I did something stupid today...

[Sunja44]

...because I bought two of those beasts: EGVA Titan X Superclocked

 

...it was rather painful as I hit the "send" button of my online banking account and it still hurts :-)

 

An important step for my UHD setup though, now just a good display and a (not yet available) CPU that won't them slow down.

[Mister X]

Well. Ok. I won't tell you, that ONE of them costs nearly as much as my whole setup ... where I had to buy ANYTHING, because I've switched from notebook to PC.

 

But hey, 24GB VRAM sounds not that bad The only problem you'll have is the one with fitting mainboard (so it supports SLI properly), CPU (that doesn't slow down, like you've said), power supply (that'll support SLI to prevent microstuttering AND that can handle all those monsters), probably you'll need more RAM, too (it's just ridicolous to have less RAM than VRAM), then you'll need a better CPU Cooler (because the old one won't be enough to handle the new CPU) and in the end all that won't fit into your current case.

 

Result: You'll also update anything else except your mouse and keyboard

[RitualClarity]

Yes..

 

The bad:

• You have an 1150 board that cuts the available bandwidth for the graphics in half. (instead of 16x16 it is now 8x8 (not actually translating into 1/2 bandwidth but does restrict the graphic bandwidth more than an 2011 chip-set motherboard.
• The second 12 gigs of memory will just sit there doing nothing with an SLI setup.. (currently)
• Unless I am mistaken you are running a 60 htz monitor as well.

 

Good:

• The processor (awesome BTW)
• 16 gigs of great ram
• Excellent choice in SSD

 

 

Now at the minimum you need to increase the capacity of your Monitor to near the full use of the graphics output. Otherwise you are wasting much of the available bandwidth. Unless you are running some of the more extreme games like Shadow of Mordor, GTA (newest version) etc.

 

If possible I would RTV one of those bad boys and get a better 120 htz monitor or better a G-sync monitor. (FTW)

 

IN any case almost every part of your rig is better than mine

 

 

[Redflyingmonkey]

4k screens are locked at 60hz atm I believe, i even think the vast majority of them do 30hz. (Hope you have a 4k monitor to accompany that monster OP !)

[nIn nIn nIn]

2 titan X's = awesome.

 

By the time you update the CPU and everything it plugs into - a.k.a. a socket 2011 (and above) platform, those titan X's will have been superseded by the next faster generation.

 

But don't sweat that, it's just the joy of cutting edge. Been there done that, got the T-shirt.   Just enjoy what you have and don't ever regret it. 4k monitors are getting cheaper, but won't be cheap for a couple of years yet. 4K projectors may never be cheap enough to justify for gaming, but what the heck who justifies cutting edge?

 

 

[Sunja44]

I already run a Titan classic SLI system and I have to say I never noticed micro stuttering much or at all (maybe my 47 old eyes just don't notice it, nevermind). Skyrim and most of the newer games are pretty thankfull when it comes to SLI. I experienced a doubling in fps alone for Skyrim.

 

CPU - to be more specific the board - is the weak point, yes. A socket 2011 board with an i7-4xxx or i7-5xxx would be the better choice for newer games that support more than 4 cores, but for Skyrim I doubt you will notice any difference. Skyrim just supports 4 cores and the better SLI connectivity of those boards (2 x true PCI 16 lanes) but lower core frequency of those CPUs in compare to my i7-4790K may balance each other. As the socket 2011 CPUs are expensive as hell - if you don't want to lose too much core frequency - I doubt I will notice a difference at all for current games (60 fps will be 60 fps...and it seems enough), there might be just a difference for a heavily modded Skyrim.

 

Those thoughts are for my curent 1440p display of course. UHD might change a lot, but - as already mentioned - it makes sense to wait for better UHD displays. The current (affordable) models are locked to 60 hz with Display port 1.2 (?) and they use technics (G-Sync, TN Panel) which decrease colors and point of view impression.

 

As a power supply I already have a 1000 W be quiet Dark Power, should be enough.

 

At moment I don't need water cooling. The default GPU coolers, the air circulation of my custom CPU cooler + case fans + a (pretty default) fan curve are enough.

 

I never thought RAM might make a difference, but adding more RAM isn't an issue. It's pretty cheap nowadays.

 

The most expensive step is achieved, missing upgrades/modifications will come step by step. 

[RitualClarity]

Well then you didn't do something stupid. At least based on your experiences. You already had Titans and it worked great for you so far so why not upgrade. The only thing you did was upgrade prematurely the graphics instead of the motherboard/Processor/Ram (yes the ram would be a massive upgrade as well)

 

I am curious if you removed one of those bad boys if you would even be able to notice a dip in "actual" quality. I don't believe based on the setup you have you would. One Titan regardless of the old version or current one should be more than enough to run the games on high etc. (however not 100% confident with the resolution. Some might need that added boost )

 

For me you almost have everything I would want for my next upgrade

 

Asus Z97 Deluxe

i7-4790K (oc 4400 Mhz)

16 GB DDR 3 1600 RAM G. Skill RipjawsX (Can use my current Corsair 1600 Ram)

 

Maybe two 1tbs. I only run an standard HD montior and have no intention for 4K at least not for a very long time. I intend on letting technology catch up and when 4K becomes the nice sweat spot in price, quality and options then upgrade. However  a G-sync monitor or 120htz. . those are pretty tempting The old gen Titan, or perhaps the new 980ti would be the graphics card and I can't see more than 16 gigs make a difference at least currently with Skyrim or most other games pretty much as you stated.

 

I agree on waiting for the monitor for better options as the best bet. As you likely will agree the upgrade to the new titans might have been a bit premature. Upgrading to a 2011 chip, Processor and Ram might have been better. for 2 thousand dollars you could have gotten pretty close to the upgrade. 500 MB, 500 memory, and rest for Processor or some division of that. (unless you got a great deal for them.. )

 

I am currently running a 990FX MB, 8150 processor (3.8) and 16 gigs of 1600mz ram and a 250 Samsung SSD and multiple mechanical HDs. For my Graphics (which is the weak part ) a GTX 670 2gb VRam. Not the best but competent. Get some lags in locations with 2K textures but mostly playable with Skryim and it pretty much still kicks the ass of all the other games I have. I am in the same boat as you and was just as tempted to get an awesome upgrade (graphics) however deep down I know I really need my main hardware upgraded first and like you I can't have both.. .. Also like you .. my rig is pretty good for gaming and better than many others rigs. I can run two GTXs at full 16 which (with PCIexpress 2.0 graphics) would run about the same as your current 1150 MB would run in SLI.

 

 

[Sunja44]

All I can say concerning display resolution is, that increasing resolution from 1080p (HD) to 1440p (WQHD) alone has not only a big impact on visuality and overall grafical quality, but on performance too. Your card(s) have some real work to do to shuffle those pixel load onto your screen. Concerning visual and grafical quality...all I can say is, when you once upgraded to more than just HD, you never want to come back, it's just too stunning. As a side effect you won't need much of AA anymore, because those pixel density is something like "inbuild" AA.

 

...but it has it's price. You need real good grafic cards and you might need two of them as SLI/Crossfire system to play certain games at reasonable fps. Even with my Geforce Titan classic SLI system I drop to 25 fps sometimes outdoors in areas with lots of trees etc in Skyrim. Average is around 40-45 fps outdoors and maybe 55 fps indoors. A heavily modded Skyrim with ENB is still the ultimate performance test. As an example I play ESO somewhat on a casual base. For MMO standards it has pretty decent grafics. I play that with my system on maximum grafic settings (ultra +), but drop to 40 fps in cities, so you can see, 1440p makes some difference and now imagine 2160p aka UHD.

 

The internet is full of moaning people, who decided to buy a UHD display and realized that just one Geforce 980 is not sufficient, because their beloved game now delivers just 25 fps (which might be in general sufficient for the human eye, but often not sufficient to equalize fps drops below that, if 25 fps is just the average...and every game has such areas with lower fps because a lot of stuff has to be displayed).

 

As more resolution your display will have, as more grafic performance you will need and as more VRAM you will need. With the upcoming of UHD displays VRAM gets much more important. Titan X cards have 12 GB of them :-)

 

A nice side effect in Skyrim is that, when you use ENB you can overcome the RAM bottleneck by ENBoost features, to swap RAM for VRAM.

[RitualClarity]

Thanks for the info on your experiences with higher resolutions. I thought most were going to happen however didn't think it was going to be that bad as you experienced it. Useful info.

 

Some of the main reasons I intend on just staying with standard HD. It gives me nice visuals (I haven't gotten spoiled yet) can be modded easily and improved visualls and still stick with some of the upper end graphic cards like the 970, 980, or even Titan and not have to drop below 40-60 even with some ENBs etc. for most games and not need SLI.

 

 

[Antrox]

Unfortunately you aren't the only who did this stupid act. I have one of those in my testbench right next to a 5th gen Intel. 

[Userper]

wow...thats 6 times more powerful than my gfx card... and you've got 2.... Dayyyym

I didn't know they made cards with that much vram... I wish you luck finding a good enough motherboard dude!!!

[RitualClarity]

His motherboard / processor should be just fine for that graphics card. The only issue is with two cards the speed drops to x8 instead of x16. A few frames a second loss over the full x16 sli setup. Lets not forget that with two it still will kick the living hell out of almost anything else out there (Titan being the most powerful single gpu processor out there)

 

He needs the power for the monitor resolution he wants to run and get high FPS for high or ultra etc settings. So really it isn't that " stupid" except for the amount of money spent.. lol. Dam those are alot of dollars.. ..

 

From what I can see on the web he might have been able to get 5 to maybe 15 FPS if he had a full x16 SLI setup (at another 1000 to 1500 dollars). For gaming that is alot of money to spend.. Now if he is gong to use it for video editing, animation or other processor intensive processes then maybe it might be worth the added money however so far I see it isn't. You can indeed get some pretty dam nice results. Oh and to add to that there is a rumor that the new SLI setup for GTX and Direct X12 or 13 not sure will have the ability to fully utilized ALL OF THE RAM FROM BOTH CARDS.  If this does happen he would have 24 gigs of VRAM.. That is just fucking sick as shit.. I mean DAM. That be some serious VRAM .. Thumbs up..

 

http://www.lazygamer.net/pc-hardware/sli-and-crossfire-setups-getting-memory-stacking-soon/

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/43347/geforce-radeon-gpus-soon-combine-vram-thanks-dx12-mantle/index.html

 

It might not be all that "Stupid" at all..

 

I for one would like to see some of the benchmarks he is able to get with his current setup.

[guadelupeh]

Wow, that's serious commitment.

[Sunja44]

 

Oh and to add to that there is a rumor that the new SLI setup for GTX and Direct X12 or 13 not sure will have the ability to fully utilized ALL OF THE RAM FROM BOTH CARDS.  If this does happen he would have 24 gigs of VRAM.. That is just fucking sick as shit.. I mean DAM. That be some serious VRAM .. Thumbs up..

 

http://www.lazygamer.net/pc-hardware/sli-and-crossfire-setups-getting-memory-stacking-soon/

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/43347/geforce-radeon-gpus-soon-combine-vram-thanks-dx12-mantle/index.html

 

It might not be all that "Stupid" at all..

 

I haven't known that at all. If this comes true, it's freaking awesome. I was already satisfied by having 12 GB VRAM available with two cards.

 

PS: Boris on the ENBDev forum already mentioned that it might be possible in theory, but at moment it would decrease performance even drastically, because the cards (and especially the SLI connectors) aren't really made for fast and flashy memory exchange among each other.

[RitualClarity]

Yea I didn't either until an sales associate at an electronics store told me.   Normally I am ahead of the curve but this time I guess not.

 

Yea that is something to be stoked about. Even your old Titans would seriously start to kick some ass with that improvement.

[Dasanko]

His motherboard / processor should be just fine for that graphics card.

 

WAT

[RitualClarity]

 

His motherboard / processor should be just fine for that graphics card.

 

WAT

 

 

What didn't you understand?

 

PCI express x16 (3.0).. (x8 in SLI).. A few frames drop over full x16 maybe but not much and still an improvement over a single card as he is running massively higher resolutions one of the main things that can kill performance (or increase it if smaller resolutions ). He has had old Titans as well on that machine and ran fine.

 

Don't believe me...? Ask those AMD users that are running Titans.. . AMD has the old 2.0 spec which is half the bandwidth of the 3.0 specs. They get a very playable experience out of their graphics cards. Search the web. There are others using GTX980's in SLI on the older 2.0.. Some on chipsets that will cut those in half and get reasonable results.

 

Ideal.. no. Functional .. yes. The is a rare case where the game might use more processor or ram (on board) instead of the GPU and might create more bandwidth issues but only slight. For that all he would have to do is lower some of the aspects of the game. However I doubt that will occur very often if at all for the foreseeable future.

 

Going forward when eventually nVidia implements stacked memory he will achieve a doubled memory boost without an more $$$..

 

Maybe he can post some benchmarks with his new setup.. ..

 

 

[Sunja44]

Will need a while, as usual the hardware seller lied to me as he marked the cards as "available / in stock" in his trade UI. Ok, I would do that too to estimate the demand and preventing to buy cards for over 1000,-€ and in the end nobody buys them :-)

[Arizona_Steve]

Sticking with my dual 670s for now. Probably won't upgrade until Skylake-E and 14nm graphics cards.

[Nachuro]

I've found that even my 970m card is powerful enough to play almost anything at Very High - Ultra between 50 and 60 FPS. I can only dream of dual Titan Xs.

But hey, it's a practical gaming investment. I bought a 4K laptop with a 860m card, with a screen that was locked at 48 Hz- needless to say, I returned it immediately. 

[SpleenSerene]

What do you need 2 of them for?

[Josephine Loire]

He bought one for me. Right? RIGHT?

[SpleenSerene]

If he'd be some autocad engineer I'd understand but for gaming ....................I don't get it.

It'll last him for a long time but in a few years those gpus will be like a gazillion gb of ddr2.

[Erundil]

Well, after reading the topic's title I was really expecting a more juicy story. After all it's LoversLab.

What a letdown >_<

[RitualClarity]

What do you need 2 of them for?

 

Running 2 ultra HD monitors at full resolution with all the eye candy on is imposible for a single card. Even the titan z has hangups on some of the games at full 4 k with all the eye candy turned on. Two makes it much better FPS on those types of monitors. Read up the post at the OP's entries. It will help clarify the situation. He does truly need them to get the results he desires.