# NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN SLI & Tri-SLI



## W1zzard (Feb 17, 2013)

We compare one, two, and three GeForce TITAN cards in our multi-GPU comparison on X79. The cards will have to fight against three HD 7970 GHz Editions, two GTX 690s, and three GTX 680s to settle the argument: what is the fastest graphics solution you can buy today?

*Show full review*


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## BigMack70 (Feb 21, 2013)

Very helpful data! Basically confirms what I was thinking... if you have the cash for multiple Titan cards, you're in for a treat. Otherwise, so long as the games you play work with SLI/CF, a pair of 680s or 7970s are both substantially faster than a Titan card and also leave you with an extra $100-200 in the bank comparatively.

I wish I had a spare 3 grand sitting in my bank account right now 

By the way I disagree that you need an x79 SB-E platform for this. An overclocked 3570k or 3770k will do just fine.


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## W1zzard (Feb 21, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> By the way I disagree that you need an x79 SB-E platform for this. An overclocked 3570k or 3770k will do just fine.



Ya, that's a good point. If you can find a board with 3x x8 PCIe 3.0 and proper slot spacing it should be fine, thanks to doubled bandwidth from 3.0. this config is only available with PLX PCIe bridge


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## BigMack70 (Feb 21, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> Ya, that's a good point. If you can find a board with 3x x8 PCIe 3.0 and proper slot spacing it should be fine, thanks to doubled bandwidth from 3.0. this config is only available with PLX PCIe bridge



Yeah so you'll still wind up forking over a similar amount of cash (probably in the $300 range) for the motherboard, but you can save on the CPU, relatively speaking.

By the way - any chance of updating this with the Crysis 3 performance numbers Titan SLI configs produce? I'm dying to see what SLI or tri-SLI Titan cards can do in that game.


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## W1zzard (Feb 21, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> By the way - any chance of updating this with the Crysis 3 performance numbers Titan SLI configs produce? I'm dying to see what SLI or tri-SLI Titan cards can do in that game.



i've been thinking about doing a crysis 3 performance analysis. but gay origin doesn't let me preload yet and i have 2.5 mbit dsl .. do the math when i'll be finished downloading


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## TaHoward (Feb 21, 2013)

Well now I'm really torn... I 'd like to up my system performance for 5760x1080 but it seems the 690 and Titan trade blows in 2x Sli. It'd be a lot easier for me to just grab another 690 than trying for 2 titans and selling my current 690.

Besides raw frame rates what did you feel to be the smoothest experience at that resolution between the 2 Titans and 690's?


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## MT Alex (Feb 21, 2013)

The intro page photos are priceless


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Feb 21, 2013)




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## chinmi (Feb 21, 2013)

totally gonna need this to play all current game at max settings @ 1080p....

naahhh... just kidding... my 6990 is stil adequate... lol....


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## cadaveca (Feb 21, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> i've been thinking about doing a crysis 3 performance analysis. but gay origin doesn't let me preload yet and i have 2.5 mbit dsl .. do the math when i'll be finished downloading



By that time, you could have shipped me the cards to play with, and I could ship them back.




SLI results are pretty good, but clearly triple-card needs some work. 2x Titan coming close to 3x 7970 is damn nice, and power consumption should be far better. I need to sell my AMD cards. Oh wait. $2000 for two cards....man...


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## nickbaldwin86 (Feb 21, 2013)

so the Titan is a flop.... sorry but $500 more to play on a few more frames?

if you have $1000 then buy a 690 and have a better card. 

I know the name Titan is cool and all but only the suckers will pay $500 more to play a few frames higher and be able to tell their friends (geek voice on) "I got a TITAN in my computer" (geek voice off)

Personally would rather have 2x 690s and have a faster system with fewer cards.


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## Frick (Feb 21, 2013)

> It's only with triple-monitor 5760x1080 setups where the 3-way SLI setup gives you a performance cushion that ensures frame-rates don't drop below a playable threshold.



Depending on what you play. Performance in some games really is all over the place. I'm not sure I want to call triple-monitor SLI gaming working at all. It really is all over the place.


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## redeye (Feb 21, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> i've been thinking about doing a crysis 3 performance analysis. but gay origin doesn't let me preload yet and i have 2.5 mbit dsl .. do the math when i'll be finished downloading



odd, bought the digital deluxe , sunday February 17, and preloaded before it was released...)  perhaps my location of missisauga, ontario , canada was a factor in my being able to preload it..

the FXAA anti-aliasing is amazing...

in the game if you shoot the "cell" banners hanging on the railings... the "hole" flickers (not because of FXAA) but because if the "rigged" nature of that effect...


BTW, is the Ruby Figurine (featured on the front page) an AMD exclusive tchotchke?... i don't collect them... but it is an awesome figurine!.


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## iO (Feb 21, 2013)

No wonder you can´t buy the card when most reviewers get 3 cards for SLI setups...


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## yogurt_21 (Feb 21, 2013)

based on the numbers, 3 way anything scales terribly. 2 way seems to be the way to go. 

So in that sense if you're planning on buy one now, sli later the titan makes more sense than the 690 as quad sli scaling is terrible and not always present (leaving you at slightly less than a single 680) Also if you happen to be sitting on a 2k gpu budget. Dual titans make more sense. 

To me thought I just can't understand what NV is thinking, the enthusiast pc market is thin enough, why limit yourself to less than a % of it? 

I really can't see a 500$ solution based on a cut down titan beating the 680 or 7970GHZ edition for instance. Not without seriously threatening the titan in a similarly priced scenario. 

Not to mention the majority of the market seems to be leaving the desktop behind (primarily because they can get everything they want in a mobile solution for cheaper than a single enthusiast component such as cpu, mobo, gpu, etc) 

maybe this'll be a gpu compute king?


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## murk00 (Feb 21, 2013)

*Should I Switch to Titans from my system?*

I set out to build a system that would play either 5760x1080 or 7680*1440.

*My system* 

Power Supply - Dual 1200 Watt Corsair

Motherboard - Asus Maximus V Extreme

CPU - Core i7 3770k Ivy Bridge

RAM - GSkill 2400 16 gigs

Hard Drive - Intel 520 240gb SSD

Video Card - Right now I have two GTX 680 Classifieds, held off on purchasing another 2 until I got my Hydro Copper Blocks with backplates in. 

My Problem on what to do now. So I have my backplates coming in, and just got my 4 Hydro blocks for the 680s. 


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*My Confusion* starts with the review of the Titans test bed, they stated this:  

_"The Intel Core i7 "Ivy Bridge" test-bed we normally use for our graphics card reviews won't do justice to 3-way configurations, so we set up a new Intel Core i7 "Sandy Bridge-E" test-bed running an Intel X79 chipset motherboard, which gives each of the three cards a PCI-Express x16 connection of its own. All other data-points in this review were measured on the same test bed."_

I bought the Ivy Bridge setup thinking that with PCI 3.0 that it would not limit my video cards. That being said do I need to switch to x79 to take advantage of my videocards full potential since Im doing very high resolutions. I was on the understanding that x8 on 3.0 was more bandwidth than x16 on 2.0.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also another questions with my current setup would I have been better off then going with x79 than Ivy Bridge even if I dont buy the Titans? I am very confused on what to do at this point lol, and any help to fill in the gaps would be appreciated. I want to limit all bottlenecks.

I have not purchased my water cooling yet becuase I have been waiting on these damn backplates to come in for my waterblocks, but If I need to cut my losses and sell a few things now or whatever is what I am trying to figure out.


One thing to note is don't take in to account money because at this point whats a little more once you spend this much.

This system will be used to play FPS pretty much mainly ( Planetside 2 to be exact and Battlefield 3)

Anyhelp would be appreicated, thanks guys !!


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## BigMack70 (Feb 21, 2013)

x8 on 3.0 is the same as x16 on 2.0 and is plenty

Almost any Z77 is fine for two Titan cards. For 3 Titan cards you'd probably want a Z77 motherboard that has a PLX chip as Wizz mentioned above, so that you can run all 3 cards at PCI-e 3.0 x8.


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## murk00 (Feb 21, 2013)

Thanks for responding so quickly I missed the whole part he mentioned about PLX


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## MxPhenom 216 (Feb 21, 2013)

nickbaldwin86 said:


> so the Titan is a flop.... sorry but $500 more to play on a few more frames?
> 
> if you have $1000 then buy a 690 and have a better card.
> 
> ...



maybe a flop to anyone that was expecting better. Performing nearly 30% better, and consuming less pwer then the current single GPU top dog the 7970, IMO is far from a flop, regardless of price.

(I would buy it if it was around $699.)


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## W1zzard (Feb 21, 2013)

redeye said:


> BTW, is the Ruby Figurine (featured on the front page) an AMD exclusive tchotchke?... i don't collect them... but it is an awesome figurine!.



i got it at some ati event many years ago. you can find some on ebay (not the exact one i have though)



murk00 said:


> Thanks for responding so quickly, my Z77 does have the PLX chip since I have the Asus Maximus V Extreme so I should be good then>???



yes



BigMack70 said:


> Almost any Z77 is fine for two Titan cards. For 3 Titan cards you'd probably want a Z77 motherboard that has a PLX chip as Wizz mentioned above, so that you can run all 3 cards at PCI-e 3.0 x8.



that exactly


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## Delta6326 (Feb 21, 2013)

Fantastic review W1zz!!!
W1zz what do you plan on doing with these cards? do you have to send them to other reviewers?

I also have a Ruby Figurine still sitting in it's box.

Can you say EPeen


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## el fore (Feb 21, 2013)

*reply*

Both apparatus and bustle (by the news) for less performance than expected, so expensive and is overcome by the GTX 690 for the same price or even cheaper is.

Not only wait 700 series for compliance with expectations.

Note: I am using google translate


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## 15th Warlock (Feb 22, 2013)

Thanks for the review W1zz 

In my case I have rigs that run on both ends of the spectrum, one connected to a 3D 1080p TV and the other to a surround 3D 5760x1080 setup. 

I had a quad sli 680 powering the 5760 setup, discovered it was overkill, decided to go dual sli, on both rigs and have been happy ever since. 

Now I have balanced both rigs, as I play mostly on my den, the lure of the surround monitors has waned after a while, and I rather play in my couch 

The point I'm getting to is, I've found sli 680s to be plenty enough to power even the most demanding games, even though Titan seems tempting, I'm not willing to drop $2K to improve any of my setups for a measly gain in performance, dual 680s (or 7970s for that matter) rip through even the most demanding games in my own experience. 

Nvidia should've priced this card at 899 or even 799, as no single gpu card has even closely been priced this expensively, this sets a dangerous precedent. 

The way I see, only very few ppl would really benefit from this card, and it's potential from a "cheap" compute gpu point of view is awesome, but IMHO nvidia has priced this card in the wrong bracket.

Don't get me wrong though, I love the performance the amount of onboard memory, the awesome look, the scaling, but in only very few cases this card justifies the price against a 690 or hypothetical 7990, nvidia is making a killer profit with this card, not that they are inherently evil for doing so (I'm looking at you Apple)

If they release a 3GB version for 799 or 849, that would be a completely different story, and I could justify purchasing a couple of these babies  but guessing how limited the yields on good GK110 must be, I guess that's not happening any time soon, shame, but I can wait for the 700 series.


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## The Von Matrices (Feb 22, 2013)

I'm still completely confused at the performance/dollar chart.  I can't reason why the results say that the GTX 680 3-way SLI has a lower price/performance than the GTX 690 quad SLI, even though at 5760x1080 the GTX 690 quad SLI performs 3% better than the GTX 680 3-way SLI for a >33% increase in price.


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## EarthDog (Feb 22, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> Ya, that's a good point. If you can find a board with 3x x8 PCIe 3.0 and proper slot spacing it should be fine, thanks to doubled bandwidth from 3.0. this config is only available with PLX PCIe bridge



I would love to see this card tested with pcie scaling... as well as the 7990 and 690.


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## adamisepic (Feb 22, 2013)

*4-way*

Would it be possible to run these in 4-way sli with the right motherboard


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## Spaceman Spiff (Feb 22, 2013)

TaHoward said:


> Well now I'm really torn... I 'd like to up my system performance for 5760x1080 but it seems the 690 and Titan trade blows in 2x Sli. It'd be a lot easier for me to just grab another 690 than trying for 2 titans and selling my current 690.
> 
> Besides raw frame rates what did you feel to be the smoothest experience at that resolution between the 2 Titans and 690's?



I'm in the same boat. Obviously it is total overkill and hell, I sold my entire lga775 pc and 2x 6970's to get the funds for my 690, but simply adding another 690 would be the "cheapest" option. 

I love my 120hz screen but now I'm not content unless I can pump a constant 120 frames and keep the oh so delightful buttery smoothness. I have no idea what I can sell to get another 690....Also, I'd have to watercool it as well since my case is already packed.

I don't think I'll be doing any upgrading for a while.

Edit: Unless someone wants to buy a 2000 Yamaha R6!!?


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## micropage7 (Feb 22, 2013)

adamisepic said:


> Would it be possible to run these in 4-way sli with the right motherboard



yeah and you gonna face reality that your vga card is much powerful than your processor


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## StefanG (Feb 22, 2013)

I really appreciate the amount of work you guys invested to cover all kind of configurations rather than focusing on the GTX Titan only. I haven't found any other tests with this kind of coverage so far - Awesome work!

Here are my comments based on my own experiences running GTX 690 like cooling solutions and SLI configs in the past and present:
 - 3 x GTX 680 is only possible with reference cards due to the height of the cooling solution. Most of the more powerful and less noises solutions are just to high to get them running side by side (you cannot even get the cards installed). The Titan solution is actually quite good in this case.
- The GTX 690 reference cooler is keeping half of the hot air inside the case due to his design. Running two 690 actually warm up the inside of the case and all components quite heavily The problem is that a good ventilated case normally blows the cold air in direction of the video cards but this is far than optimal for a cooling solution like the one the GTX 690 is using (similar for the ATI 6990). I am using a Silverstone TJ11 and the even the manual is pointing this out.

Again, great review!
Stefan


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## rainzor (Feb 22, 2013)

If i counted correctly 2 Titans outperformed 3x7970 in 12 out of 18 game tests, 4 times Radeons were faster and 2 times they were even. Also, from what i saw around the web, 2 Titans will beat 2xAresII more often then not. Fact is 3way and 4way cf/sli scaling is usually very poor and there lies some value of the Titan....


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## Melvis (Feb 22, 2013)

First of all AMD needs to get the drivers sorted, most of those benchmarks have very poor scaling for the 7970...

Apart from that the Titan performs as good as what im running now, but mine cost $550 less :shadedshu


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## THE_EGG (Feb 22, 2013)

Melvis said:


> First of all AMD needs to get the drivers sorted, most of those benchmarks have very poor scaling for the 7970...
> 
> Apart from that the Titan performs as good as what im running now, but mine cost $550 less :shadedshu



Keep in mind that your setup being $550 cheaper will probably end up being something like $700 or more cheaper than the Australian price of a Geforce Titan.

Way too expensive for me. Not justified yet anyway me thinks. At least not unless you have massive multi-montior setups, big resolution or until the next-gen consoles come out. But even when the next-gen consoles do come out, I think a 680 or a 7970 ghz will be more than adequate. That's my thoughts anyway. Great review as always


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## Initialised (Feb 22, 2013)

3x1080p is nice and all but when are we going to start seeing 4K resolution testing in TPU reviews?


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## BigMack70 (Feb 22, 2013)

Initialised said:


> 3x1080p is nice and all but when are we going to start seeing 4K resolution testing in TPU reviews?



Maybe when 4k monitors cost less than like 20 grand?


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## W1zzard (Feb 22, 2013)

Initialised said:


> 3x1080p is nice and all but when are we going to start seeing 4K resolution testing in TPU reviews?



as soon as someone sends me a 4k monitor


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## Ikaruga (Feb 22, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> as soon as someone sends me a 4k monitor


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## Akrian (Feb 22, 2013)

Thanks Wizz for another awesome review.  + Hilarious "Titan pack" picture surrounding the poor ATI chick ( not sure what's her name, Sapphire ? )

The card seems awesome. The price however just butchers it, just butchers.
I mean sure 3xTitans will win over 3x7970. Buut for twice the price 0_o. I confess if the price would've been around 600$ per card, I'd jump on the tri-sli wagon. But for 3k$ + 600$ for waterblocks, I'll pass. My 7970s+WBs cost me around 1700 total. So that's still cheaper then two titans, and higher performance too.

Waiting for the next round at the end of this year, hope to see some AMD 89xx series dropping by as well as 7xx series from Nvidia =)


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## Qiplayer (Feb 22, 2013)

*Overclocking*

Hi everybody. I'm new here.
Last year I wasted 2000$ on 2 gtx 690, then went back on the 2 680.
Scaling was bad but had microstuttering and a general slow down of the image even with 120fps on 6000x1080p.

I think by the comparison and the though you do, you are missing the overclocking.
Not the fact that you can overclock 2 titan, but the fact that 2 gtx 680 or 2 hd7970 overclock much better than 2 gtx 690. And finally yes it would have been nice to OC all cards and see what is the performance and cost par performance comparison. 
Comon nobody spends 1000 or more on gpus and doesn't overclock.

Then if you have space always go with single gpu cards. A single 690 with a slight overclock was terribly noisy and performed 85% compared to 2 gtx 680 with OC.

So for who has 3 screens the best cards are a couple of the most overclocked 7970 or 680 (by overclocked I mean like the ftw of evga. Or in this case 2 titan


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## Ikaruga (Feb 22, 2013)

Qiplayer said:


> Hi everybody. I'm new here.
> Last year I wasted 2000$ on 2 gtx 690, then went back on the 2 680.
> Scaling was bad but had microstuttering and a general slow down of the image even with 120fps on 6000x1080p.
> 
> ...



Hi and welcome to the forum. Please note that W1zzard did OC the card in the single-card review, and it's highly likely that he will also review several other custom built factory OC-ed Titans in the future.

edit.: btw W1zzard, may I ask: did you rerun the BF3 test with the voltage OC too, and if yes, how much more fps did you get?


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## Darkrealms (Feb 23, 2013)

Thanks for another thorough and well thought out review.

Any idea how many reviewers Nvidia sent the 3-SLI setup to?

So this being the GK110 vs the GK104 does it have better crunching performance?  Or is that the difference between the "GK" and the "K" (Tesla) architectures?


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## radrok (Feb 23, 2013)

Man that SLI performance is tasty :O

So basically a SLI or even Tri-SLI of these beasts is the highest peak of performance we are going to see from GPUs in these 2 years, right?
Cause the GTX 780 will probably be a GK114 which AFAIK should be slower than GK110, I'm purely speculating on the older architecture where GF110 > GF114.


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## Prima.Vera (Feb 23, 2013)

WOW, ATI's crossfire sucks in so many games. I thought is only me with my 5870/5850 that is having problem, but as far as I can see half of the tested games have really big problems with Crossfire/SLI


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## FreedomEclipse (Feb 23, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> WOW, ATI's crossfire sucks in so many games



Its their drivers, their cards are great though 7970 is an awesome card but drivers for crossfire are just poopoo.


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## Nirutbs (Feb 24, 2013)

Nice thanks ..680 is enough for me now. Titan is too high.


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## 15th Warlock (Feb 25, 2013)

Hello W1zzard, I really hope you read this, once again, thank you for your thorough review, I know this might be too much to ask for, but I would really appreciate if you can give us an update on the Titan SLI performance for Crysis 3, as of this moment no other game requires more GPU muscle, specially when running maxed out in multiple monitor setups.

Looking forward to an update, thank you very much in advance.


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## Kronvict (Feb 25, 2013)

Akrian said:


> Thanks Wizz for another awesome review.  + Hilarious "Titan pack" picture surrounding the poor ATI chick ( not sure what's her name, Sapphire ? )
> 
> The card seems awesome. The price however just butchers it, just butchers.
> I mean sure 3xTitans will win over 3x7970. Buut for twice the price 0_o. I confess if the price would've been around 600$ per card, I'd jump on the tri-sli wagon. But for 3k$ + 600$ for waterblocks, I'll pass. My 7970s+WBs cost me around 1700 total. So that's still cheaper then two titans, and higher performance too.
> ...



Agreed. I was planning on buying The GTX Titan but then they released with a $999 Price tag per GPU, i couldn't justify the price imo. The price itself killed my willingness to get one regardless of how awesome it is so i just ordered two GTX 680s for a sli config. After seeing the performance of GTX 680 SLi vs a single titan i'm glad i did.


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## Laki747 (Feb 26, 2013)

Hi,

I am not an expert or anything like that but i have one thing that is making me confused

How come that in almost all tests 1xGTX 690 had better results in all resolutions then 2xGTX 690?? Could some 1 plz explain that to me?


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## Mixedjams (Feb 26, 2013)

Kronvict said:


> Agreed. I was planning on buying The GTX Titan but then they released with a $999 Price tag per GPU, i couldn't justify the price imo. The price itself killed my willingness to get one regardless of how awesome it is so i just ordered two GTX 680s for a sli config. After seeing the performance of GTX 680 SLi vs a single titan i'm glad i did.



Hey good for you man enjoy those lovely cards! I will be looking to pick up two 680s also I was really considering 2 7950s but after looking at how poorly the 7970s did in some games really turned me off to the idea. I will be picking up a 2560x1440p 120hz monitor and I can't be playing at those frame rates even though the AMD Never Settle Bundle is spectacular, I need to have the ease of mind knowing I'm not going to be getting 20-30fps while playing certain games, really disappointed in AMD after reading the review.


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## Initialised (Feb 26, 2013)

W1zzard said:


> as soon as someone sends me a 4k monitor


Was looking at a 84" £22k is a bit steep. So far only seen 4K data on BSN.


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## Antjel (Mar 8, 2013)

*Just my experience*

Hey guys thought I would share my experience for those thinking about choosing a 690 over a Titan.

I have 2x690GTX in Quad SLI and unfortunately I rarely get to use them because quad sli driver are horrible and not just on the diminishing return on performance but flat out unusable.  When running in Quad SLI I only have 1 game that does not crash (Batman Arkham City) after just a few minutes of play.  I spent months troubleshooting and even RMA'd both of my 690's only to find out when running in Quad if you aren't benchmarking it's really not worth doing it.  I game mostly with just 1 690 now (absolutely no crashes and settings on ultimate) and turn one of them off.  If you google the 690 enough you will find most people have turned off their quad sli and are waiting again for new drivers with some hope they didn't get totally con'd into the quad sli hype.

This is my take and my lessons learned:
Games and drivers are built and primarily tested on the largest population.

Single Card
2 x SLI

So my lessons learned is if I want to actually use the hardware I paid for then get hardware that is going to work with the majority of applications I want to use.

So this is why I see value in the Titan.  The Titan not only has enough vram to run the surround gaming I want but also has the performance similar to a 690 with a single GPU so you can comfortable go to 2 x SLI before experiencing the lack of driver support in a 3x 4x SLI configuration.

I will never attempt greater than 2xSLI again it's too costly and has caused way too much of a headache.

Now will I replace my 690's with Titan's?...probably not that is too much of an investment but when it does come time to upgrade again my strategy will be different.

Lastly,
I am not in any way bashing the 690, it is an amazing card and by itself crushes all games I have tried on ultra settings on a single monitor.  I just don't recommend getting it if you have a dream of going quad sli with it down the road.

Cheers,
Antjel


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## EarthDog (Mar 8, 2013)

Tell us something we dont know, quad SLI/CFx notoriously sucks! Why do you need such a setup anyway 3 2560x1600 panels?

LOL, wait... I just finished reading your post. You have 2 690's on a single monitor? W.T.F??? What were you thinking?


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## PatoRodrigues (Mar 9, 2013)

Hey Antjel... seriously. Do a favor to the Gods of Hardware, and keep the 690's. Assuming that you can afford such a setup, i believe you could also invest in 3x1080p monitors AT LEAST. And if you play on a single monitor, please tell me that you play on 2560x1440....


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## Qiplayer (May 6, 2013)

*numbers tell nothing*

Hi! I had 2 gtx 690 and was having better performance in every game (bf3 crysis2 and some other) with 2 gtx680. Meanwhile I upgraded my whole rig because i thought it was else, but it where the cards).

Can you please TECHPOWERUP, the next time use something more reliable than just fps?

with 2 690 I was getting 40% more fps than 2 overclocked 680 but general game slow down and speed up, like every 2 seconds it was whith rallenty.

So fps really don't tell how the game experience will look like.

You cud do vids, and attach them together for every game. So for one game we cud compare how smooth the different configuration are.
Or compare fps timing...


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## erocker (May 6, 2013)

With scaling less than 50% for a 2nd card, I don't think frame timing would be my biggest concern for cards this expensive.


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## Qiplayer (May 6, 2013)

Laki747 said:


> Hi,
> 
> I am not an expert or anything like that but i have one thing that is making me confused
> 
> How come that in almost all tests 1xGTX 690 had better results in all resolutions then 2xGTX 690?? Could some 1 plz explain that to me?



because
if 1 gtx 680 performs like 1
1+1 gtx 680 perform 1.9
1+1+1= 2,5
1+1+1+1= dunno
gtx 690 performs like 1,7 (counting also you overclock the gtx 680 more than the 690, I was able to run the 680 stable ingame with +95 on clock on stock cooler, while the 690's where crashing at +30)

690+690 are 0.2+$$$$ (away from your poket)
generally I think because of drivers, but cud find already somebody that had a not bad performance.

I talk about running 3x1920*1080 monitors.

finally there is no reason of having dual cards unless it is for space reasons



erocker said:


> With scaling less than 50% for a 2nd card, I don't think frame timing would be my biggest concern for cards this expensive.



When i play online crysis2 on res 5900x1080 I see everything smooth with 90-110 fps. Before i had 2 now 3 gtx 680.
If I get less than 70-80fps the game isn't smooth.

As i have a 60hz monitor, and won't see more than 60 fps, what is it that makes the difference? I beliese when fps are higher also the frame timing is better.

people said that 2 titans have much better frame timings than 2 680, because of that even if you don't have much fps the game is very smooth.

Also I read amd cards generally where'n having good frame times, but more fps, so user cudn't understand why with gtx cards they where having a better game experience. So they started to compare also frame times, and there was the difference.


Anyway I would apreciate more a vid (Check if low fps of youtube isn't hiding important informations) 


thanks for the fast reply 




To the owners of gtx 680 I suggest buying a third gtx 680 instead of making other changes. unless they want to spend 2k on cards.
DONT mix 2gb and 4gb version, it runs only with 310 drivers or older, not compatible with crysis3. Nvidia doesn't support it anymore, now that it would have sense...
2gb are not the bottleneck with 3 hd screens, on crysis2 and bf3.

We really need AMD taking out a fast single gpu.


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## klepp0906 (Jul 22, 2014)

Yikes - quad SLI doesn't require a E chip.  The extra lanes do next to nothing (assuming you have a plx chip).  It's been proven time and time again at x8 the cards aren't even saturating the bus. 

Course now I'm nit picking but apparently the writer quit wow awhile back. Considering the "most successful Mmorpg to ever ruin the entire genre, has had about half the quoted subs for a few years now"

12 mil at it's best of all time subs.  1/4 easily RMT.  Now it has a smidgen over 6. 

Damage is already one though.  Other mmorpgs trying for the same number of subs assume it's due to how easy they made the game so every faux mmo since is designed as a one game fits all solution which always falls flat on it's face to all but the kids who were mmo first timers due to wow.

With that said - this isn't about wow it's about quad titans which I run.  On a 1150 chipset at that.  The only limiting factor is the clockspeed.  X79 or x87/97 it makes no difference.  It will be bottlenecked by your clockspeed not your pcie lanes.

The end


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