Hi Guys, I'm asking this on behalf of a friend. He's currently running 2x 1.5GB Asus GTX 580 Matrix in SLI and is wondering if a single GTX Titan would be a worthy upgrade? The rest of his spec: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.something GHz 16GB Corsair Vengeance Asus Maximus IV Extreme so SLI would be dual x8 PCIe 2.0 Cooler Master HAF-X 1050w Enermax Revolution PSU 27" Dell U2711 If not the Titan, would GTX 670 SLI or possibly GTX 680 SLI be a better upgrade? Would the dual x8 PCIe 2.0 be a limiting factor with 670/680 SLI? Thanks
Although, if he can afford a Titan, I doubt he worries too much about the leccy bill. I doubt he'd notice much of a difference on a single monitor - but possibly across three. SLI'd 670s probably offers the best value.
The limiting factor is the 1.5GB on his cards, if it was the 3GB models, then I would say - Keep with what he has have got. He will benefit from 1 Titan at his native res. So do it!
I'll defer to Simon's superior experience in this field. Although, I remember threads re: SLI 580s when the the 690 came out, and the 690 was about 15% faster at single res - much the same as it is with the Titan. Therefore I assumed SLI 580s are approx equal to a Titan.
You are forgetting that 1.5GB will hold FPS back/Image quality due to the limited 1.5GB. Gaming at 2560x1440 with my 4GB cards, shows VRAM usage as shown below. Crysis 3 fully maxed out with 8xMSAA hits will over 3.2GB VRAM. Farcry 3 fully maxed out with 8xMSAA hits well over 3.2GB VRAM. Hitman fully maxed out with 8xMSAA hits well over 3.2GB VRAM. BF3 fully maxed out with 4xMSAA hits well over 2.4GB VRAM Max Payne 3 maxed out with 4xMSAA hits well over 3GB VRAM Games are only going to get more demanding as the next gen consoles starts to role out. So now can you see my point?
I see your point, which is why I deferred to your knowledge in my response, mate. BTW I thought TXAA offered the delights of MSAA but with reduced overheads? Have you tried it out? If so, what do you think?
Thanks a lot everyone, I'll relay this info over to him. Knowing him, he'll probably wait for Haswell then upgrade the lot... +rep to all
It does, but I do prefer SMAA MGPU x2 which gives the same image quality as 16XQCSAA with less of an impact. Check this video out to show you what I mean! http://vimeo.com/31247769
TXAA is an absolute rig killer and has no image quality benefit at all, so there's no point in using it at all from what I can tell. That's based on the performance I got in Crysis 3 anyway, which still killed my single Titan at 1080p on high preset with FXAA. Though when I say 'killed' I mean 45 FPS minimum in the very grassy areas (typically 70-80, up to 120-130 in some areas), which looks very choppy on a 120Hz monitor.
Problem with memory comparisons is, is the game just using the memory because it can or does it need it. As I've ran far cry 3 at same settings and have not broken 1.8gb on 2gb cards
I ran Crysis three last night with TXAA and everything turned up at 1600p - it wasn't noticeably jittery, nor did it stall. This is with a single 2GB 670. Are you chaps just running GPUz in the background to measure max memory use?
Yes this is true. I run Farcry 3 maxed out as well and have absolutely no issues with exceeding my Vram limit @ 2560x1600.
