[Swolern]

I recently picked up 3 Korean Qnix 2560x1440 monitors and happen to have an extra Titan in hand, so i decided to see how the scaling is with this extreme resolution. 7680x1440 is an insaine resolution and just as insaine to run. 7680x1440 has about a 11 million pixel count. It has an 80% higher pixel count than 5760x1080 and 20% higher than 4k. I currently have my monitors OC'd to 96Hz, which is actually a large noticeable difference in smoothness & response time vs 60hz(when I can hit 96fps of course). I disabled Aero so i could get the lowest VRAM use possible for the 780 owners comparison. I also used a dual PSU setup to run the quads as my 1200w is not sufficient.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Here are my test specs:
3930k @ 5ghz
16gb 1866 ram
Extreme 11 motherboard running 3-way Titans @ pci-e 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16
Titans @ stock speeds
Windows 7 (Aero disabled)
Nvidia driver 320.49




Only 1 Titan on water at this point so the others were getting too warm during benckmarks when in quad SLI. I used a external Lasko blower fan to keep them cool. 300+CFM.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Heaven 4.0 Maxed Settings 2xMSAA
-Great Scaling all the way to 4-way SLI

2-way (2-way SLI shows 3 cards as one card was disabled)


3-way


4-way


Tomb Raider
-Maxed Settings, TressFx & Post Processing- enabled, FXAA
-Near Perfect Scaling all the way to 4-way SLI (butter smooth gameplay)

2-way: 43.9fps Avg
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/TombRaider_2way_zps44194994.png.html

3-way: 64fps Avg
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/TombRaider_3way_zps3343198c.png.html

4-way: 83.3fps Avg
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/TombRaider_4-way_zps82b434f6.png.html

Hitman Absolution
-Maxed settings 4xMSAA
-One of the few games, without mods, i have seen go above 3gb and still have a playable framerate as peak vram was at 4.37gb.
-4-way runs into some CPU limitations(GPU utilization drops)

2-way: 30.4fps Avg
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/Hitman2way_zps592861fb.png.html

3-way: 44.9fps Avg
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/Hitman3way_zps44ee89ce.png.html

4-way: 52.45fps Avg
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/Hitman4-way_zps97c2e021.png.html

Crysis 3- Still shot. Chose one of the more difficult to render areas in the heavy rain
-Very High settings FXAA
-Great Scaling all the way to 4-way SLI

2-way: 29.4fps
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/crysis3_2way_zpscd9b4283.png.html

3-way: 43.4fps
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/C3-way_zps436c8a24.png.html

4-way: 57.2fps
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/crysis3_4-way_zpsede19d90.png.html

Metro Last Light
-The games hates more than 2 GPUs
-Looks like the best config is 2-way SLI with a dedicated Physx card. Great if anyone has an old Nvidia card laying around. It had the highest Avg & minimum framerate.

2-way


2-way with 3rd Titan as dedicated Physx


3-way


4-way


Witcher 2: Maxed settings, Ubersampling disabled
-Still shot
-4-way runs into some CPU limitations(GPU use drops)

2-way: 39.6fps
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/witcher2_2way_zps9a35513f.png.html

3-way:59.5fps
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/witcher2_3way_zpsd8a1c8d5.png.html

4-way:66.3fps
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/witcher2_4-way_zps9158462e.png.html

Other games tested were BF3 & Far Cry 3. They were both completely unplayable with quad SLI. As they both had massively varying GPU use & FPS which displayed a stuttery mess. 3-way wasn't perfect, but tolerable, more so when vsync enabled.

These are some very high settings as 7680x1440 is very difficult to run in some games even for Quad Titans. For me some settings will need to be decreased to hit the 96fps mark to match my refresh rate for the smoothest gameplay possible. Looks like about 50% or less of the games tested scaled well in quad SLI. Tri-SLI scaling had a better % of success, but for those extremely demanding games the 4th card is needed at this resolution, if the CPU is not holding the performance back. 2-way SLI may work, but demanding game's settings will need to be drastically reduced. As usual 3-way SLI looks to be the sweet spot.

Update: Looks like another great Quad scaler also uses tons of VRAM
All same previous OS specs
OC Titans this time to all benched groupings

MOH: Warfighter (sp)
-Ultra Presets
-Vram maxes out at 3550mb

2-way SLI: 45FPS
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/MOH2-way_zps1383cbaa.png.html

3-way: 66.4fps
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/MOH3-way_zps6f879f3f.png.html

4-way: 83.8fps
http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/MOH4-way_zps625e8a26.png.html

http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/MOH4-way2_zpseb983a8a.png.html

Added 8/23
Dpoverlord Titan 3-way SLI Scaling on X58 Platform 8050x1600

 

[Jameswalt1]

+1

Amazing thread.

 

[malmental]

nice...

 

[Carlitos714]

very nice. thank you for all the hard work.

My plan was to get a 2560x1440 Korean monitor and eventually get 3. After seeing how much gpu is needed to run them, I think I will stick with 1 for now.

 

[Yungbenny911]

Nice, i can only imagine how much though

 

[FlyingSolo]

Awesome work Swolern and thanks +rep

 

[Nikola-Tesla]

Finally somebody benchmarking with pci-e 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 in high res.
+1

..any chances for benches with Skyrim (maxed ambient occlusion and bumped ugirdstoload)?

Another question: can you play some titles with downsampling? If so, how's res|Hz ?

 

[Triniboi82]

Great job Swolern, good to see how the top level cards are performing now on this resolution. Hopefully by the time I'm ready to upgrade a single next gen or the gen after cards will be powerful enough to handle these resolutions.

 

[Swolern]

No prob guys. I used a second circuit this time for the additional PSU, lol.
Quote:

Originally Posted by Nikola-Tesla

Finally somebody benchmarking with pci-e 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 in high res.
+1

..any chances for benches with Skyrim (maxed ambient occlusion and bumped ugirdstoload)?

Another question: can you play some titles with downsampling? If so, how's res|Hz ?

About to go on vacation with the fam, but ill get to it when I get back. You bring up an interesting point with pci-e bandwidth. The only quad 2.0 vs 3.0 comparison I have seen is with quad 7970s which there was basically no benefit for the increased bandwidth. It is known that Nvidia's SLI technology relies heavily on pci-e bandwidth vs crossfire. I guess that's why crossfire only requires x4 speed. The only Titan pci-e comparison I have seen is with 2-way SLI at 5760x1080 with a max of 7% performance increase vs 2.0. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7089/geforce-gtx-titan-twoway-sli-scaling-pcie-2-vs-pcie-3

My board does pci-e 3.0 with x16 to all lanes natively, but has dual PLX chips that are know to cause some latency of their own. So it would be interesting to see a comparison as Anands benchmarks showed the higher the res the greater the gains with 3.0 x16. And I'm running 2x the GPU horsepower & an 80% higher resolution compared to 5760x1080 & 2-way in Anand's benchmark.

 

[King4x4]

Repped!

Also you just proved that 3GB is sufficient at that resolution with current games!

 

[Swolern]

Yes all of them that I tested stayed under 3gb except for Hitman at 4.3gb. Not a lot of difference between 2xmsaa & 4xmsaa, but it's noticeable for me, but I'm just sensitive to the jaggies.

I'm still concerned on next gen games coming in a few months, along with BF4 mandatory Win 8.1 for upgraded CPU utilization. Win 8 uses more VRAM resources than Win 7 at this point. Not sure if any of that changed for 8.1 though.

 

[Nikola-Tesla]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swolern

I'm still concerned on next gen games coming in a few months, along with BF4 mandatory Win 8.1 for upgraded CPU utilization. Win 8 uses more VRAM resources than Win 7 at this point. Not sure if any of that changed for 8.1 though.

I don't expect less vram usage - graphics hardware acceleration for system, browsers, etc is a good thing* and it won't go away
*(unless someone is short on vram while gaming).

Downsampling is another vram hog and differences in pci-e 2.0 vs 3.0 should be even greater.

 

[Booty Warrior]

Quote:

Originally Posted by King4x4

Repped!

Also you just proved that 3GB is sufficient at that resolution with current games!

Indeed. I didn't expect that to be honest, hah.

Very nice work!

 

[Swolern]

Mam i never knew MOH Warfighter was such a Vram hog. Im back on 3-way SLI right now, GPUs OC'd. Perfect scaling with my config. I will have to add it to the OP when i get a chance. Settings: Ultra presets. Same Win 7 Aero disabled as OP. Vram at 3400. 66fps with 3-way SLI.

Its funny how MOH scales so much better that BF3 with the same engine.

http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/swolern/media/MOHW_2013_08_03_21_43_23_155_zps229ed57a.png.html

 

[Jameswalt1]

MoH Warfighter is an awesome play through in surround

 

[provost]

Did you test your 5760 x 1080 120 hz with this set up? After all this testing, are you going to stick to 4 way sli or do you prefer Tri sli?

 

[CallsignVega]

Cool post! Mirrors what I have seen in the past running 3x 30" monitors with 12 mil pixels. Some games can actually run with damn near perfect scaling in 3 and 4 way SLI if you place a large demand on the GPU's.

 

[wermad]

Awesome job mate

 

[deafboy]

Good to know. +rep

 

[Paradigm Shifter]

Nicely done.