SLI with triple monitor in 144hz

[daikichikun]

Hello everyone, I have question about 1080ti SLI with triple high refresh rate monitors....

If I want to have refresh rate >120, I need to use Display Port, so 3 monitors, 3 DP ports, however, I am not sure in SLI setup, does all 3 monitors needed to be connected to a single GPU? I did some searches but have no cue...some people say that all monitors must be connected to the same display card but other say its ok to connect to any ports of the 2 cards as long as Nvidia Surround is enable....

If all monitors need to be plugged to the same GPU....this will definitely limited the options since there are not much 1080ti comes with 3 DP.....sadly...EVGA is a good choice but it is not popular here, no stock now...and no idea when will be any stock available shortly...

Anyone is currently running SLI setup playing with triple monitors >120hz refresh rate that can give some advice?

 

[BBKing212]

How about this video?

 

[Hiro Abe]

How about this video?

There we go! Thank you for this! It's basically what I expected in terms of FOV. Thanks for pulling back at the end so we can see the entire screen. Very helpful. How long have you've been running with the 49"?

Ugh! So torn right now!

 

[Mr Latte]

This is not making sense to me. The physical size of screen real estate is not changing. It's simply a higher resolution. Or perhaps I'm reading your statement incorrectly?

The video is interesting but he's using TrackIR which makes it near impossible to get a good sense of his FOV.

Yes I think I am mistaken here as it is the ratio that determines the horizontal vs vertical visible screen or window. The resolution indeed just makes it sharper and not more of it. I saw an image that threw me off.

As for FOV that may depend on the individual although guidelines are usually quite good to follow.

The current 49" models are 1/2 vertical of a 4K UHD and the upcoming 1440p are 1/2 vertical of a 5K display. Indeed they both retain 32:9 aspect ratio so what is seen wont change, just more pixels for higher sharpness.

Ultimately it comes down to visual fidelity Vs framerate Vs screen size for the player to take into account.

 

[BBKing212]

There we go! Thank you for this! It's basically what I expected in terms of FOV. Thanks for pulling back at the end so we can see the entire screen. Very helpful. How long have you've been running with the 49"?

Ugh! So torn right now!

Hehhe, this is not my video. I found it on houtube.
P.S. i am also thinking to buy it....

 

[Hiro Abe]

@BBKing212 Understood. Thanks for finding that video then! It has kind of sealed the deal for me to move forward on getting one of these behemoths.

Uh... anyone interested in a nice set of triples?

 

[Hiro Abe]

Want to make sure I'm thinking this thru correctly. As long as a sim supports the 32:9 aspect ratio, then everything should be rendered correctly without distortion... yes? I'm thinking of Dirt Rally which did not support triple screen so the sides got distorted as the sim just stretched the image to fill the screen. That should go away as long as it supports 3840 x 1080. I'm going to do due diligence and be sure the sims I frequent - and sometimes drive - are going to render fine before I pull this sizable trigger.

 

[Mr Latte]

You would think this is a topic/feature some of "SIM" channels would of looked into already...
Covering testing with all the main titles.

 

[Hiro Abe]

Probably. I haven't started to research but thought I would throw it out here in case someone had a quick answer.

 

[Hiro Abe]

Heh... found some more racing videos on the 49 including Dirt Rally. The guy's fov is wrong but you can tell the view out of the side window is not distorted and looks pretty darn good. Okay... allowing myself to start obsessing about this thing.

Dirt Rally video

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Going back to the SLI aspect of this thread - if anyone's running nvidia SLI in AC, how is your experience with it? AMD crossfire is a major pain - I have 95% cpu use ( in AC, not the rig overall ) with crossfire vs about 25% with one card, and I get slowdowns in fixed places after a lap or two. I am kinda tempted to sell one card ( other is a loaner ) & get a 1080, but every single nvidia card I've owned I've managed to kill inside 6 months...

rF2 seems happy with crossfire though.

7680x1440 is magic though even with triples - don't really notice the ( small ) bezel when I'm driving, it's more about peripheral vision anyway.

 

[daikichikun]

Going back to the SLI aspect of this thread - if anyone's running nvidia SLI in AC, how is your experience with it? AMD crossfire is a major pain - I have 95% cpu use ( in AC, not the rig overall ) with crossfire vs about 25% with one card, and I get slowdowns in fixed places after a lap or two. I am kinda tempted to sell one card ( other is a loaner ) & get a 1080, but every single nvidia card I've owned I've managed to kill inside 6 months...

rF2 seems happy with crossfire though.

7680x1440 is magic though even with triples - don't really notice the ( small ) bezel when I'm driving, it's more about peripheral vision anyway.

Totally understand that it's really hard for most of the people to justify the cost of running SLI instead of just get a single more powerful card, i.e. SLI 1060 VS a 1080....as you don't have any scaling issue. So, when I consider SLI, I will only think about 1080ti SLI(at this moment), as long as you can't find a more powerful single card.

I haven't use AMD card before, no idea...but I did search "1080ti SLI + Assetto Corsa", thing like that.. in Youtube and able to find a few videos. The benchmarks are incredible..

But I agreed with other guys, we are not going to see a huge improvement in the software support / game programming for SLI..however, I do want to try if I have the cash...as long as I understand it is not a cost effective approach, but just an extreme case for someone who wants the ultimate gaming performance...

 

[anton_Chez]

Buying any high end card now is going to be murder, with the inflated prices we have been seeing over the past 6 months at least. You want 2? Damn, I thought I was pretty crazy I was a user of SLI with dual 970's and for the most part, they worked really well. Apart from the 970 VRAM fiasco (which only posed a problem for me in one title) but that's limited to that particular card so it won't affect and newer cards. People report mixed feelings about dual card setups and Nvidia deciding to pull the plug on supporting anything other than a two card config is probably a sign of the times. That said, I have had multiple dual card systems and the 970 was great. Nearly every title I wanted to play supported it at launch and the performance was comparable to a single card MOST of the time, in terms of smoothness and frame pacing. I enjoyed my time with it and found the performance significantly higher than any single card of the time.

Regarding the sims and their triple screen support. I have had iRacing, AC, R3E, rF2 and AMS all support triple screens for me when I had mine. Some do it a little differently to others but all were fine with aspect ratio and image stretching. Dirt games and RBR, no go, as well as titles like Wreckfest, WRC. Forza I can't remember, but I'd say probably not. How this relates to a ultrawide resolution I don't know, but they are the sims that have no troubles with triples support. I'd say that they are the ones most likely to not give you issues. Can't say for certain though as I don't have one.

 

[daikichikun]

Cool @AntoN_CheZ , so envy that you have so extensive experience with SLI, 970 is a great card, I previously owned a Gigabyte 970, even on my old system with an i5-4440 and just 8G ram, I could run VR quite nicely. I am not sure at this moment, the price of the top end cards are reasonable or not, may be it varies from place to place. Lucky enough that in my city, the demand for high end GPU is not as keen as other places, so as the crypto mining rush starts to cool down in the last few months, the price drops quite a lot, especially the price of used card. I would not get another card for SLI very soon, may be for me, the best time is to wait until the 1180 comes to the market. As I agree with you, I believe the SLI performance in the sims can be >30% than a single GPU since I heard that the SLI scaling in racing sims is implemented quite well..so I still believe a 1080ti SLI performance in sims would be lot stronger than a single 1180.

The only issue for 1080ti is thermal. Normal operation temperature is around 80c......Even you use the longest 4-slot SLI bridge, the 2 monster size cards are still too close...performance wise, definitely give you a big smile, but probably the cards will start to throttling not long after you started the game...

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Dirt Rally & Wreckfest worked out of the box triple for me - DR is lacking any way of adjusting angle for the outer screens, but you don't really notice when you're driving. Wreckfest I can't tell because I can't set controls up until they patch it

I have a 270mm fan on my case door and the door itself is a large filtered intake - no problems getting air to the cards. My main problem has been recent AMD drivers resetting the card fan profiles to something that means they cook themselves, that was causing my slowdowns in AC... no resolution of the excess CPU use though.

One thing to think about before you get an ultrawide screen is anything else you use fullscreen and whether that will support it, not just sims. I like having fullscreen vid on one screen while I'm working on the other two, for instance.

 

[anton_Chez]

I think the 1180 will have maybe slightly higher performance than a 1080Ti but for roughly the same price if Nvidia's pricing scheme lately is anything to go by. They seem to be pushing the price of the highest non Ti card up with each release, one way or another.

In regards to thermals, I wouldn't worry too much. Chances are that you are not going to be running each card at close to maximum, even with the standard boost clock that the cards come with. Even if you are throttling a little bit, the fact you have 2 cards will more than make up for it. For example, when I had my 970's, I overclocked each one to find it's maximum stable core, and then basically never really touched them again. Just left them at stock, let the standard boost do it's thing and it was pretty much always enough. I find that either adding a side intake fan like Simon mentioned, or even just cracking the side panel slightly gives me huge drops in temp. Maybe 8 - 10C if it's running at near full usage. This is with the non blower style coolers.

 

[Khyber]

too bad that monitor is 1080p. no thanks... 1440p version will be out eventually

 

[daikichikun]

Seems everyone is so excited on the performance of the new card..and I really forgot to ask a few technical questions to all of you guys who race with triple screen...

Do you need to connect all 3 monitors to the same display card?

And do you need to always turn on Nivida Surround for gaming in triple screen? Even playing sims which already have triple screen support?

In case yes, then what is the function / purpose for sims like AC, iRacing etc which emphasis they are "triple screen support"?

 

[RichardHessels]

I don't think Surround Vision is perfect in its attempt to replicate peripheral vision nor is it ideal when you then move your head to focus on the additional screens. Typically about the first 1/3rd looks okay but then its stretched looking to me.

Proper racesims (rF1,rF2, AC, AMS, iRacing, raceroom) have options for multiview, thats seperate horizons drawn for the side screens, so no stretching the middle image, but really the view you see when looking left or right.

 

[Hiro Abe]

@daikichikun In order to use Nvidia's Surround, all monitors need to be plugged into the card.

In regards to having to invoke Surround, it is necessary to get triple screen working. When setting up triple screen in the sim, you are not telling it what part of the image to draw to which monitor. It is treating it as one super wide image that is being drawn to one big monitor and dividing it up according to the screen and bezel dimensions and angles from your inputs and adjust/draw that part of the image so it matches how your physical screens are set up.

 

[daikichikun]

I see....thanks guys, so it means I have to activate Surround at the first step if I want to use triple screen regardless the sims support triple or not...

Let's take a step further, how about the connection in SLI mode? I read the instruction in the Nividia Surround page, but I was totally confused....I have no idea what it means "2D Surround Mode" and "3D Vision Surround Mode".....does that "3D Vision Surround mode" actually means using that Nividia 3D Glass to play "3D" games?....