Can someone explain why 2x780 SLI isn't even enough to run all games on ultra @ 1440p?

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

I know the 3GB on the 780 ti bottlenecks the 780 ti, but is that the reason even dual 780 ti's can't achieve 60+ fps on all games? All I want is 60+ fps on 1440p with ultra quality, and I can't seem to achieve that unless I turn off AA, which I guess isn't a huge issue. Is the only way to run games on ultra settings with AA on is 3+ cards? I just don't understand..

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/geforce-gtx-780-ti-sli.html

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 21, 2014

nVidia cards don't tend to handle higher resolutions. AMD however handles them nicely. And if you're planning to go for a third 780... Don't. You're not getting anything out of it. (2 way SLI is the best same with crossfire)

cub_fanatic · Jul 21, 2014

Are you asking basing it on a review or do you actually have two 780ti's in your PC right now and they aren't performing like you expected? The system they tested on is a 3970X. I'm willing to bet that if you get a newer Ivy-E CPU and overclock both the CPU and the 780ti's just a little, you won't have to add a 3rd one to get 60 FPS in almost every game.

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

DroneDroneDrone :

I thought 780 ti SLI was overkill, but clearly it's not. I also will not go for a third card, I just wanted to know if that's the only way to get 60fps+ on 1440p. I'll look at some 295x2 benchmarks and see if it can achieve what I want.

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 21, 2014

295x2 will do that

Best card out at the market atm (and not ridiculously priced like that one $3000 Titan...)

Joseph DeGarmo · Jul 21, 2014

Your CPU is likely bottlenecking the two GPUs. Upgrade to an i7-4790k or i7-4820k CPU and any bottlenecks should be gone.

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

cub_fanatic :

I'm looking to upgrade my system to be able to run on ultra settings on 1440p getting 60+ fps. So I am just trying to figure out how to achieve that, but I can't seem to find a card that can handle that. I will be running mine on 4th gen, the 4770k although I am considering the 4930k since they are running it on 6 cores as well, but I'm not sure the slight increase in power would be worth the big increase in price. I'm not looking to have 3 cards, I am just curious if that's the only way to achieve 60+fps on 1440p with ultra settings and AA.

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 21, 2014

Yeah. I looked into it some more. 780 SLI, 780 TI SLI should max out 1440p no problem. Are you running SLI at the moment?

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

Joseph DeGarmo :

I would think the 3960X with it's 6 cores would not be the issue, interesting though. So you're saying since it's a 3rd Gen CPU, it doesn't matter if it has 6 cores or not because it's likely bottle-necking the GPUs? Haven't decided on 780 ti SLI or 295x2 yet, but I'll be running mine on either 4770k (Which I own right now) or 4930k (but not sure the bump in price is worth it for the performance bump). I could get the 4790k though, but would that make any difference from the 4770k?

bystander · Jul 21, 2014

What is the deal with "maxing out" all games anyways? No system can max out all games and have 60 FPS. There are always settings, resolutions and bottlenecks that prevent you from maxing out all games. PC games are built with options. These are not consoles where one setting fits all. They give us options, some of which are too demanding on many if not all existing systems, but can be upped with different combinations of other settings and sometimes in future systems.

People consider 780ti SLI and up overkill, because ~95% of games can be maxed out, and the few settings that have to be lowered on the exceptions barely make a difference.

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

DroneDroneDrone :

I am not, I am looking to get 60+ fps on ultra settings on 1440p. That's why I thought 780 ti SLI would be enough to handle ALL games, but based on the benchmarks above it seems that it can't. Which is why I am confused.

maddogfargo · Jul 21, 2014

At 1080p you are pushing around 2.1m pixels per frame.

At 1440p you are pushing around 3.7m pixels per frame.

That's almost double the data to the screen.

So if you have a agme that runs 70-90 FPS at 1080p, 60 FPS solid with Vsync enabled is possible. But it will run around 30-50 FPS at 1440p.

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

bystander :

I agree, the compromise I would make would be to turn off AA. I am just curious what would be needed to run ALL games fully maxed out (Ultra, AA, etc.)

bystander · Jul 21, 2014

Episodic :

bystander :

I agree, the compromise I would make would be to turn off AA. I am just curious what would be needed to run ALL games fully maxed out (Ultra, AA, etc.)

A time machine.

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

maddogfargo :

So you're saying my only options are to either not enable AA to achieve 60+fps (hopefully) or keep AA on and live with 30-50fps?

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

bystander :

Episodic :

A time machine.

Fair enough, haha.

bystander · Jul 21, 2014

There are lots of options. Every game is different. Some games you can disable PhysX, other games you lower or turn off AA. Other games you disable advanced DoF or Ubersampling. Some, you may change the LoD, texture setting, or what ever is the best compromise for performance vs visual quality.

And here is the dirty truth. Some games cannot maintain 60 FPS no matter what you do.

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 21, 2014

Well there's always AMD to fall back too at higher res

cub_fanatic · Jul 21, 2014

Episodic :

... also, you can't just go by a single review's results. This review isn't showing you the max FPS either, just the averages and the minimum FPS. The games that aren't averaging over 60 could very well do 60+ most of the time but their results could be brought down by a couple of scenes that drop into the 30's or 40's. And like bystander said, no setup can max out every game in 1440p. You also have to take into consideration that some games are optimized for AMD cards and some for Nvidia cards. That is just the way it is. So, unless you have two sets of GPUs, one a set of 780ti's in SLI and one a 295x2 or a pair of R9 290X's that you swap in and out between games, you will always have some games that just aren't optimized for your cards.

OmegaGame · Jul 21, 2014

Some forms of Anti Aliasing are simply extremely performance sapping. I will use SSAA as an example. It is called supersampling because it means rendering the image at a higher resolution and then scaling it back to the desired size. So it might scale it all the way up to 4k then fit it to your actual resolution which improves image quality significantly.. But it will literally be like running the game at 4K.. MSAA or Multi Sample anti-aliasing will have around a 25% performance hit for every 2x MSAA you apply. So 8x MSAA will halve your frame rate compared to no AA. At 1440p however. 8x of any AA wont really be necessary as the pixel density should already be very high. You could happily get away with 2xAA and have a jaggie free experience. Because AA is mostly needed for lower resolutions in which have lots of jaggedness due to its larger pixels. Also if you're looking to SLI cards for 1440p and playing at ultra is a must. Then i would highly recommend getting the 6GB 780's - Ti or 290X 4GB for the larger frame buffer they allot.

trogdor796 · Jul 21, 2014

What is your current gpu setup? Do you actually have 2 780's right now? If not, and you are thinking of upgrading to those for 1440p, you should wait and see what the 800 series brings possibly, they are supposed to release around November.

If you already have 2 780's I don't think I would switch them out for 780ti's. Not worth the hassle and amount you would spend/lose selling your 780's IMO. '

As for upgrading your CPU, I don't think it's necessary, but if you are looking into replacing your board, keep in mind that Intel is releasing Haswell-E this fall, which will support DDR4 and apparently they will have a 6-core CPU, 5820k, for around $400, but I think the PCIe lanes for that cpu are gimped, not sure.

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

DroneDroneDrone :

Well based on these benchmarks 780 ti SLI is either better or the same as the 295x2, thoughts?

Although it does beat it on Metro Last Light, not by much though.

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

cub_fanatic :

Episodic :

... also, you can't just go by a single review's results. This review isn't showing you the max FPS either, just the averages and the minimum FPS. The games that aren't averaging over 60 could very well do 60+ most of the time but their results could be brought down by a couple of scenes that drop into the 30's or 40's. And like bystander said, no setup can max out every game in 1440p. You also have to take into consideration that some games are optimized for AMD cards and some for Nvidia cards. That is just the way it is. So, unless you have two sets of GPUs, one a set of 780ti's in SLI and one a 295x2 or a pair of R9 290X's that you swap in and out between games, you will always have some games that just aren't optimized for your cards.

Ah, so the hardware needs to catch up in order to play ALL games on ultra. I did look at other benchmarks, but even Tom's only shows Avg and Min, but I'll see if I can find even more.

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 21, 2014

Well, I'd get the one the you could get for a cheaper price.

Episodic · Jul 21, 2014

OmegaGame :

Oh, so the higher the resolution the lower AA is needed? That's cool, didn't know that. Also, if the 780 Ti 6GB was out, and was a reasonable price, then I would SLI those. So then my question is,
I definitely need SLI to somewhat achieve what I want, correct? If so, then 2x780 6GB SLI or an R9 295x2 is better than 2x780 ti 3GB SLI?

Can someone explain why 2x780 SLI isn't even enough to run all games on ultra @ 1440p?

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