The Ludicrous Graphics Test: Dual GTX Titan SLI for 4K and Triple Monitor Gaming

[Steve]

For some time now the most popular screen resolution among gamers has been 1080p, though the community is slowly but surely migrating to 1440p thanks to the increased availability of quality 1440p displays and affordable GPUs such as the Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1060 which are quite capable at this resolution.

But what about 4K gaming? Ultra HD displays have been around for a few years now and today it's possible to pick up a 28" 4K monitor for under $400. The reason so few gamers are going this route is because of the GPU power required to drive such a display.

Only recently with the arrival of the GTX 1080 has a single GPU been powerful enough to game at 4K and even then at times some tweaking is necessary for optimal gameplay. As impressive as the GTX 1080 is, Nvidia's latest Titan X boasts 40% more CUDA cores, making it all the more of an ally to 4K gamers.

Read the complete article.

 

[VitalyT]

It will be interesting to see how such combo fares for a single 8K monitor when those come out later this year

I remember about 2 years ago someone did an artificial benchmark of Crisis at 8K, scoring on average 2fps

It should be a little faster now

 

[herpaderp]

You already know it's not going to perform well given the Surround results. If triple UHD is barely playable with two cards, you can imagine what quad UHD will be like.

 

[Gmn17]

Just wait for volta or 1080ti's

 

[VitalyT]

You already know it's not going to perform well given the Surround results. If triple UHD is barely playable with two cards, you can imagine what quad UHD will be like.

Not necessarily. It depends on how much power the video card spends multi-channeling the output. A single-channel output through DisplayPort 1.4 could make a big difference. And if the monitor supports dual DP 1.4 input, then it is a question of driver optimization.

After all, single-scene rendering is always lighter on the hardware.

 

[herpaderp]

It's unlikely to be significantly better. I just ran Rise of the Tomb Raider (1 of only 3 games I own from their list) and got a 32FPS average at 8K compared to their 52FPS average at 4K surround. Will try Far Cry Primal sometime later, but I'm not expecting it to get any better :V

 

[asmcint]

You know, if you were to post what CPU and RAM you were using with this configuration, we could probably tell what the bottleneck you were experiencing is and thus be able to get an idea of what performance would be like were that bottleneck removed.

 

[Fbarnett]

There must be something wrong with me.. For that kind of money and Hardware I want 200fps pretty steady. This shows you FPS but I bet the drops are half and to me most games are unplayable that way.

 

[Puiu]

Just wait for volta or 1080ti's

1080 ti will have lower performance than the Titan X

 

[NightBlade007]

Two frikken titans, over 2 grand total, and can't even run games at solid 60 4k everything max? This is utterly pathetic, one titan, by this point in time, should be able to run ANYTHING, at ANY SETTING, 4k 60 fps MINIMUM. I was going to buy a titan this cycle, thinking finally I'll have a premium 4k single-card solution but I guess I'll have to wait another 2-3 years before that becomes viable at the consumer level. (600 dollar price point)

 

[Puiu]

Two frikken titans, over 2 grand total, and can't even run games at solid 60 4k everything max? This is utterly pathetic, one titan, by this point in time, should be able to run ANYTHING, at ANY SETTING, 4k 60 fps MINIMUM. I was going to buy a titan this cycle, thinking finally I'll have a premium 4k single-card solution but I guess I'll have to wait another 2-3 years before that becomes viable at the consumer level. (600 dollar price point)

it was 3 UHD displays, not 1. most games do run at 60 fps with very high settings.

 

[axiomatic13]

Hey Techspot, was that Ashes of the Singularity text DX11 or DX12? Just curious. I do not think the article specified anywhere I could find? I would be interested if DX12 made the SLI better or worse?

 

[asmcint]

There must be something wrong with me.. For that kind of money and Hardware I want 200fps pretty steady. This shows you FPS but I bet the drops are half and to me most games are unplayable that way.

The lower number on the benchmarks? That shows you what the absolute minimum they got was. Maybe next time you can read a bit more thoroughly, eh?

 

[Squid Surprise]

I know Nvidia has dropped "official" support for 3 and 4-way SLI... but I'd be very curious to see how 3 Titan Xs perform at these resolutions... and 4 as well... I'd assume that scaling won't be close to 100%, but even 30% might make the difference in those last few stubborn titles...Obviously not worth the money, but once you're going Dual Titan Xs, what's 1 more?

Oh... and where's Hardreset saying that the FuryX's will be way better than the Titans in a few years... I bet he also thinks that dual 480s right now will be smoking this rig...

 

[asmcint]

I know Nvidia has dropped "official" support for 3 and 4-way SLI... but I'd be very curious to see how 3 Titan Xs perform at these resolutions... and 4 as well... I'd assume that scaling won't be close to 100%, but even 30% might make the difference in those last few stubborn titles...Obviously not worth the money, but once you're going Dual Titan Xs, what's 1 more?

Oh... and where's Hardreset saying that the FuryX's will be way better than the Titans in a few years... I bet he also thinks that dual 480s right now will be smoking this rig...

It's more complicated than that with regards to support for 3 and 4 way SLI. You literally cannot fit more than one of the new SLI bridges onto a 1080 or newer card. While you could probably use old bridges, the older bridges are slower and as such your 3 or 4-way SLI configuration would have more trouble keeping up with the 2-way on the new bridges.

Besides that, even supporting 2-way SLI is a mixed bag for games, and more cards than that often saw vastly diminishing returns when they were even supported. Ultimately even if you could do 3 or 4-way SLI with the new bridges, it'd pretty much be a coin toss as to whether or not it made any significant impact on a triple-monitor setup's framerates, particularly in the situations when the triple-4K setups couldn't maintain a playable framerate.

 

[Squid Surprise]

It's more complicated than that with regards to support for 3 and 4 way SLI. You literally cannot fit more than one of the new SLI bridges onto a 1080 or newer card. While you could probably use old bridges, the older bridges are slower and as such your 3 or 4-way SLI configuration would have more trouble keeping up with the 2-way on the new bridges.

Besides that, even supporting 2-way SLI is a mixed bag for games, and more cards than that often saw vastly diminishing returns when they were even supported. Ultimately even if you could do 3 or 4-way SLI with the new bridges, it'd pretty much be a coin toss as to whether or not it made any significant impact on a triple-monitor setup's framerates, particularly in the situations when the triple-4K setups couldn't maintain a playable framerate.

I've got 3 Titan X (Maxwell) going on my system right now... I've noticed that the SLI bridge does little anyways... What would also be interesting is a comparison between a dual Titan X system with the new bridge against a dual Titan X system with the old bridge... I suspect the results wouldn't be very different....

Once you do slap on an older triple or quad SLI bridge, I'd be curious as to whether performance would increase - and on which titles...

 

[ddferrari]

It's more complicated than that with regards to support for 3 and 4 way SLI. You literally cannot fit more than one of the new SLI bridges onto a 1080 or newer card. While you could probably use old bridges, the older bridges are slower and as such your 3 or 4-way SLI configuration would have more trouble keeping up with the 2-way on the new bridges.

Besides that, even supporting 2-way SLI is a mixed bag for games, and more cards than that often saw vastly diminishing returns when they were even supported. Ultimately even if you could do 3 or 4-way SLI with the new bridges, it'd pretty much be a coin toss as to whether or not it made any significant impact on a triple-monitor setup's framerates, particularly in the situations when the triple-4K setups couldn't maintain a playable framerate.

I've got 3 Titan X (Maxwell) going on my system right now... I've noticed that the SLI bridge does little anyways... What would also be interesting is a comparison between a dual Titan X system with the new bridge against a dual Titan X system with the old bridge... I suspect the results wouldn't be very different....

Once you do slap on an older triple or quad SLI bridge, I'd be curious as to whether performance would increase - and on which titles...

Here's a link to a PC World article where they tested this scenario with two 1080s. Turns out that sometimes there wasn't much difference and sometimes there was. The least difference was at 1080p/1440p, but surely no one buys SLI 1080 or Titan for those resolutions anyway. Their conclusion: if you're spending that much on GPUs, spend the extra $40 and get the new bridge.

 

[ddferrari]

It's more complicated than that with regards to support for 3 and 4 way SLI. You literally cannot fit more than one of the new SLI bridges onto a 1080 or newer card. While you could probably use old bridges, the older bridges are slower and as such your 3 or 4-way SLI configuration would have more trouble keeping up with the 2-way on the new bridges.

Besides that, even supporting 2-way SLI is a mixed bag for games, and more cards than that often saw vastly diminishing returns when they were even supported. Ultimately even if you could do 3 or 4-way SLI with the new bridges, it'd pretty much be a coin toss as to whether or not it made any significant impact on a triple-monitor setup's framerates, particularly in the situations when the triple-4K setups couldn't maintain a playable framerate.

I've got 3 Titan X (Maxwell) going on my system right now... I've noticed that the SLI bridge does little anyways... What would also be interesting is a comparison between a dual Titan X system with the new bridge against a dual Titan X system with the old bridge... I suspect the results wouldn't be very different....

Once you do slap on an older triple or quad SLI bridge, I'd be curious as to whether performance would increase - and on which titles...

Here's a link to a PC World article where they tested this scenario with two 1080s. Turns out that sometimes there wasn't much difference and sometimes there was. The least difference was at 1080p/1440p, but surely no one buys SLI 1080 or Titan for those resolutions anyway. Their conclusion: if you're spending that much on GPUs, spend the extra $40 and get the new bridge.

Oops, here's the link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3087...ayoff-in-buying-nvidias-40-sli-hb-bridge.html

 

[ddferrari]

I know Nvidia has dropped "official" support for 3 and 4-way SLI... but I'd be very curious to see how 3 Titan Xs perform at these resolutions... and 4 as well... I'd assume that scaling won't be close to 100%, but even 30% might make the difference in those last few stubborn titles...Obviously not worth the money, but once you're going Dual Titan Xs, what's 1 more?

Oh... and where's Hardreset saying that the FuryX's will be way better than the Titans in a few years... I bet he also thinks that dual 480s right now will be smoking this rig...

Even the single 1080 didn't trail far behind the crossfire Fury X setup, and actually had better minimal framerates in a few titles!

 

[ddferrari]

Well that review was fun! It also helped me decide that I'm going to stick with 1440p for another year or two. I'm waiting to see what the 1080 Ti brings in both performance and cost; then maybe add a second one down the road when it's time for 4k.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Oops, here's the link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3087...ayoff-in-buying-nvidias-40-sli-hb-bridge.html

Thanks

So I still want a comparison between 3/4 Titan Xs (using old bridge) vs 2 Titan Xs using new bridge....Article could be called "3-Way SLI is dead! Or is it?"

 

[Night Hawk]

Until new display port is used in 4k display lcd your going to see little gains in frame rate

 

[Squid Surprise]

Until new display port is used in 4k display lcd your going to see little gains in frame rate

That would have no effect on frame rate.... That's predominately based on GPU horsepower....

 

[Puiu]

That would have no effect on frame rate.... That's predominately based on GPU horsepower....

I think he was talking about the 60Hz limit on 4K displays using HDMI 2.0.

 

[Bigtruckseries]

I have the Titan X 12GB.

I would prefer if they designed these cards with 4 DISPLAY PORTS rather than 1 HDMI+ 3 Display Ports.

I do appreciate the card runs quietly under my 3 monitor load. I like it because it's beefy and able to handle everything I throw at it. I was getting over 120 FPS in DOOM 2016 even in the big Gore Nest sequences.