Hardware & Technical Suggested GPU(s) for Eyefinity and crossfire

[CMDR Marsalis]

Hi folks, currently considering what kind of machine I want to assemble for playing ED in the future as my HP Elitebook just isn't up to snuff in the graphics department.

My question though for any folks running triple monitor (landscape) eyefinity setups, what GPU(s) are you using and what kind of framerates are you getting?

For cards such as the R9 290x, I see very few if any that have multiple Displayport outputs, usually it seems to be one DP, one HDMI and a couple of Dual Link DVIs. I think the R9 295x2 is a nice exception (4 mini Displayport) but my real question is this.

As I understand it, AMD's "Freesync" feature (when it appears and we have monitors that support it) will only work over Displayport. When running an eyefinity setup (crossfire), do all the screen connections have to run to the same physical card, or can they be split between the two? Is it a non issue assuming that the card offers DP 1.2 MST so multiple screens can share the same connection, albeit via an active hub of some description?

My 2 current monitors are Dell IPS Ultrasharps which won't go past 60Hz refresh and the max res is 1920 x 1080 (can connect via DP, DVI and VGA). When I get the PC I plan to acquire a 3rd to complete the picture. Ideally I'd like the PC and the GPU(s) to outlive the monitors. Although my screens don't support Freesync, I'd like the hardware to be as future proof as the budget (still to be decided) allows.

Before any green team fans jump in and rubbish the cards mentioned above, I'm aware that Nvidia have some very capable cards, it's just that until now, I've mostly researched AMD cards (probably a slight bias from the discrete Radeon graphics in my Elitebook which is happily driving multiple screens which I think is quite cool for a laptop).

 

[Ravenov]

Not rubbishing the red team, only giving my own experience (which is nvidia only). I run a GTX 690 with an i5 750 @4ghz and get close to a constant 60fps at 6038*1080 (3 DVI ports on mine, and it works fine). It drops when very close to planets, in dense ring systems or very high tech space stations.

I only mention this since they have really dropped in price on the second hand market these days.

 

[LXIV]

With Displayport you can use a hub or get DP 1.2 monitors which may be daisy-chained. I'm in the research phase of an upgrade in that direction myself. I'm not certain on how it would handle the resolution though; I have three 1920x1080 monitors plugged into my GTX 670 and NVidia Surround presents it to the OS as a single 5760-wide display which E : D can use natively.

 

[adoredtv]

Eyefinity works with different resolutions these days so you can happily get a nicer centre screen if you want. I have a 1920x1200 IPS in the centre, flanked by a couple of old 1680x1050's. My eyefinity is currently set up at a resolution of 5280x1000 though there are various options like stretching the flanking monitors or chopping off the top of my main one (my preferred option).

The game isn't that hard on it, I only have a 7850 and I could run eyefinity at 40-50fps almost everywhere on low/medium.

http://i.imgur.com/gMqrX1c.jpg

 

[Dark Lord Insidious]

i7 2600k @ 4.6ghz , 16gb ram, SLI gtx 780's OC, 3 x samsung SA950's 120hz monitors.
FPS
67-80 in dock and station,
80-120 in normal space outside the station(looking at the station),
100- 150 in super cruise.

Anything 780 or above you will have no trouble with ED, 2 x gtx 980's would be awesome and a good sweet spot at the moment.
I can connect these with either display port or DVI etc as there is enough for both , since Nvidia SLI can use both cards to connect monitors (unlike AMD as far as I am aware, I couldn't with my 7970's).
I have had both Nvidia and AMD cards in multiple builds so I am no fanboy of either but at the moment the Nvidia cards seem to be giving a better result in most games and setting up the Surround plus SLI was much less of a hassle than eyefinity was.(screen tearing was a pain).
Anyways that's just my 2 cents, do with it as you will....

 

[adoredtv]

I have had both Nvidia and AMD cards in multiple builds so I am no fanboy of either but at the moment the Nvidia cards seem to be giving a better result in most games and setting up the Surround plus SLI was much less of a hassle than eyefinity was.(screen tearing was a pain).

I press CTRL-ALT-SHIFT E and my 3 screens come on and immediately put me into Eyefinity mode. CTRL-ALT-SHIFT 1-6 are further profiles for whatever setup I want at the time. It's no hassle at all, in fact I'm pretty sure this is something Nvidia gets a lot of heat from their users over not having - at least that used to be the case.

 

[Roland2]

I press CTRL-ALT-SHIFT E and my 3 screens come on and immediately put me into Eyefinity mode. CTRL-ALT-SHIFT 1-6 are further profiles for whatever setup I want at the time. It's no hassle at all, in fact I'm pretty sure this is something Nvidia gets a lot of heat from their users over not having - at least that used to be the case.

Initial setup for Nvidia Surround can be a PITA, but once set up, it also has hot keys to go into and out of Surround mode.

 

[CMDR Marsalis]

Not rubbishing the red team, only giving my own experience (which is nvidia only). I run a GTX 690 with an i5 750 @4ghz and get close to a constant 60fps at 6038*1080 (3 DVI ports on mine, and it works fine). It drops when very close to planets, in dense ring systems or very high tech space stations.

I only mention this since they have really dropped in price on the second hand market these days.

Thanks, that's a good indication of what to expect performance wise which is also something I'm looking at.

I know what you mean about the second hand market prices. I've seen i5-2500 based setups with a 750ti going for less than £400 which depending on how well that card handles a triple monitor setup could be a good introduction. Any 750ti owners out there that can comment?

Whilst I know that an R9 29XXXXX setup could be complete overkill, I'm intrigued by the crossfire potential and also quite encouraged by the XDMA feature that means (certain) cards no longer require a dedicated bridge connection to run in Crossfire. Elite is the only game (I have a PS3 at home) that I've ever considered getting a gaming PC for, probably something to do with a misspent youth on the BBC B Disc version (Rank: Elite) and then again on the RISC PC.

Come to think of it, one other (possibly daft) question. I know that one of the Beta builds added support for SLI, but what about Crossfire? Is that explicitly supported or it just works?

 

[Dark Lord Insidious]

I press CTRL-ALT-SHIFT E and my 3 screens come on and immediately put me into Eyefinity mode. CTRL-ALT-SHIFT 1-6 are further profiles for whatever setup I want at the time. It's no hassle at all, in fact I'm pretty sure this is something Nvidia gets a lot of heat from their users over not having - at least that used to be the case.

Nvidia also has buttons to switch profiles so I'm not sure what you are getting at? With my 7970's it did not work how you have said here (it was very buggy and would sometimes lock up) but I'm guessing they have improved it of late.

 

[adoredtv]

Nvidia also has buttons to switch profiles so I'm not sure what you are getting at? With my 7970's it did not work how you have said here (it was very buggy and would sometimes lock up) but I'm guessing they have improved it of late.

I'm "getting at" your point that setting up Eyefinity is somehow borked compared to Nv Surround. From the very start (I bought a 5850, 2 more monitors and adapter at launch in 2009) it has always been completely fine and simple to set up. Since my 5850 I've had various cards from each new series and it has only improved. The current Eyefinity setup is absolutely brilliant, allowing for mixed screen resolutions, sizes and alignments of screens.

Switching between Surround and "Standard" in a non painful way?
Quick-switch between Extended Desktop and Surround
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1307919-Something-to-note-on-nvidia-vs-amd-in-surround-gaming

In fact for years Nvidia didn't have profile switching and each time Surround had to be set up manually (including bezel compensation). Every single time. So if anyone has "improved it of late" it's Nvidia, who had a shambolic system in place for almost 3 out of the 4 years they've had Nv Surround.


@OP, a 750 Ti will not be good enough for what you want. It'll likely perform worse than my 7850, which is ok for messing around but only on lower settings.

 

[aMinDAmoK]

With Displayport you can use a hub or get DP 1.2 monitors which may be daisy-chained. I'm in the research phase of an upgrade in that direction myself. I'm not certain on how it would handle the resolution though; I have three 1920x1080 monitors plugged into my GTX 670 and NVidia Surround presents it to the OS as a single 5760-wide display which E : D can use natively.

^^^THIS^^^

DisplayPort 1.2, which all the newer AMD cards have, only needs one connector to support 3 screens. The R7 and R9 cards support dynamic refresh. I have a 7870 that has 3 mini displayport. But, that was the last one I saw like that. Currently I run a Sapphire 290 VaporX. You just have to be sure your monitors are DP1.2 for daisy chaining. Setup is a breeze.

 

[Dark Lord Insidious]

I'm "getting at" your point that setting up Eyefinity is somehow borked compared to Nv Surround. From the very start (I bought a 5850, 2 more monitors and adapter at launch in 2009) it has always been completely fine and simple to set up. Since my 5850 I've had various cards from each new series and it has only improved. The current Eyefinity setup is absolutely brilliant, allowing for mixed screen resolutions, sizes and alignments of screens.

Switching between Surround and "Standard" in a non painful way?
Quick-switch between Extended Desktop and Surround
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1307919-Something-to-note-on-nvidia-vs-amd-in-surround-gaming

In fact for years Nvidia didn't have profile switching and each time Surround had to be set up manually (including bezel compensation). Every single time. So if anyone has "improved it of late" it's Nvidia, who had a shambolic system in place for almost 3 out of the 4 years they've had Nv Surround.


@OP, a 750 Ti will not be good enough for what you want. It'll likely perform worse than my 7850, which is ok for messing around but only on lower settings.

No need to go all hostile but you are quite wrong about the nvidia setup for years not having a way to switch profiles....... this could always be done through windows itself so I'm still not getting why you are going on a fanboy rant. If you read my comment I simply said that I had trouble with setting up eyefinity on my 7970's and before that on my 6970's and before that on my 5850's. the trouble was related to screen tearing and having to use different cables to plug in the different screens, as you needed to plug them into the same card (DP splitters didnt exist then), I never had this trouble with the nvidia cards as I could use any of the 3 different types of connections in any config that worked best because i wasnt limited to having to plug them into the one card( or run an active DP adapter).........
And this??
"In fact for years Nvidia didn't have profile switching and each time Surround had to be set up manually (including bezel compensation). Every single time. So if anyone has "improved it of late" it's Nvidia, who had a shambolic system in place for almost 3 out of the 4 years they've had Nv Surround."
What an absolute load of rubbish I have had an nvidia setup as well since Surround had been implemented and I had never had to do what you suggest so I think you had better go somewhere else and troll, or at least get your facts right.....
I will repeat again, i am no fanboy of either side, and have had both setups, and i was just giving my current opinion.

 

[adoredtv]

No need to go all hostile but you are quite wrong about the nvidia setup for years not having a way to switch profiles....... this could always be done through windows itself so I'm still not getting why you are going on a fanboy rant.

If you read my links, you can clearly see that this was not possible on Nvidia cards up to at least June 2013.

f you read my comment I simply said that I had trouble with setting up eyefinity on my 7970's and before that on my 6970's and before that on my 5850's. the trouble was related to screen tearing and having to use different cables to plug in the different screens, as you needed to plug them into the same card (DP splitters didnt exist then), I never had this trouble with the nvidia cards as I could use any of the 3 different types of connections in any config that worked best because i wasnt limited to having to plug them into the one card( or run an active DP adapter).........

Yes it's true that with AMD to start with it required an adapter, however even with the additional cost of the adapter the cards rarely cost more than the equivalent Nvidia cards. What's more, when Nvidia finally released their own version of Eyefinity nearly a year later, it REQUIRED two Nvidia cards for it because back then you couldn't even run 3 screens off one Nvidia card, even in non-surround.

And this??
"In fact for years Nvidia didn't have profile switching and each time Surround had to be set up manually (including bezel compensation). Every single time. So if anyone has "improved it of late" it's Nvidia, who had a shambolic system in place for almost 3 out of the 4 years they've had Nv Surround."
What an absolute load of rubbish I have had an nvidia setup as well since Surround had been implemented and I had never had to do what you suggest so I think you had better go somewhere else and troll, or at least get your facts right.....
I will repeat again, i am no fanboy of either side, and have had both setups, and i was just giving my current opinion.

Really? So all those people on various threads on various forums are just plain lying?

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1682979
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1579279
http://www.wsgf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=25246
https://forums.geforce.com/default/...4-in-a-non-painful-way-/post/4226973/#4226973
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=357484
http://forums.evga.com/nVidia-Profile-switching-m521213.aspx

Need I go on?

All the people who have to buy 3rd party software (DisplayFusion) to hack it to make it barely work were just wasting their money?

And Nvidia didn't just sneak in this option to switch between triple wide and single wide in May this year? How - exactly - were you doing it before I wonder? And you've the cheek to call me a fanboy!

 

[Acid Twin]

Never had nothing but problems with ATI/AMD in crossfire (and in my experience, maybe not others, awful driver support) so I now stay well away. Nvidia have never failed me apart from in the price department

I would go with 2x http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-041-IN (970 Superclocked very nicely) - I have one and am insanely happy with it, my friend just picked up two for SLI is is loving it and there doesn't seem to be any major issues like micro-stuttering etc.

Edit: This will go back in a sale so wait - I picked mine up for £280 and I've seen some sites put the 970s down to 230/240 which is an amazing price for the performance of the card IMHO. I'd recommend this version of the card simply because of the cooler; 4 fans with one dedicated to the vram and although it may already be superclocked, it runs so cool there is potential to overclock even more).

 

[CMDR Marsalis]

Thanks for all that have contributed thus far, lets please not let this degenerate into a red vs green issue.

If I wanted the best fps/quality I can get for £500 max on the GPU front, what are the options? I'm aware that anything over 60fps is kind of lost on my current monitors, but my feeling is that maximising the GPU grunt will prevent rates dropping when in busy systems/stations.

Also, does anybody know if explicit crossfire support was added in the same way it was for SLI?

 

[Foxback]

Im also curious about an upgrade to my graphics card. I get the feeling that a DK2 and multi monitor setup I plan on running will be very intence on the video memory. anyone have an idea of a good card to run that kind of setup at 60+ fps with max settings? thinking the r9 290x could handle it alone and not sure on the NVidia side of things. Im currently running an NVidia craptro but that was by limitation of a pre build pc ibuypower was having a sale on : /

 

[adoredtv]

You can get an R9 295X2 for £510. I don't think Crossfire works yet, in fact I don't believe AMD has done any driver work on the game at all so I'd expect nothing but improvements from them from now on in.

That said, any dual graphics card is risky. You get unmatched performance but only when it works though in those cases where support hasn't been added you're still gonna have a very fast card in what is basically a 290X with one chip. Even though Crossfire is better than SLI in just about every way these days, the important thing is game support and that's where AMD is generally a bit slow.

Personally I'd just buy a 290 or 970 now and think about adding another later.

 

[Foxback]

interesting, ill have to do some more research into it. also on a side note, how do you calculate PSU needs? like if I got an r9 290 with plans to expand to 2-4x 290x do I really need a 1200w?

 

[adoredtv]

From what I can tell AMD isn't great on OR either right now, probably because they haven't done any driver work. With the game out soon they should have something done within a month one would hope.

You're probably gonna need a 1200W PSU for 4 290X cards yes, mostly due to requiring an ungodly amount of 8-pin and 6-pin connectors.

I hate to say it but now is a bad time to be buying (isn't it always though) with the consumer OR launching next year and the 390X isn't that far off on the horizon. I'm not buying anything until the consumer OR is ready.

 

[Foxback]

fair enough, I just needed some pointers. going to do some more research for a Christmas purchase. also marketing info on the OR has the DK2 priced much lower than the consumer version. I know this isn't much of a turn off for some people, but the DK2 seems to work well enough now as a platform for ED I figured ill get it now before the volume production phase takes over