearing in mind.

Running three screens on a single 7970 is still pretty tough on the GPU...check out benchmarks and reviews, there are a few around presenting data on this. Admittedly that's at max settings, so you can tweak them down, but if you're like me you don't drop money into a new system to immediately play at lower settings!

If you're considering a 690 then you're likely OK spending a lot on a GPU; y'know what I'd recommend? The TITAN GPU. It has 6GB of VRAM and is designed for multi-screen gaming. It's also the fastest single GPU out there right now (the 690 is faster, but that's two GPUs on onw PCB). It's a bit pricier than the 690, but not by much, and I think it will give you what you're needing for gaming on three screens.

TL;DR? Avoid multi-GPU and triple screens right now due to (small) issues inherent with combining two relatively niche setups. Best to stick with single cards where possible, go TITAN as it's within the same price region as the 690.
 
It's a misconception with VRAM. Yes the 690 only have 2gb but in all multi screen tests to date it ran out of rendering power before it hit the vram limit.

2 gtx 680 will be slightly faster but obviously take up for case space.

I would say crossfire is not as smooth, does have better scaling but as you correctly said the driver support often just is not there.

The 690 is actually very power efficient. It is the same as have 2 slightly lower clocked 680's in your system but only have a single card in place. Due to the high internal transfer (Debatable) it is smoother than 2 680's separately frame time wise.


TLDR version: 690 is fast and trouble free, 2gb is fine, 7970's crossfire is brute fastest but with issues.

Hope that helped
 


Right now, that's the case. See my post re 1GB being considered sufficient for a GPU a couple of days ago. If you're going to sink $1k into a GPU, I'd argue that as you'll be using it for a while then you want to get more than 2GB of VRAM, especially where multi-screen gaming is involved. 2GB is OK right now, but it's getting close to the limit. Some new games down the line where triple-screens are more commonplace, and you'll see the 2GB ceiling being exceeded. AMD have been in the multi-screen game longer than Nvidia...I don't think it's by accident their GPUs come with 3GB on them.

At the end of the day and repeating my point, TITAN makes the discussion more or less irrelevant. If the OP can afford it, and as it's designed with multiple screens in mind, then why go through the nausea of multi-GPUs when you don't need to?
 
As I said you run out of rendering steam before Vram limits.

I do have to agree that titan has a massive advantage when multiscreen gaming not only due to its large buffer but also it's larger memory bus.

They do however perform slower so 2 titans is really where it makes sense.
 


Which I'm not disputing. The point I'm making is that simply because 2GB is sufficient now doesn't mean it will be 2-3 years from now. Changes to game engines, or new engines entirely, may be coded such that the VRAM becomes the limiting factor. Going on the gradual increase over time with VRAM on GPUs, I'd say history argues that point quite well.



Wouldn't that be nice! It's true that one TITAN is slower than a 690, but a 690 is a dual GPU at the end of the day...if the OP is prepared to accept the niggles that come with SLI and triple screens, then fair play, that's the one to go for. On the other hand, one TITAN will be less hassle...that's one for the OP to determine. That being said, as triple screen gaming becomes less niche, support will grow. I hope so...I aim to go down that route myself, most likely with dual 7970s.
 
I think the inherent problems with SLI tend to come with tri screen in most cases anyway. The two are almost synonymous with each other.

While you may be correct that vram may become a limiting factor I think that will be beyond the useful lifespan of the GPU as dev's tend to program to the limit of available tech which for the majority is 2gb currently.

Only time will tell us the answer 😀
 
Fair point...I know people who still game with less than 1GB of RAM. It could turn out that 2GB is fine for triple screens; I just wouldn't want to rely on that, if I was spending $1k. Nvidia put 6GB on TITAN for a reason...but then again, you can get some pretty high resolutions when you start looking at 3x27" screens.

OP, let us know what you go with...it would be great to get your feedback on performance too.
 
Dual Titans it is! Lemme ask the wife...

I'd consider the intel route for the CPU but I'm still a bit scorned on them because I recently learned that locked processors exist. Still kinda new to the game, but I didn't think that new. I've always had intel but when I found out my last processor was keeping my awesome ram from being awesome, because I didn't drop however much more for their 'extreme' version... I was frustrated.

If I didn't have the processor already I probably would go that route.

Might seriously consider one titan. Dual down the road if it is ever worth it, one is plenty for now haha. I might have to dip into my harley fund.

I like the idea of 3 screens more than SLI, I've just had SLI on every computer since 2004 so it feels normal.

Looking at this mobo since I'm already bound to an AM3+ card and will probably go nvidia for gpu:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131877

I'll be hurting on the CPU side a little but I don't think enough to go make me change out anytime soon.
 
The sabertooth boards are usually a little expensive for what they are. They cheaper asus boards might be a good choice.

If you are going to go SLI I wouldn't recommend it with an AMD CPU as you will majorly bottleneck.

Basically the titan and the 690 will be close for tri screen performance but the titan route gives you much more scope later on.

Good luck with your rig. Sounds like a beast.
 


Do AMD not lock CPUs as well? I've not had a problem with that, tbh. Any locked i5/i7 CPU tends to be just a little cheaper than an unlocked one, so it's not as if Intel are massively monopolising unlocked CPUs (yet). If you have the CPU already, then that's cool...yes, it's not as powerful as Intel, but it's not going to noticeably hold you back.

If you're used to SLI as well, then you know what you're doing...the 690 may be better for you (and, ahem, you could get another one of those down the line...just get a PSU that'll handle them!) If you seriously can do 2xTITAN, then go for it...jealous.com. Some testing has indicated that 3 TITANs are actually bottle-necked by modern CPUs, so you'll be getting a GPU setup that'll last you a good while!!

Have a look at reviews of TITAN v a 690...the TITAN is definitely the weaker of the two, but 2xTITANs will kick the 690 up and down the park.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom