Would an upgrade provide a significant increase?

[xnikx]

So i recently bought two 4gb 680gtxs for my three 27in monitors, 5760x1080.

But these cards are barely cutting it in new games like bf3 and crysis 2.

I can play bf3 pretty smoothly on medium settings, and crysis 2 on very high with dx11 enabled.
put i still get fps dips into the 50s and 40s.

I was reading this review
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-680-sli-overclock-surround,3162.html
and they are playing bf3 on two 2gb 680s on ultra settings with great fps.

Right now i have a lg 1336 board and an i7 950 @ 4ghz. So im wondering if i upgrade to a i7-3770K if their would be a big difference in performance?

 

[TroyX]

simple answer is NO!

does your mobo have a 3rd PCI Express slot?

i rather invest on a 3rd card.

the benchmarks you posted are single player scores and you cant compare them to multiplayer experience.

 

[cyclone3d]

Up your RAM speed.

The BF games love RAM speed. A while back, I was visiting a friend who was running their RAM at 1333 on a 1366 setup. He was getting hitching in BF2. I upped the RAM speed to 1600 and it helped a ton... smoothed it out like you wouldn't believe.

Running higher than 1600 should help even more.

Also, are you absolutely sure that your system is completely stable at 4Ghz? A slightly unstable system can still work, but hurt performance.

Have you checked to see what GPU and CPU usage you are getting when running the games? Are you sure you are running SLI? If only one card shows load, then you aren't.

If you go to the 1155 platform with a 3770k, you are gonna be in even worse shape PCIe lane wise since one will run at x16, another at x8 and the 3rd at x4.

If you go to the 2011 socket, you can at least get x16,x16,x8.

 

[cyclone3d]

simple answer is NO!

does your mobo have a 3rd PCI Express slot?

i rather invest on a 3rd card.

the benchmarks you posted are single player scores and you cant compare them to multiplayer experience.

He has a 3rd slot, but it will only run at x4 on his current board.

 

[Forceman]

How is performance in other games? BF3 multiplayer does show pretty healthy improvements from better CPUs, so that may be your problem in that game. If other games show the SLI performance to be on par (so not a problem with the cards) I'd look at a Z77/Ivy Bridge combo. I would absolutely upgrade the CPU before I even considered getting a third 680.

Here's [H]'s review with multiplayer BF3 with SLI 680s - they had FPS in the 50s with Ultra settings and MSAA, but that's on a 4.8Ghz 2600K.

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/03/28/nvidia_kepler_geforce_gtx_680_sli_video_card_review/5

Edit: You can also turn on the performance overlay in BF3 that'll show you whether it is the CPU or GPU that is holding the game back. I'm pretty much 100% sure it's going to be the CPU.

Bring up the console (~) and enter Render.PerfOverlayVisible 1 then play as normal. The overlay will show a green line and a yellow line (green is CPU and yellow is GPU) - whichever one is on top is the one holding you back.

 

[RamonGTP]

Up your RAM speed.

The BF games love RAM speed. A while back, I was visiting a friend who was running their RAM at 1333 on a 1366 setup. He was getting hitching in BF2. I upped the RAM speed to 1600 and it helped a ton... smoothed it out like you wouldn't believe.

Running higher than 1600 should help even more.

Also, are you absolutely sure that your system is completely stable at 4Ghz? A slightly unstable system can still work, but hurt performance.

Have you checked to see what GPU and CPU usage you are getting when running the games? Are you sure you are running SLI? If only one card shows load, then you aren't.

If you go to the 1155 platform with a 3770k, you are gonna be in even worse shape PCIe lane wise since one will run at x16, another at x8 and the 3rd at x4.

If you go to the 2011 socket, you can at least get x16,x16,x8.

I've never heard of this nor have I read any reviews showing a significant performance gain by going from 1333 to 1600. Sure it will help, but it isnt going to be the difference between severe hitching and smooth gameplay.

 

[cyclone3d]

I've never heard of this nor have I read any reviews showing a significant performance gain by going from 1333 to 1600. Sure it will help, but it isnt going to be the difference between severe hitching and smooth gameplay.

Just reporting on specific personal experience.

Makes quite a bit of difference on the 1366 platform and certain games. Maybe not so much with the newer Intel platforms as the RAM throughput has gone up quite a bit.

The FPS may not show a huge difference, but it is a whole lot smoother in any case.

 

[xnikx]

How is performance in other games? BF3 multiplayer does show pretty healthy improvements from better CPUs, so that may be your problem in that game. If other games show the SLI performance to be on par (so not a problem with the cards) I'd look at a Z77/Ivy Bridge combo. I would absolutely upgrade the CPU before I even considered getting a third 680.

Here's [H]'s review with multiplayer BF3 with SLI 680s - they had FPS in the 50s with Ultra settings and MSAA, but that's on a 4.8Ghz 2600K.

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/03/28/nvidia_kepler_geforce_gtx_680_sli_video_card_review/5

Edit: You can also turn on the performance overlay in BF3 that'll show you whether it is the CPU or GPU that is holding the game back. I'm pretty much 100% sure it's going to be the CPU.

Bring up the console (~) and enter Render.PerfOverlayVisible 1 then play as normal. The overlay will show a green line and a yellow line (green is CPU and yellow is GPU) - whichever one is on top is the one holding you back.

after reading this review, my performance is not all that different. But i would say average fps on ultra settings is like 46.

medium settings

high settings

ultra settings

medium settings provide the smoothest gameplay, 50s is the lowest i see my fps drop. sometimes it drops into the 40s.

high and ultra seem to stuttery.

EDIT: On my current board i cannot add a third card, at least not one that takes up two slots. plus idkl if i would want to add a third card under air.

 

[cyclone3d]

Are those graphs showing the percentage of GPU and CPU usage? Is so, it looks like for some reason the game is not even trying to use all of the GPU or CPU.

Open up task manager and watch the CPU usage.. If one or more of the threads is always pegged, then your CPU is holding you back.

Do you have Vsync enabled? That will do exactly what you are seeing.

You can also try turning off core parking in Windows.
http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

 

[schmuckley]

Sandy/Ivy bridge and some RAMs @ 2133 ..you'd get more fps/smoother gameplay..also 7970s are better for large resolutions like that..maybe not what you want to hear but..it is what it is.

 

[Forceman]

Are those graphs showing the percentage of GPU and CPU usage? Is so, it looks like for some reason the game is not even trying to use all of the GPU or CPU.

The perfoverlay graphs show frametime - how long it takes to process the frame, not usage percentage. So higher numbers mean lower FPS and the component with the highest time (so the one on top) is the one holding you back

Sandy/Ivy bridge and some RAMs @ 2133 ..you'd get more fps/smoother gameplay

RAM speed matters very little with Sandy/Ivy, above 1600 the difference is meaningless.

 

[Relativist]

Any difference at ultra with a gpu overclock?

 

[xnikx]

Are those graphs showing the percentage of GPU and CPU usage? Is so, it looks like for some reason the game is not even trying to use all of the GPU or CPU.

Open up task manager and watch the CPU usage.. If one or more of the threads is always pegged, then your CPU is holding you back.

Do you have Vsync enabled? That will do exactly what you are seeing.

You can also try turning off core parking in Windows.
http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

i used task bar to watch my cpu usage, could only do it in windowed mode but my cpu usage was always in the 40s.

v sync is off.

i slightly overclocked my cards with precision x
power target 125%
gpu clock offset 70mhz
mem clock offset 105mhz

even installed the newest drivers today, 306.23, and no difference.

this is what i was planning to upgrade to.
ASRock Z77 Extreme9, i7-3770K Ivy Bridge, CORSAIR DOMINATOR GT 16GB DR3 2133

EDIT: So i overclocked my cards a little more
gpu clock offset 125mhz
mem clock offset 500mhz

now i was playing a game of strike at karkand on ultra settings and for the most part i was getting great fps and great gpu usage.
but at times my gpu usage would drop and i would get like 49 fps.

playing on medium settings my gpu usage is 50-70% but i get good fps.

so i think the problem lies with the 680s dynamic frequency.
if my gpu usage would stay at above 80% at all times i would get great fps at all times, but these cards dont want to do that. The gpu usage is constantly going from 40% to the high 90s.
and yes i have prefer maximum power and high performance power settings on.

 

[Forceman]

The dynamic frequency has nothing to do with GPU usage, except that when usage is low the frequency may drop. But it doesn't work the other way around - the clock frequency is not causing the GPU usage to drop. It kind of sounds like you have Vsync enabled somewhere - otherwise the GPUS would be running at a higher percentage all the time. I know that my card runs at 99% in BF3 pretty much constantly with Vsync off - but with Vsync on it'll fluctuate from 90-60% depending on load. But the frequency stays at 1275 all the time either way.

And if you do decide to upgrade, don't bother getting 2133 memory - there is no noticeable performance improvement over 1600.

 

[xnikx]

well just played a few games after work
crysis 2 runs smoothly, averaging around 70 fps on very high settings with high res texture/dx11 enabled
never see my fps drop below 50% and get great usage.

im hoping this is a driver issue or bad support for surround with bf3.
i was playing and for the most part the game is playable but i still get fps dips into the 40s and 50s.
no matter what graphic settings i use.