Greensneaker :
Hi, ive just installed 3 980's and ive been dieing to talk to someone else who has this. I need to ask you some questions.
my ram is at max in msi graph also gpu ram is max, this is causing me to have lag in games,
crisis 3, advance warfare, all in 4 k, but having to turn down resolution and some grfx settings, can you tell me how yours is running, sorry to jump on this thread.. weould love to here from you.
No problem, happy to help. Well you are going to be in the same boat I am in. You are going to have 3 awesome cards, but 3 awesome cards running extremely hot! haha.
Anyways, to answer your questions:
on MSI afterburner my graph only went up to 3GB for some reason, but if you hover your mouse near the graph it will tell you the exact amount you are using. Don't worry, there isn't a problem with your cards.
Next, I used to be partial to MSI afterburner, but I highly recommend you try EVGA Precision. I didn't like it at first but now I love it. You can get a great on-screen display with a large amount of information that is very helpful in game (memory usage, GPU usage, fan speed, temps, etc.).
The reason you probably have lag is 1 of two things I am thinking. Either A: You are playing with high AA settings at 4k which would cause your issue to a T. high AA settings easily go over 4 GB VRAM. You only get 4GB, not 12. Even if you have 3 980s you still only have 4 GB. I play with AA on low or MSAA 2x. Your best bet is to get EVGA precision, put an on screen display on, and watch your GPU memory usage. If it goes over 3.8 GB, you're gonna get lag. Try turning those settings off and you may be smooth as butter.
Next, it could just be poor SLI optimization. A lot of games have an issue with 2-way SLI, let alone 3-way SLI. For me, the "Half-way" solution was to enable 'Smooth Vsync' on the nvidia control panel. This helped out a bunch in newer games such as battlefield 4 and crysis. However, there are still games such as the hardline beta among others which I had to disable 3-way SLI to get a playable experience. There was too much stuttering.
The full solution to that issue is to get a g-sync monitor. You can get the one I got which is the acer xb280hk. It is great, and it will fully fix your sli-stuttering. The only thing that it won't fix is heat. Your GPUs will be running 100% during games so you will need to make sure those GPUs are cooled.
The only other thing I can think of is that only your 1st GPU is actually running. If you put EVGAs onscreen display on you will be able to tell what the GPU usage for each card is at. It should be the same across all 3 cards.
So my guess is you aren't really experiencing lag or poor frame-rate. You are probably just experiencing some brutal SLI-Stuttering. Try smooth vsync, try frame-limiters, if not, a g-sync monitor should do it.
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