Video Card Dilemma

[wrxdrunkie]

So I have somewhat of a dilemma when it comes to my current gaming setup(s). I have two gamings rigs right now. One will be hooked up to my 4k TV for living room 4k gaming and the other will be in my office for better mouse and keyboard gaming. Really the only games I play on mouse and keyboard are online shooters and I am only playing h1z1 at the moment. I know it’s a buggy game but I hope to get good performance on it for my office gaming setup.


Rig 1: Living room PC (most likely)

NZXT S340 Case

Corsair H100i V2 CPU Cooler

MSI X58m motherboard

Xeon X5650 @ 4ghz

16gb DDR3 Ram

Vizio P Series 4k TV

Corsair RM850i Power Supply

2xEVGA 980ti SC in SLI


I literally just got my second 980ti. I got Newegg to match the price of the EVGA 17th anniversary sale so I got the SC FTW version for $400 shipped after rebate. The cards run warm and my case is louder than I’d like but gaming results have been good, I might switch to air cooling at some point but not right now. I can basically max witcher 3 out @ 4k with no AA and get around 55fps. With SLI disabled and the same settings I get around 30-35fps. However, I am not utilizing the “sync” tech of my monitor which is disappointing and something I would like to use.


Rig 2: Office PC

Alienware Alpha R2 with graphics amplifier


Specs:

I7-6700t

16gb DDR4 @2133mhz

GTX 960

Samsung U28E590D freesync Monitor


I am trying to figure out what I should do regarding the GPU for my Alpha and graphics amplifier. I can return the 980ti if needed. So really I only have 1 980ti that I am “stuck” with (had it since December, love it).


The way I see it I have a couple of options.

1. Take 1 980ti out of my rig right now and put it in the graphics amplifier and call it a day. I will lose SLI and won’t be utilizing freesync but once a new AMD 4k card gets released I can use it with the Alpha and throw the 980ti back in my S340.
   
   
2. Leave SLI in the current rig and get a RX 480 for the Alpha. It probably wouldn’t keep up with h1z1 at 4k but h1z1 honestly doesn’t require that powerful of hardware. It isn’t optimized very well but it also isn’t very demanding. I could also wait for non-reference RX 480s to hit. I wouldn’t be surprised if an RX 480 ran the game at 40fps average @ 4k.
   
   
3. Return the 980ti and get a 1070 or 1080 for the Alpha. Wouldn’t get the freesync with this route and it is significantly more expensive all while the gaming experience on @ 4k won’t be THAT much better. Con to this setup, once I get the new AMD 4k card in late 2016 and move the Nvidia card to my living room rig, I can’t run SLI, so I wouldn’t have as powerful setup as if I had gone with option 1 or 2. I would have to buy another Nvidia card in addition to the AMD card I just got to run SLI.
   
   
4. Some other option that I haven’t thought of that the smart people of [H]ardforum suggested.

 

[Krenum]

Sell your 980ti's while their still worth something & get a 1080. Sell your 960 for 100 bucks and buy 2 RX 480s for the other.

Or just buy 2 1080's. From the looks of it you have the money. Stop making it difficult.

 

[Supercharged_Z06]

From my own investigations into 4K gaming, don't expect more than a 5-10% bump going from a 980Ti to a 1080 at 4k. While it can significantly bump lower resolution performance, the 1080 seems to run out of steam at 4k. Check out the Firestrike Ultra benchmark thread.

Awaiting the 1080Ti or 1080 Titan myself...

 

[wrxdrunkie]

Sell your 980ti's while their still worth something & get a 1080. Sell your 960 for 100 bucks and buy 2 RX 480s for the other.

Or just buy 2 1080's. From the looks of it you have the money. Stop making it difficult.

Haha, funny enough I am actually considering performance for the money. Can't sell the 960 as it is built into the Alpha. Selling a 980ti would probably get me $300 and the 1080 would be around $700 after tax. So I am looking at $300 more than my SLI setup and I still need a card for the Alienware Graphics amplifier. Two 1080s just isn't in the budget.

From my own investigations into 4K gaming, don't expect more than a 5-10% bump going from a 980Ti to a 1080 at 4k. While it can significantly bump lower resolution performance, the 1080 seems to run out of steam at 4k. Check out the Firestrike Ultra benchmark thread.

Awaiting the 1080Ti or 1080 Titan myself...

Yeah that is kind of what I am thinking. The 980ti in SLI helps a lot more than 10% and was significantly less money. I was originally planning on waiting completely for the 1080ti but two things happened. 1) I played around an hour of W3 @ wanted to run it at higher settings. 2) I got a good deal on the freesync monitor which has me looking at AMD now. Really wish the RX "490" was out.

 

[sleepybp]

the two 980ti's you have are so powerful, the only reason it would make sense to get rid of them right now is if you care enough about the lower heat/power consumption of the new 1080. Your desktop monitor is also 4k? If you game at 4k on the office computer then I think you would be disappointed in RX 480. SLI/Xfire is always a pain, so maybe you should put the 2nd 980ti in that office computer and just wait until Vega/1080ti come out to get a true 4k card for your main living room system

 

[wrxdrunkie]

Last night I played h1z1 and I was getting like 120fps on 4k ultra settings. It was actually using SLI! I was blown away. However it didn't last long, after changing some settings to increase draw distance I was only getting 45fps, much like a single 980ti.

Well I started checking temps and my top card got up to 88 degrees Celsius. The bottom card is about 10 degrees cooler. I was nervous! Plus MSI afterburner was reading like 495mhz instead of the 1395mhz I was getting....

So I took one card out and the new NVidia card is still hitting 84 degrees by itself.... so a 4 degree change from removing sli.... This card was the top card in every test so far... The top card by itself runs hotter than my old 980ti was in SLI...

My cooling setup:

NZXT S340 case H100i V2 CPU cooler. Running in push mode at the front of the case.

Two 120mm exhaust fans

Cards:

EVGA SC FTW 980ti (new card that runs hotter but is clocked higher)

EVGA SC 980ti (old card close to stock speeds, runs cooler)

Any ideas on the temps? Should I make changes to my setup?

TL;DR: My new top sli card is hitting 88 degrees in SLI during h1z1 gaming and 84 degrees by itself. Ideas or suggestions? Or is 88 degrees still ok and expected?

Thinking of possibly switching out one of the blower style 980ti with a hybrid setup.