Hardware & Technical Looking to go multi-GPU with multi-monitors

Porina

Porina
We have Windows 10. We have Skylake. Now is a good time for me to replace my 4 year old desktop which suffers from not having UEFI or USB3 amongst other things.

One thing I want to do this time around is to go for a gaming multi-monitor setup, but I'm really not familiar with how it works in general, and specifically with ED. I want to go for a simple 3 monitor wide arrangement. I think I will be looking at GTX 980 upwards.

The main question is, do the GPUs share the load for the entire scene, or do they "keep to their own connected monitor(s)"? Consider the scenario I have two of the same GPU, and 3 monitors. Would all 3 monitors connect to 1 card? Presumably if this is the case the cards will balance between themselves. Would I connect 2 to one, 1 to the others? Will they still balance, or would one card have to push twice as many pixels as the other? If that latter case, would running three cards, one for each monitor, be better than running two?

I suppose the bottom line is I could go for 3x 980 or 2x 980Ti for a similar price, and arguably a similar combined raw performance. It mostly comes down to how the monitors connect and the load is split between them.

I haven't yet decided what monitors to go for, but I'm thinking of going up to 1440p as a step up from 1080p, without the pain of trying to drive 4k.
 

Porina

Porina
After much looking around, I have come to the following conclusions. Firstly, the mobos I was looking at don't support 3x SLI so that's out from the start. Next, 3x 1440p monitors is going to add up in cost, on top of the GPUs to run them... so I'm going to cheap out after all. Single 980Ti, 3x 1080p monitors. Sorted.

I might order the monitors separately to test them out with my existing GPUs, which could just about drive 4k at reduced settings. 3x1080p is 3/4 that so enough for a taster.
 

adoredtv

adoredtv
Last I heard Nvidia's multi-monitor was still pretty horrible, be sure to read up on it before making that decision.
 

Porina

Porina
Hmm... while I have a ton of kit lying around, my existing monitors are all different enough I can't try 3 at once. I did try two mismatched on an AMD before and that seemed fine with ED, apart from the monitor join being almost in the middle of the FoV. So getting 3x 1080p is a low cost option to try things out with. Annoyingly I'm currently running a 1200p main display and similar aren't cheap. 3x1080p works out much cheaper than 2x1200p extra, and they probably wont match anyway. As it is, getting 3 to fit on my desk will be a challenge in itself... :)

It is early days for Skylake so I doubt I'll decide on the main box build within the next couple of weeks anyway. The monitor logistics I can work out now.
 

adoredtv

adoredtv
Eyefinity can do different resolutions and panels fine now but Nv Surround can't. You want to dig out that 5870 and try again - http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-eyefinity-3-panel-mixed-resolution-review,1.html

I'm running 1x 1920x1200 and 2x 1680x1050. Not entirely sure if 3 completely different monitors will work but I don't see any reason why not.

You *should* be able to drop your current monitor down to 1920x1080 and only need 2 1080p side monitors with an Nvidia card but I'm not entirely sure either - for sure you can do it on AMD. I have 7 profiles set and use Eyefinity at 5280x1000 resolution. My first 3 profiles are set up with my main screen at 1200p and my 4-6 set up with my main screen at 1080p, with 7 for Eyefinity.

http://i.imgur.com/e5Ft8a7.png

(My girlfriend is using one of my side screens just now lol, so only 3 showing on that screenshot.)

Choose "Use Centered Timings" and your 1200p screen should be able to switch between 1200p and 1080p at the click of a profile button. Not sure what the Nvidia option is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work so well in Surround anyway.

I'd generally recommend the 980 Ti over the Fury X for everything except multi-monitor and VR. At 4K/Eyefinity resolutions they are basically identical in performance anyway.
 
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Porina

Porina
Coincidently I'm running 1920x1200+1680x1050 dual setup, which are my latest and previous main desktop monitors.

Overall I prefer nvidia, so unless you're saying it is so broken as to not work in the simple condition of 3 monitors one GPU, I really think I'd prefer that over an AMD heater. The possible benefit of having mismatched displays only matters if you're on a very limited budget. I don't want to deal with scaling issues and no doubt the colour/contrast wont match either. 1080p monitors are cheap so it is easier to buy 3 of those than mess around trying to fit my current monitor into the mix. I've identified an Asus model with relatively thin borders and IPS display as I'd take the colour rendering over raw response time.
 

Zelos1983

Z
With nVidia, the load is shared and all monitors have to be connected to the primary GPU. Running Dual Titan X, waiting for a third one to return from RMA.
 

Porina

Porina
Ok, the TDP was a bit closer than I thought, at 250W for the 980Ti and 275W for the Fury X, but on average for gaming uses red runs hotter than green. Being lower temperature through the use of water cooling doesn't change the fact it is pushing more heat out.

As for research, so far I've not seen anything to suggest nvidia cards wont work, or work worse, with 3 identical monitors than an AMD card. Nor have you shown anything so far to either put me off nvidia, or promote some useful benefit for picking AMD. I just feel AMD are stagnating in GPUs kinda like their CPUs which haven't really moved on for years now. Ok, so they have HMB but in the current implementation it isn't doing a lot in practice.
 

BuckRogerz

B
Found this thread searching for multimonitor + Elite. I run 3 monitors, mixed-mode resolution. One 1920x1080, two 1680x1050. I run PLP on a Radeon. I used 3dfx for 4 years, Nvidia for 9, and AMD for 6. Various 2D cards for the preceding 10 years (ATI/S3 etc). That's 29 years of video cards. I can assure you if you're going for multimonitor you want AMD. That said if you're willing to buy 3 identical monitors as you suggested, you'll probably be alright with Nvidia. The thing with Eyefinity/NV Surround is that AMD invented it, NV copied it. They're better there, no question about it.
As a bonus, AMD is also the leader in VR, or will be once it's here. They were also 'firsts' in that area as well. I'd get a Sapphire Fury Tri-X or FuryX myself. But if you're willing to always work around Nvidia's limitations going forward, the 980Ti is pretty slick.

Just sucks to plop down that much coin and have an inferior VR card and inferior multimonitor/Eyefinity setup. Just 2 sense. Good luck!
 

Zelos1983

Z
Porina said:
Ok, the TDP was a bit closer than I thought, at 250W for the 980Ti and 275W for the Fury X, but on average for gaming uses red runs hotter than green. Being lower temperature through the use of water cooling doesn't change the fact it is pushing more heat out.
Click to expand...

It saves you from having a cooling problem in the case. For air cooling, there are two solutions on the market: Either it blows the hot air out through the slot cover, which is preferable, but less efficient due to the small size of the opening. Or it blows the hot air just away from the GPU via larger fans, but then it stays inside the case and becomes a problem for other components. Thus you would have to provide efficient airflow inside the case. Professional servers etc. are developed with a lot of spoilers inside the cases, but with custom built rigs, that might become tricky.
Even when it was cold in the room, my old rig with an GTX670 capped performance because it reached 85 degrees on air cooling. The new Titans run at full load at 35 to 45 degrees.

Hence the water cooling, you can get the air outside of the case efficiently. But then, your room warms up, depending on your location, you might want to have a good ventilation or an AC. This rather hot summer I have been running my rig at high temperatures and the GPU/CPU temps stay cool.
 

Porina

Porina
In one of my current systems I have an R9 280X (bought originally for 64-bit compute) which is also 250W TDP air cooled, and I have no trouble with operating temperatures even on hot days. I suppose there's two parts to this. My main concern was total heat output under load, regardless of how it gets out. For sure I wouldn't say no to lower temperatures as long as there were no other disadvantages involved.

BuckRogerz, sorry missed your post earlier. Thanks for your comments also, but I kinda side-stepped the issue anyway as I'm now looking at getting a single ultra-wide monitor instead. No joins to worry about, even if not nearly as wide.

Bonus points if anyone can find a 2160p ultra-wide. I can only seem to find 1440p ones. Then again, the thought of trying to drive 2160p 21:9 which is >30% more pixels than regular 4k is rather scary! The 1440p ones would be roughly 2.5x a regular 1080p so my proposed 980Ti purchase should deliver comparable performance to the 960 at 1200p I currently use.
 

Porina

Porina
I've ordered the LG I linked previously so I guess we're done here :) It took me a while to work out the difference between models ending in 87 (linked) and 97. Turns out the '87 is the business-like model with adjustable stand and styling, with the '97 begin more bling but the stand is much more limited.

Here's a video showing THREE of them with a triple R9 280X (was done before the 300 series) which is getting somewhat silly... I think one will suffice for me!

[video=youtube_share;RWgQmpzdqpc]https://youtu.be/RWgQmpzdqpc[/video]

Now I need to do a case mod because the system with my 960 in it has a stupid lip preventing me from properly connecting to the DP/HDMI sockets. Not a problem up to now since I used the DVI which is on the next slot down.
 
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BuckRogerz

B
You'll be fine with that setup. I don't like multimonitor gaming (Eyefinity) anyway. It's only good for FPS/driving type games. Once you fire up LoL or DOTA2 it's garbage. Most people play those games these days more than anything else so it's important to keep in mind.

Honestly you selected a pretty decent setup IMO. I like sticking with standard old 1080P just for compatibility reasons, but if you don't want that, an ultrawide is the way to go for sure. That also works around the NV Surround issues. I'd also get 1440P myself, just easier to drive.
You might want to hold onto that 960 until the 16nm/14nm cards arrive IMO. Just run lower details on your ultrawide. NV Pascal will have async compute shaders like the GCN stuff has, and 16nm is going to be a big bump for cards across the board.
I'm personally considering a GF960 for my rig and holding out till Pascal and seeing how those are. But I'd have a hard time spending $650 today until VR arrives and we see how things pan out there. I'd use the 960 and wait for Pascal myself.

I suspect in 1 year I'll have a Skylake rig with Pascal. I'm going to keep using 1080P@60hz because I don't play FPS games so 144hz isn't a big deal and I just don't care. Also I'll probably buy into SteamVR / HTC Vive. That's my preferred "high res" upgrade from 1080P. You might want to consider holding out for a similar setup. Right now is a really bad time to buy, other thank Skylake, prices might drop on it but it won't be trumped by much any year soon.

Though your comments give me pause, I would certainly like an ultrawide as well. :D Might have to add that onto the list, I play MOBAs and I wouldn't turn that down.. but yeah, I think ultrawides + VR will eclipse multi-monitor gaming personally. You're on the right track.
 

Porina

Porina
The biggest driver for me to want a bigger field of view is docking in ED! Currently I will use free look to help me line up with the port on approach, but if I had a wide enough setup I could look to the side to do the same. Other games are a distant secondary factor.

I considered Oculus (waiting for consumer model) but to be honest I'm not into wearables, which is ironic since it is also my day job. I'm sure it looks great but I'm no touch typist when it comes to controls so I'm not sure that will work out great. So best for me is simply to have as wide a FoV as possible with a monitor setup.

The 960 was always a stop gap card for me. Low cost, and plenty enough for 1080p Ultra in ED. I tried using it with 4k, and that was mixed. Could just about maintain 30fps ball park at reduced settings. So once this monitor arrives (approx 60% the pixels of 4k) I hope that means I can either maintain 60fps at lower settings, or 30fps on Ultra. Undecided there and will see how it really goes. I can also test the R9 280X although the room noticeably gets warmer when it is in use.
 

Ravenov

Ravenov
Porina said:
The biggest driver for me to want a bigger field of view is docking in ED! Currently I will use free look to help me line up with the port on approach, but if I had a wide enough setup I could look to the side to do the same. Other games are a distant secondary factor.

I considered Oculus (waiting for consumer model) but to be honest I'm not into wearables, which is ironic since it is also my day job. I'm sure it looks great but I'm no touch typist when it comes to controls so I'm not sure that will work out great. So best for me is simply to have as wide a FoV as possible with a monitor setup.

The 960 was always a stop gap card for me. Low cost, and plenty enough for 1080p Ultra in ED. I tried using it with 4k, and that was mixed. Could just about maintain 30fps ball park at reduced settings. So once this monitor arrives (approx 60% the pixels of 4k) I hope that means I can either maintain 60fps at lower settings, or 30fps on Ultra. Undecided there and will see how it really goes. I can also test the R9 280X although the room noticeably gets warmer when it is in use.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you haven't tried a head tracker yet? Track IR (ready to go out the box, pricey) or one of the less expensive solutions like ED Tracker might be what you are looking for. I combine TrackIR with 3 1080p monitors using NV Surround with a dual GPU card with no problems, fwiw...
 

Porina

Porina
I haven't tried head tracking, and actually I don't fully understand the gaming impact here. At least not in all use cases. To me it didn't seem to make much sense on a single monitor setup but I think I need further research into this area. And even if it is not as intrusive as an Oculus, it is still a wearable at the end of the day.
 

Porina

Porina
To close on this thread, I got the monitor today and set it up. I ideally need a beefier GPU but that's no surprise, but with what I currently have I found capping it at 30Hz with vsync on gives a nice experience. The view is wider, but not still not as wide as I hope for in game at defaults. Due to the higher pixel density, I found I could increase the field of view so that I can see more while retaining detail clarity. Flying around gave me a milder impression than when I tried 4k, but still for sure a big improvement over 1080p. Offsetting that, it is stupidly wide for desktop use so that will take some getting used to. As a minor niggle, the monitor I got does have some light leak in three of its corners, but it wasn't overly intrusive in game. It felt kinda like backwards vignetting. When trying to test it more formally by displaying a black image on the whole screen, the monitor put itself to sleep. This is with power saving and sleep off.

I also looked more into head tracking and am semi-interested now. My fundamental understanding wasn't wrong, but the practical impact worked differently than I expected. My problem with it was that the monitor is fixed, so if you look around, you still need to see the monitor. I was concerned the non-linear relationship between head movement with a fixed screen wouldn't feel right. That said, I'm not convinced enough to shell out for a Track IR 5 yet, nor do I have the time to do the much cheaper home brew option which is more likely the route I'd go to play with.
 
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