Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hello WSGF,

I'm reaching the end of my two year video card upgrade cycle and am in a bit of a pickle. I currently have a 560ti and would like to get into 2D Surround gaming at a resolution of 5760x1080.

When the GTX 760s were announced, I felt like those would be the price-performance sweetspot and figured that a pair of those in SLI would be just the ticket for my first foray into Surround gaming. However, in my research, I found that VRAM across the two cards does not stack and could be a limiting factor insofar as playable FPS. At least, that's the hypothetical case with the 2gb versions of the card. Should I wait for a 4gb version?

Main question: 2gb or 4gb GTX 760 SLI 2D Surround gaming @ 5760x1080?

How serious of a concern would this be? With these two cards in SLI, I was hoping to be able to extend this next upgrade cycle out to 3-4 years. I would like to be able to play games at a mix of High and Ultra, skewing towards Ultra.

I tend to play games like BF3 (will be playing BF4), Skyrim (without texture mods), Tomb Raider, XCOM, SC2, Arkham Asylum/ City/ Origins, ARMA III, AC III, WARGAME AirLand Battle, etc.

Current build:
i5 2500k - stock clocked and cooled
MSI 560ti Twin Frozr II
8gb RAM
AsRock Z68 Pro Gen3 Fatal1ty
Corsair 850W PSU
Corsair Graphite 600t White Edition

GPU options:
MSI N760 TF 2GD5/OC (preferred option, love Twin Frozr)
Gigabyte GV-N760OC-2GD
EVGA GTX 760 w/ ACX 4gb (when released)

No reference coolers if at all possible.

more is always better

The problem is that most games nowaday don't really limit with 2gb. So you have to use artrificial VRAM increases like extreme high resolution textures or SSAA so see a Vram limit, but thats most of the time not realistic.
But with the upcoming new console that might change in the next two years.

_________________
We gonna send it to outa space!

Haldi,

Thanks so much for your reply.

Just some background on my current setup: I've a 560ti and can play BF3 with the following settings at 1080p:
Ambient Occlusion - HBAO
Anisotropic Filtering - 16x
AA Deferred - 2x MSAA
AA Post - High
Effect Quality - Ultra
Fullscreen - On
Graphics Quality - Custom
Mesh Quality - Ultra
Shadow Quality - High
Terrain Decoration - Ultra
Terrain Quality - Ultra
Texture Quality - Ultra

My card is now about two years old and has aged rather well at the 1080p resolution. At least with BF3, my rig defaulted to High when the game initially released and settled on the above.

Would it be safe to assume that that won't be the case in the next two years with two 760 2gb in SLI at 5760x1080?

as you can see in this Benchmatk you would get around 45fps.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2224/4/

the problem with the future is that because of the xbox one and ps4 it has become completly unpredictable how games will behave in the next two years.
you can say: ps4 has 8gb gddr5 so they use 4gb for vram, 3gb as ram and 1gb for os.... or maybe thats depending on each game! nobody knows.
as for computer gpu's most mainstream gaming cards now have 2gb, there are cheap 1gb versions around, but 2gb is standard. (in being sold, not possesed).

_________________
We gonna send it to outa space!

Okay, it's decided, I'll be going with the 4gb version.

Now the question is which version to go with. I know that EVGA has one version released with the reference cooler and a yet to be released version with a slight overclock and ACX cooling technology. I'm not aware of any other manufacturer making 4gb versions of the GTX 760.

From the reviews I've read, it seems that the cards using the reference cooler run hotter than non-reference. Obviously, with these new cards using Boost 2.0, a lot of the performance will be directly tied to GPU temps. How big of a disadvantage would using a reference cooler vs using a non-reference cooler?

I've also read that blower type coolers (reference in this case) are better suited towards SLI setups like I plan on using. Given that my current case has a 200mm intake fan on the front, a 200mm exhaust fan on top, and a 120mm exhaust fan on the rear, would a blower prove to be any type of advantage?

Don't know if this is helpful but I feel compelled to chime in since I'm also currently upgrading.

I'm coming from 2x 570gtx's and from all the reviews/benchmarks I've seen I was considering moving to a single 780gtx.

I can play BF3 with HBAO and everything on Ultra but with deferred AA set to OFF. I also run Post Processing OFF cause I find it annoying.
My current FPS in game are anywhere from the mid 30s to just under and sometimes touching 60fps. Generally they're in the mid 40s on the 570 sli.

I felt like moving to the 780gtx was kind of a lateral move and not going to really boost things much but it would get rid of the dual card game dependencies and reduce power usage by half or more at idle.

It turns out my brother just got a 780gtx and we've been comparing framerates between games as of late and it turns out its way more than a lateral move as I originally thought.

Here are some numbers comparing these two setups. Bare in mind I'm running a core i7 @4.4Ghz with the 570sli 1.25GB, he is running a 965 i7 @3.2ghz with the 780gtx 3GB.
I am pretty shocked at the differences.

As mentioned above my settings in BF3. 780gtx is running everything Ultra with 2xAA deferred. Resolutions are ~5900x1200 so around 7.1MP per frame.

I'm averaging ~35fps, he's averaging ~50fps (40fps min) with 2xAA and much weaker CPU clock. Of course we know at these resolutions that CPU clock means next to nothing because we're video bound however you'd think it would help feed the card/s a bit.

In the new Hitman, I have everything on HIGH, MSAA OFF, bloom on Normal, Tesselation ON, with 8xAF and average 19.999 fps with dips in the single digits when loading areas.
He is averaging 44fps and never drops below 40 with everything Maxed out and 2xMSAA 16xAF.

In CS:GO which is admittedly "easy to run" I'm averaging 120fps and he's averaging 170fps with everything on max, reflect all, and AA 4x on both setups.

In all cases we're talking about a 25-50% faster aNd everything is running on ultra on his setup smooth and rock steady.

Not so much on my aging setup.

BF3 VRAM usage according to GPU-Z with the above settings on both setups is maxed out on the 570 sli setup on both cards and on the 780gtx with 3GB memory it sits around 2.250GB of VRAM (out of 3).

I guess I'm trying to say two things here.

One, if you're absolutely sold on the 760sli setup. Make sure you buy the ones with 4GB ram or in a couple years you'll wish you did.

Two, if I were you, I'd just get a single 780gtx card, fore-go any sli compatability issues, use less power and have plenty of memory and plenty of horse power.

As far as the dual fan or single fan, if you're not running a water cooled CPU, why would you want to dump all that hot air in your case? Stock HSF, single fan, exhaust it out the back away from your CPU, RAM, voltage regulators,etc.

Pardon the "wall of text"

Either way you'll absolutely love the result.

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i7 sandy 4.4ghz with a snorkel
1080gtx
8gb RAM
Gigabyte P67-UD7 rev. B3
OS -Samsung 840pro 256GB ssd
Games -Samsung 840pro 500GB ssd
Pagefile -crucial 60GB ssd
Storage -2x 4TB WD
PWS -Seasonic Prime 1k Titanium

I'm in the same situation here and was looking at the option that Cinnabuns mentioned. I'm aware the 780 and 2 760s would be around the same price, but just concerned with the less VRAM in the 780. Although a single 780 would give better performance at high resolutions on single widescreen monitors, from what I can tell 4gb 760 SLI would be better for 5670x1080 correct? A similar price with only a slight graphical drop, but better performance for 5670x1080 means for me it looks like SLI 670 would win out. I'd like some more opinions on this, but I think Tommy has it right, just go for the 4gb 670s,

Gigabyte just revealed their 4GB 760, the GV-N760OC-4GD. It's not yet available in stores, but it's pricing is expected to be around $300.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... x?pid=4670

I actually jumped the gun last week and bought the 2GB version, thinking 4GB cards would be few and far between (currently EVGA is the only maker of a 4GB 760, using a blower-style cooler). I think the windforce cooler is really great, and combined with the gtx 700 series' fan speed flattening I barely noticed it. I'm in the same boat as OP, looking to eventually do 760 SLI for triple monitor gaming. I think i'll return this one and order the 4gb one when it comes out, maybe cross-shipping so I can try out SLI for a few minutes. Oh and gtx 700 cards now come with a code for the new splinter cell too.