Motherboard and CPU for 2 x 1080 Ti?

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Justintoxicated

[H]F Junkie
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I ordered a couple 1080 Ti cards and I haven't been into gaming lately because I am stuck on DSL for the last 8 years.... Anyways, will these work ok in my Z87 Asus Hero MB with 4770k? I imagine I'm going to take a hit. Monitor is only 1440p @ 96htz though.

Just looking for some suggestions to get me started.

Should I go threadripper? X399?
 
I'd benchmark some games on it to see yourself if you have a cpu bottleneck. If you lower the graphics settings a notch and your frame rates don't really increase you probably have a cpu bottleneck. If they increase then its GPU bound.

I don't think it'd be a bottleneck for most games. The 4770k still is a pretty heavy hitting CPU, especially if you've got a decent overclock on it.

For gaming a threadripper might not be the best choice. You want higher single threaded performance more than multi-threaded performance. A 8700k might be a better choice.
 
The higher the resolution, the less likely you're going to see a CPU bottleneck. I don't think you'll have a problem. Probably only need 1 1080Ti to push your monitor though.

Threadripper isn't bad for what you're getting. If you use your computer for more than gaming, you'll see a significant increase in production.
 
kirbyrj said:
The higher the resolution, the less likely you're going to see a CPU bottleneck. I don't think you'll have a problem. Probably only need 1 1080Ti to push your monitor though.

Threadripper isn't bad for what you're getting. If you use your computer for more than gaming, you'll see a significant increase in production.
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Like development and spinning up docker containers video editing? How bad will it be for gaming? I will also need to see if it can overclock at all because thats always fun when your liquid cooled.

I need to figure this out fairly quickly as my server just went down (blown motherboard) and the z87 and 4770k board will probably become the new fileserver / camera server (was an X48 / Q9450)
 
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Justintoxicated said:
Like development and spinning up docker containers video editing? How bad will it be for gaming? I will also need to see if it can overclock at all because thats always fun when your liquid cooled.

I need to figure this out fairly quickly as my server just went down (blown motherboard) and the z87 and 4770k board will probably become the new fileserver / camera server (was an X48 / Q9450)
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In general cpu's with high thread counts have lower clock speeds. This means that you can get a ton of cpu performance when rendering 3d scenes, running VM's, video editing, etc. It usually comes at the price of single threaded performance though. So if your applications aren't multi-threaded or only support 2-4 threads then you will probably see lower performance when compared to traditional 4-8 core desktop cpu's.

That said anandtech has a great review on threadripper's game mode, which disables half the CPU to make it work more similarly to a traditional ryzen 7. I honestly did not know about this feature and it seems that depending on the game, it can help.

Honestly if budget isn't a huge issue, I'd throw down for a threadripper, i mean you already went overkill with two 1080 ti's. That said I highly doubt you'd need that much cpu, even if you're trying to future proof it. A ryzen 7 or an 8700k would bring you onto a newer chipset and give you a nice enough performance bump to scratch that 'new system' itch.

Overclocking threadripper looks like its able to do ~4ghz, but power consumption gets pretty wild. pcper has an article where it increased power usage by 52%!
 
Many review sites are saying that the Threadripper is great for price/performance for a blend of gaming, heavy workload. Sounds like you may be a good candidate for TR.
 
lilfiend said:
In general cpu's with high thread counts have lower clock speeds. This means that you can get a ton of cpu performance when rendering 3d scenes, running VM's, video editing, etc. It usually comes at the price of single threaded performance though. So if your applications aren't multi-threaded or only support 2-4 threads then you will probably see lower performance when compared to traditional 4-8 core desktop cpu's.

That said anandtech has a great review on threadripper's game mode, which disables half the CPU to make it work more similarly to a traditional ryzen 7. I honestly did not know about this feature and it seems that depending on the game, it can help.

Honestly if budget isn't a huge issue, I'd throw down for a threadripper, i mean you already went overkill with two 1080 ti's. That said I highly doubt you'd need that much cpu, even if you're trying to future proof it. A ryzen 7 or an 8700k would bring you onto a newer chipset and give you a nice enough performance bump to scratch that 'new system' itch.

Overclocking threadripper looks like its able to do ~4ghz, but power consumption gets pretty wild. pcper has an article where it increased power usage by 52%!
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Which CPU's are the best overclockers then. PC has dual quad radiators, might as well make use of them :) I was getting into docker, which is spinning up lots of virtual containers for development. Thread ripper sounds awesome for this. However a 4 or 8 core CPU can probably handle this fine too. Budget is an issue since the servers motherboard burned up this is a forced upgrade.

The video cards will also be used for mining in their off time, which is the reason for two, and well I keep buying SLI motherboards and only using one slot! I was planning to just slap them in my current motherboard until I found my server was dead :(

kirbyrj said:
Many review sites are saying that the Threadripper is great for price/performance for a blend of gaming, heavy workload. Sounds like you may be a good candidate for TR.
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Yea I saw this too, but overclocking it was pretty poor, although not having an OC wouldn't be the end of the world :)
I haven't played a game online in over a year mostly because my shitty internet connection and having to "adult" things all the time around the house these days. Also sitting in a chair all day is hard on my back so doing more when I get home isn't that appealing. Maybe if I get a new rig and found a good game it would all come back to me again though.
 
Justintoxicated said:
Yea I saw this too, but overclocking it was pretty poor, although not having an OC wouldn't be the end of the world :)
I haven't played a game online in over a year mostly because my shitty internet connection and having to "adult" things all the time around the house these days. Also sitting in a chair all day is hard on my back so doing more when I get home isn't that appealing. Maybe if I get a new rig and found a good game it would all come back to me again though.
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Should have a 2nd gen product in 2H 2018. 3.8-4.0 Ghz with TR is still a pretty potent CPU. "Should" get a little better with 2nd gen TR later in the year.
 
kirbyrj said:
Should have a 2nd gen product in 2H 2018. 3.8-4.0 Ghz with TR is still a pretty potent CPU. "Should" get a little better with 2nd gen TR later in the year.
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Well honestly I wish I could wait for next gen stuff so I would not worry about meltdown and spectre... Looking at pricing I don't think I can afford threadripper right now. I'd probably be better off buying new monitors anyways. It would make quite the server next upgrade cycle though (hopefully another 4-5 years).

I'm strongly considering a coffeelake 8700k cpu and delidding + waterblock. Then gotta figure out which MB.
It would be sweet if I could find one with 8 sata ports. But I guess 6 will do. I guess my next SSD drives won't use SATA anymore anyways? But more ports would would be nice in the future when it will eventually assume server role.

8700k with z370 PCIe will be limited to 8x with both cards

or

i7-7740X / i77800X and a X299 board?
 
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Justintoxicated said:
Well honestly I wish I could wait for next gen stuff so I would not worry about meltdown and spectre... Looking at pricing I don't think I can afford threadripper right now. I'd probably be better off buying new monitors anyways. It would make quite the server next upgrade cycle though (hopefully another 4-5 years).

I'm strongly considering a coffeelake 8700k cpu and delidding + waterblock. Then gotta figure out which MB.
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Personally, I went with x299. I shopped around and got a deal on a 7820x and a motherboard for about $50 more than a 8700k setup. Definitely wouldn't hurt you to go that route as it will be a viable platform longer than z370 IMO. Especially with future off lease xeons in the future.
 
kirbyrj said:
Personally, I went with x299. I shopped around and got a deal on a 7820x and a motherboard for about $50 more than a 8700k setup. Definitely wouldn't hurt you to go that route as it will be a viable platform longer than z370 IMO. Especially with future off lease xeons in the future.
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Hah I was just editing my post when you wrote that. Would I need to delid a LGA 2066 CPU?

I can see getting a i7-7800X for about the same price but the 7820x is considerably more expensive?

Man power consumption is much much better on coffeelake :(

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...3|19-117-827^19-117-827,19-117-793^19-117-793
 
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Justintoxicated said:
Hah I was just editing my post when you wrote that. Would I need to delid a LGA 2066 CPU?

I can see getting a i7-7800X for about the same price but the 7820x is considerably more expensive?

Man power consumption is much much better on coffeelake :(

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?CompareItemList=343|19-117-827^19-117-827,19-117-793^19-117-793
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I delided mine. I can run 4.5-4.6Ghz with about 1.35V. I'm running a Scythe Fuma twin tower cooler and it does a decent job. I've seen a 7800X in the FS/FT section for $270. It doesn't clock as high as CFL, but I just like the upgrade path of X299 better, especially after getting burned with Z270/CFL. At least I know I'll get another generation and the off lease Xeons. Or you could always get a low end TR 1900X and then drop in a next gen one when they release.
 
kirbyrj said:
I delided mine. I can run 4.5-4.6Ghz with about 1.35V. I'm running a Scythe Fuma twin tower cooler and it does a decent job. I've seen a 7800X in the FS/FT section for $270. It doesn't clock as high as CFL, but I just like the upgrade path of X299 better, especially after getting burned with Z270/CFL. At least I know I'll get another generation and the off lease Xeons. Or you could always get a low end TR 1900X and then drop in a next gen one when they release.
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wont Z370 also be PCIe limited? I have Z87 chipset right now and it has the same stupid PCIe limitation.

So lets go with X299 then for now. I doubt I will every upgrade the CPU either, by then I will need a new motherboard and DDR5.

So assuming I pickup the 7800X which motherboard would you recommend? Something with nice overclocking would be great. The [H] seems to like the Asus Rampage, but it's probably more than I need. In fact the MSI they compare it to in the article sounds better for most things.

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/12/27/asus_rog_rampage_vi_apex_motherboard_review/7

I have never been an MSI fan though, but its only $260 on newegg.

ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Professional Gaming looks good too!
 
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Realistically, you'll hit the CPU limit before you hit the board limits on just about every chip. Just pick out one with the features you want/need and you'll be set. I'm running an Aorus 3 because it was $170 AR and came with a free case and PSU. I have zero problems with it even if it is a "budget" board.
 
kirbyrj said:
Realistically, you'll hit the CPU limit before you hit the board limits on just about every chip. Just pick out one with the features you want/need and you'll be set. I'm running an Aorus 3 because it was $170 AR and came with a free case and PSU. I have zero problems with it even if it is a "budget" board.
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PCIe 3 8x will not limit the 1080s? if so I might go with a Z370 chipset.
 
Ok so I came up with the following builds but not sure which direction to go. The MSI SLI PLUS has really good reviews but not allot of features. MSI is not my favorite brand, I have had ok luck with Asus and I'm not sure about ASRock

$379 Skylake 7800X
$219 - MSI X299 SLI PLUS or ASROCK TIACHI X299 $280


$379 8700k
$219 Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 7 or $271 Asus Maximus Hero X Z370

+ 2x1080 ti...For Way Too Much Money.
 
Just so you know, if you want 2x x16 lanes for your GPU's you need to buy a 10+ core i9, the others only offer 24 PCIe lanes so you have one at 16x and one at 8x in best case scenario unless some are used for other cards.

btw I'm using the ASrock taichi x299 and I am pretty happy with it, rocking an i7 7820x
 
Denpepe said:
Just so you know, if you want 2x x16 lanes for your GPU's you need to buy a 10+ core i9, the others only offer 24 PCIe lanes so you have one at 16x and one at 8x in best case scenario unless some are used for other cards.

btw I'm using the ASrock taichi x299 and I am pretty happy with it, rocking an i7 7820x
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I saw that, does it even help if only one card is run at 16x and the other is stuck at 8x? Memory bandwidth is still better on 299x though If I get 4 sticks, but that also means I have to buy smaller sticks of ram 8gb each in my case to keep budget reasonable.

I still do not know what to do. 8700k and less memory bandwidth and PCIE lanes capped (Higher clock speed and more efficient)
or X299.

I can't find any benchmarks of 7820x or 7800x on X299 vs 8700k on z370 with SLI 1080 ti video cards.

Why did intel screw this up so bad? I feel like I would be better off buying an X99 motherboad and getting full PCIE support? What a mess X299 is.
 
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Intel did not screw up anything, just their typical "rape the consumer" attitude. For "future proofing" your choices appear to be X299 / i9 or ThreadRipper. Personally, I would wait for ThreadRipper v2.
 
Mega6 said:
Intel did not screw up anything, just their typical "rape the consumer" attitude. For "future proofing" your choices appear to be X299 / i9 or ThreadRipper. Personally, I would wait for ThreadRipper v2.
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I guess I just never understand the future proof attitude with HEDT, whens the last time you could actually get a clock speed increase on those? Seems like people say that referring to more cores which half the people its suggested to would never use, although they end up upgrading to coffeelake for clockspeed
 
Well I'll be running my SB-E for a while so that is about a "future-proof" of an example as I can give. It just seems that after SB-E, you keep getting less from Intel for more $$.
 
Yea what I really want is 8700k but with more than 16 pipes. Sounds like you will seriously bottleneck with 2 1080ti + NVME let alone sound card and Ethernet also running.

Actually on Z370 is there even a board that offer NVME direct to the CPU?

So no matter which system I buy I get screwed right now. Kinda stupid. I'm waiting to see if I ever actually get these GTX 1080 ti's. if I only end up keeping one of them then Z370 might be good enough. I don't care much about future proofing when the cost difference is already another motherboard, but the old gaming computer often turns into a non overclocked file server somewhere down the line. Anyways, Intel is looking like a bad buy for me but so is the current AMD selection.

I guess z299 is technically the best board for SLI 1080's but there not a great CPU offering to match it, so whats the point?
 
Justintoxicated said:
Yea what I really want is 8700k but with more than 16 pipes. Sounds like you will seriously bottleneck with 2 1080ti + NVME let alone sound card and Ethernet also running.

Actually on Z370 is there even a board that offer NVME direct to the CPU?

So no matter which system I buy I get screwed right now. Kinda stupid. I'm waiting to see if I ever actually get these GTX 1080 ti's. if I only end up keeping one of them then Z370 might be good enough. I don't care much about future proofing when the cost difference is already another motherboard, but the old gaming computer often turns into a non overclocked file server somewhere down the line. Anyways, Intel is looking like a bad buy for me but so is the current AMD selection.

I guess z299 is technically the best board for SLI 1080's but there not a great CPU offering to match it, so whats the point?
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Which kind of gets you back to the threadripper you were looking at earlier.
 
I managed to get the server working off an old G45M motherboard (sister chipset to X48). It can probably handle it's tasks just fine still. I just think it's odd that my x48 chipset now almost 10 yeas old can do 16x x2 while I still can't find a modern mother board that supports this correctly lol. Of course I'm not sure how limiting the Q9450 is to the numbe of PCIE lanes on the motherboard?

I'd love to hear more about how old technology Q9450 compared to modern chips that have integrated PCIE lanes? Would a modern chip running two cards at 8x in SLI have more performance than an old chip where the MB alone was 16x x2 PCIE if the cards were not CPU bound?
 
Well, technically, the G45/P45/X48 generation is PCIe 2.0 IIRC which at 16x x2 essentially is PCIe 3.0 at 8x x2 speeds. I think that when you start to get that old, you are CPU bound even at high res. You start to see it even with the 1st Gen Core chips are about 25-40% slower with the same video cards/resolutions, but as you get to CPU's in the past few years, you start to be GPU bound above 1440p more or less.
 
Speedeu4ia said:
I guess I just never understand the future proof attitude with HEDT, whens the last time you could actually get a clock speed increase on those? Seems like people say that referring to more cores which half the people its suggested to would never use, although they end up upgrading to coffeelake for clockspeed
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Cattle, not pets, is how I've treated my gear.
Data is valuable.

The workloads you live in may be further optimized with tiered storage, or specialized add in cards.

There may be further value in connecting your specialized resources with optimized paths, if available.

In the end the gear is replaced.

Sometimes I won't care about optimized local performance and just use an issued laptop to interact with my work.

It all depends on what I'm doing during the arc of the hardware's useful life.
 
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