Z77 or X79 for SLI GTX 670 on 5760x1080?

[mglushed]

I posted once in Motherboards box but I don't know if it's correct place to post so I re-post it here:

Hello, I'm trying to build a system which is cost efficient and has enough power to run Battlefield 3 on the resolution of 5760x1080 at 50+ FPS.

With a Z77 motherboard, I can have 8-8 lanes which most people say that would be enough for SLI GTX 670 on 1920x1080. But some people are saying, that wouldn't be enough for SLI GTX 670 on 5760x1080. They say I would only get about 30 FPS with a Z77, but I can get 50 FPS with a X79 because 8-8 lanes get bottleneck on that resolution, only 16-16 lanes which is available with X79 motherboards can fully operate SLI GTX 670 on that resolution.

Is it true?


Thanks for your time!

 

[maestro0428]

I doubt that 8x/8x will bottle neck those cards in SLI. In the limited benchmarking I have seen, there is no difference in performance.

 

[mglushed]

Thanks for your answers. I heard many people said there is no performance difference between them too, but most of them (or all of them) were mentioning about the resolution of 1920x1080. Are you mentioning that resolution too? Have you tested, or have a link to a test result somewhere which runs SLI 670 or SLI 680 on a Z77 motherboard, on the resolution of 5760x1080?

 

[J_E_D_70]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-core-i7-3770k-gaming-bottleneck,3407.html

Front page of this site...

 

[mglushed]

Thanks a lot for the review!

Based on these my question is answered!


By the way, how come the bigger the resolution is, the less stressful the PCI-e lanes would be? I don't know anything about those lanes, please explain a bit more.

 

[mglushed]

Thank you very much!

Btw, last question, should I go for two R7970 Lightning (would this be better than two ASUS GTX 670 DC2T for higher resolution because of 3GB VRAM?), or two MSI GTX 680 Lightning (more expensive but would last longer I guess), or two ASUS GTX 670 DC2T (cheapest, seem enough for now but I heard people saying those cards are not durable)? My purpose for now is just to play BF3 at 5760x1080 with 50+fps, but I would love those cards to last one or two year so I don't have to upgrade so often.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Keep in mind those benches are single player and not representative of what you'll get in multiplayer - it will be a bit lower.

One of the best tweaks I've seen so far is turning MSAA off and setting FXAA to High. Same result with lower impact on fps. I used to get drops with adaptive vsync on and fan was loud. That simple change locks 60 fps and reduced my GPU fan noise.

Have fun!

 

[mglushed]

Best answer selected by mglushed.

 

[mglushed]

Keep in mind those benches are single player and not representative of what you'll get in multiplayer - it will be a bit lower.

One of the best tweaks I've seen so far is turning MSAA off and setting FXAA to High. Same result with lower impact on fps. I used to get drops with adaptive vsync on and fan was loud. That simple change locks 60 fps and reduced my GPU fan noise.

Have fun!

Thanks for the nice tips!

 

[mglushed]

A pair of either of the Lightning cards would be awesome for BF3. 7970 Lightnings if you want to overclock, 680 Lightnings if you just want to plug-n-play.

Thanks a lot for your very helpful answer!

I've been always using nVidia and I love their cards, have not ever tried Radeon's but the capability of running 5 vertical monitors is so tempting... and also they are cheaper than nVidia's, but I have not ever overclocked a graphic card though so I don't know if it's hard or dangerous. And people saying 2GB of VRAM would be quite not really enough for such resolution, so I think "maybe" 7970 would be a better choice.

-----------

Actually never mind the 7970 Lightning. I just read the review on techpowerup and the 7970 Lightning is almost twice as noisy as the GTX 680 Lightning, also is 10C hotter. Hopefully 2GB of VRAM isn't so bad at the resolution.