7680*1600 - with strange requirements

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Kenjiwing

2[H]4U
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Apr 6, 2009
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Alright.. so ive decided to go from 1 30 to 3.. and ive been reading around and have a general idea of what I want to do but im hoping to get some recommendations from the rest of you.

My rig is in my sig..

Everything will be under water and my PSU is limited to an AX850.. I dont want to resleeve it right now maybe in the future ill get a 1k-1200 but I am not switching that out at the moment.

So I need to power 3 30's with a 850w psu and I want to get the best performance possible.

I assume crossfire 6970's or 2 sli 580s (if my PSU could even support this) but im hoping if anyone have any real tests on these cards at this res.. I know my CPU wont be an issue.
 
Kenjiwing said:
Alright.. so ive decided to go from 1 30 to 3.. and ive been reading around and have a general idea of what I want to do but im hoping to get some recommendations from the rest of you.

My rig is in my sig..

Everything will be under water and my PSU is limited to an AX850.. I dont want to resleeve it right now maybe in the future ill get a 1k-1200 but I am not switching that out at the moment.

So I need to power 3 30's with a 850w psu and I want to get the best performance possible.

I assume crossfire 6970's or 2 sli 580s (if my PSU could even support this) but im hoping if anyone have any real tests on these cards at this res.. I know my CPU wont be an issue.
Click to expand...

I use an antec 850 signature series PSU, and it powers my 6970's in crossfire with no issue, and I have my I7 at 4ghz.

This is why I went with the 6970's over the 580's....They consume less power and are almost as good as 580gtx at 2560x1600 and over resolutions.
 
^ This, 2x6970's should be plenty to go w/ your PSU

obviously 3x580 would be better @ that resolution, but there is no way I would recommend that on an 850 watt psu

DanD is running a 1200 watt w/ duel 580's if my memory serves me

so did you by 2 more 3007's from Suiken? or whatever his name is
 
I haven't seen any reviews in multi-monitor either, but I can contribute this. The 6970 seems to catch up with the 580 as resolution increases. The 580s 15% advantage at 1680 becomes a 10% advantage at 2560. The pixels go from 1.7MP to 4.1MP and the advantage drops by 5%, and 7680 is 12.3MP, so I think the 6970s would outperform the 580s at your resolution.

I can also see 1.5GB actually being a limitation at 12MP, so I think the 6970s will fit your needs better.

EDIT: Is cost any concern? If not, you could possibly go 580 triple-SLI, but that would require a 1000+ PSU. As it stands, going with 6970 would be almost $300 cheaper before factoring in electricity costs, although the point may be moot in your case. I think you should only consider 580s if you go with three of them, because otherwise 6970s are a much better buy.
 
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yang88she said:
^ This, 2x6970's should be plenty to go w/ your PSU

obviously 3x580 would be better @ that resolution, but there is no way I would recommend that on an 850 watt psu

DanD is running a 1200 watt w/ duel 580's if my memory serves me

so did you by 2 more 3007's from Suiken? or whatever his name is
Click to expand...

I was going to but he stopped responding to PMs.. I had someone else pm me about monitors so I got them for a good price.
 
nice grab!, wish I had the budget, was going to say that I have a 3007 wfphc for sale as well =P going 3xu2410s
 
I think the most interesting question there is whether the 570/80 would continue outperforming ATI parts if they just had more RAM...in which case, some vendor could release 2.5GB/3GB version.
 
Matrices said:
I think the most interesting question there is whether the 570/80 would continue outperforming ATI parts if they just had more RAM...in which case, some vendor could release 2.5GB/3GB version.
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True, but then the price would go up another $60-70 bucks.

I don't think i would want to pay $600 for a video card when I can get a 6970 for $370.

Also remember the 6990 will come out soon, and that will have 4GB (2GB per core) on it.
 
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Matrices said:
I think the most interesting question there is whether the 570/80 would continue outperforming ATI parts if they just had more RAM...in which case, some vendor could release 2.5GB/3GB version.
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More RAM would only make a difference at high resolutions when the regular 570/580 cards would run out of RAM. The 6900 series would still catch up with them as resolution increased because it scales better as resolution goes up. More memory wouldn't make it scale better. They would have to increase memory bandwidth.
 
I think there was a review on HardwareHeaven.com that had 3x SLI 580 and 3x CF 6970 about neck and neck with the 580 pulling out ahead just a tad.
 
heatlesssun said:
I think there was a review on HardwareHeaven.com that had 3x SLI 580 and 3x CF 6970 about neck and neck with the 580 pulling out ahead just a tad.
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True. Which is just odd, since AMD is better than or on part with the Nvidia performance on 2-way SLI for that resolution. If Nvidia is vRAM limited, yet its performance improves rather than decreases in 3-way SLI compared with AMD, AMD's Tri-Fire scaling must be quite a bit worse.
 
Two GTX580s are basically 600W of power. That's cutting it a little fine on an 850W PSU. My HD4870X2s use a similar amount of power and I use an 850W PSU, in heavy load I pull about 700W out of the unit, so I have a little breathing room, but I'm only running a 95W CPU, not a 130W hex-core, and a P55 board not a ridiculous EVGA. Realistically it's going to be between two HD6970s and two GTX570s on that PSU, and two HD6970s will be faster, as well as a lot more efficient.
Also, yeah, Tri-CF scaling is nowhere near as good as dual CF.
 
Well I run 3 x 30"rs and I have pretty decent performance just out of my 1 5870. The main things that get hit hard when I play are mipmap quality and anti-aliasing. I'll tell you having more VRAM is pretty darn important. Most games I run 2xAA and Medium Quality Textures. What ever GPU / 's you pick, I'd make sure there is atleast 2GB of VRAM as it can run out quickly.
 
XacTactX said:
I haven't seen any reviews in multi-monitor either, but I can contribute this. The 6970 seems to catch up with the 580 as resolution increases. The 580s 15% advantage at 1680 becomes a 10% advantage at 2560. The pixels go from 1.7MP to 4.1MP and the advantage drops by 5%, and 7680 is 12.3MP, so I think the 6970s would outperform the 580s at your resolution.

I can also see 1.5GB actually being a limitation at 12MP, so I think the 6970s will fit your needs better.

EDIT: Is cost any concern? If not, you could possibly go 580 triple-SLI, but that would require a 1000+ PSU. As it stands, going with 6970 would be almost $300 cheaper before factoring in electricity costs, although the point may be moot in your case. I think you should only consider 580s if you go with three of them, because otherwise 6970s are a much better buy.
Click to expand...

I would hardly call the 6970 going from 15% slower to 10% slower than the 580 "catching up". It's just a small improvement. Then to say "I think the 6970s would outperform the 580s at your 7680x1600" is just random speculation. There are too many variables that go into performance at such a high resolution that actual tests would need to be done to come to any conclusion.

I do find that with my 3x 30" setup with GTX580's that 1.5GB Vram is maxed out if I go higher than 2x AA. 4x AA will crash out the game. Although, with screens this large and detailed, you don't need anything higher than 2x AA and you have to push such a huge amount of pixels that 4x AA wouldn't be worth the huge slowdown to begin with even if you had 2GB Vram.
 
7680x1600 off one 5870 is pretty impressive. No wonder you're using minimal AA, I'm amazed that res works at all. I find 1GB per GPU a bit on the small side just for one 30" display.
Vega: With a fair amount of AA the HD6970s will definitely outperform the GTX580, 1.5GB just won't be enough for such an enormous resolution. Even as it is, two HD6970s are basically identical to two GTX580s because of how good the crossfire scaling is.
 
Vega said:
I would hardly call the 6970 going from 15% slower to 10% slower than the 580 "catching up". It's just a small improvement. Then to say "I think the 6970s would outperform the 580s at your 7680x1600" is just random speculation. There are too many variables that go into performance at such a high resolution that actual tests would need to be done to come to any conclusion.

I do find that with my 3x 30" setup with GTX580's that 1.5GB Vram is maxed out if I go higher than 2x AA. 4x AA will crash out the game. Although, with screens this large and detailed, you don't need anything higher than 2x AA and you have to push such a huge amount of pixels that 4x AA wouldn't be worth the huge slowdown to begin with even if you had 2GB Vram.
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Yup, I estimated based on the information currently available :p. Based on what we do know I don't think my estimates were out of line, but we definitely need to see some multi-monitor tests on this like you said. I'm curious to see how the scaling trend is at higher resolutions, and if the 6970s will match or beat the 580s at 5760 x 1080 and above.
 
IIRC a stock 980X and stock GTX 580 SLI uses around 650w DC. Don't think you'd be able to run everything overclocked with an 850w PSU.

With a single 1080p display I see 1gb vram use in some games. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see 1.5gb being enough for 3x30".
 
z3r0- said:
IIRC a stock 980X and stock GTX 580 SLI uses around 650w DC. Don't think you'd be able to run everything overclocked with an 850w PSU.

With a single 1080p display I see 1gb vram use in some games. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see 1.5gb being enough for 3x30".
Click to expand...

Defo won't be enough. I hit 1.3GB usage in Crysis at 2560x1600 no AA
 
In Crysis Warhead at 2560x1600 4xAA in a benchmark run of a game section, which probably isn't the worst part of the game, the only card on test [this was before the 6900s came out sadly] which didn't performance tank was the GTX580 with 1.5GB. Even the 570 tanked with 1.25GB. That's only 4 megapixels, and 4xAA. Even three 20" monitors is more than 5 megapixels. Three 24"s is almost 7.
 
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