Vega's *Heavyweight* display and computer; edition 2012

[Callsign_Vega]

Expect PCI-E 3.0 vs 2.0 tests, what is required to reach 2GB of VRAM and what happens when that VRAM is reached tests etc. So far in BF3 the results are pretty bad news once the memory reaches 2048MB! (Although it takes quite a bit to surpass the 2GB VRAM amount even at extremely high resolution and settings). More to follow...

I love this new nVIdia Surround. It keeps the desktop task-bar only on the center monitor and when I maximize windows it only maximizes on the center screen. Awesome features! With the simple registry edit, I've got all of the cards running at PCI-E 3.0. In the BIOS I can switch between 1.0/2.0/3.0 at will so this will make for some nice tests.

Who want's to bet there will be appreciable differences on my setup?

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

coming together nicely vega

[barjoysee]

Expect PCI-E 3.0 vs 2.0 tests, what is required to reach 2GB of VRAM and what happens when that VRAM is reached tests etc. So far in BF3 the results are pretty bad news once the memory reaches 2048MB! (Although it takes quite a bit to surpass the 2GB VRAM amount even at extremely high resolution and settings). More to follow...

Hi Vega,

Mega setup you have there and must say love you builds !
I'm just ripping my old system apart I7 920 and 2x3Gb 580Sli's I've seen 2150Mb Memory usage in B3 at default Ultra settings on my single 30" Dell I was looking at replacing the two 580's with the 2Gb 680's but have been worried about the 2Gb of memory they have. Here in the UK we will soon have the 4Gb Versions (aPalit GeForce GTX 680 Jetstream 4Gb) though I would hang on for the EVGA's but the price is going to be scary ...

Barjoysee

[Callsign_Vega]

Hi Vega,

Mega setup you have there and must say love you builds !
I'm just ripping my old system apart I7 920 and 2x3Gb 580Sli's I've seen 2150Mb Memory usage in B3 at default Ultra settings on my single 30" Dell I was looking at replacing the two 580's with the 2Gb 680's but have been worried about the 2Gb of memory they have. Here in the UK we will soon have the 4Gb Versions (aPalit GeForce GTX 680 Jetstream 4Gb) though I would hang on for the EVGA's but the price is going to be scary ...

Barjoysee

You will be fine with BF3 with the 2GB cards. I saw the prices on the Palit 4GB, pretty steep! But if you want to be really future proof then yes the 4GB might be worth it. With the 3-4GB "big kepler" cards supposedly coming out later this year, not sure if it's worth paying a premium of the 4GB 680's. Depends on how deep your wallet is I guess.

[barjoysee]

I'll proably sell the 3Gb 580's on while there worth something then look at the review's for the 4Gb's ..it is a tough one with the 110 coming out in a few months ! As they will be a good jump going on specs !

[UrbanSmooth]

What's this?

Only 2GB of VRAM on a glorious multi-display setup? Yech, I just hurled all over my Logitech Comfort Wave 450.

SAID THE MAN USING THREE GTX 480s CIRCA 2010 WITH A MERE 1.5GB OF VRAM FOR HIS NVIDIA SURROUND SETUP, ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ohh, the irony...

[Callsign_Vega]

Well, the results of my PCI Express 2.0 versus 3.0 on my 4-way SLI GTX 680 FW900 Surround setup are in. The results are so incredible I had to start the tests over from scratch and run them multiple times for confirmation!

Test setup:

3960X @ 5.0 GHz (temp slow speed)
Asus Rampage IV Extreme with PCI-E slots running 16x/8x/8x/8x
(4) EVGA GTX 680's running 1191MHz core, 3402 MHz Memory
nVidia Driver 301.10 with PCI-E 3.0 registry adjustment turned on and off for each applicable tes
GPU-Z 0.6.0




After PCI-E settings changed, confirmed with GPU-Z:






All settings in nVidia control panel, in-game and in benchmark, EVGA precision are all UNTOUCHED between benchmark runs. The only setting adjusted is the PCI-E 2.0 to 3.0 and back and forth for confirmation (Reboots obviously for registry edit).





I kid you not, that is how much PCI-E 2.0 running at 16x/8x/8x/8x versus PCI-E 3.0 bottlenecks BF3 and Heaven 2.5 at these resolutions. I attribute this to the massive bandwidth being transferred over the PCI-E bus. We are talking 4-way SLI at up to 10-megapixels in alternate frame rendering. Entire frames at high FPS are being swapped and PCI-E 2.0 falls on it's face.

The interesting part was that while running PCI-E 2.0, the GPU utilization dropped way down as would be typically seen if you are "CPU" limited. In this instance I am not CPU limited, nor GPU limited. We are really at a point now that you can be PCI-E limited unless you go PCI-E 3.0 8x (16x PCI-E 2.0) or faster on all GPU's in the system. GPU utilization dropped down into the ~50% range due to PCI-E 2.0 choking them to death. As soon as I enabled PCI-E 3.0, the GPU utilization skyrocketed to 95+% on all cores. I was going to run more benchmarks and games but the results are such blow-outs it seems pretty pointless to do any more. It may interest some of those out there running these new PCI-E 3.0 GPU's in which they think they are CPU limited (below 95% GPU utilization) yet might have PCI-E bandwidth issues.

Down to the nitty gritty; if you run a single GPU, yes; a single 16x speed PCI-E 2.0 slot will be fine. When you start to run multiple GPU's and/or run these new cards at 8x speed, especially in Surround/Eyefinity, make sure to get PCI-E 3.0.

[Andrea deluxe]

i have no word!

WOW!

i buy an ivy bridge @ the day one for my 680 sli!


PS: do you want to flash your card to evga sc+ bios? (here: http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/1...48.120329.html)

[GoldenTiger]

Wow indeed! I'm starting to wonder if my 2-way SLI is bottlenecked by having x8 2.0 for each card then... it looks possible (2560x1600). My GPU utilization is high (90%+) at almost all times in games though. Regardless, looking like a day-1 buy for Ivy Bridge for me to enable PCI-E 3.0 on my Z68 Gen3 board!

Is there any chance I could trouble you for a 2-way SLI run at 3600x1920 (PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0)? Pretty please? That's most comparable to my resolution... though still far greater (4mp vs 7mp).

[Nizzen]

Callsign_Vega: Can you post the pci-e 3.0 reg fix here in this thread. Can somone make a .reg file for this

Great findings about the bandwidth !

[Systemlord]

Wow indeed! I'm starting to wonder if my 2-way SLI is bottlenecked by having x8 2.0 for each card then... it looks possible (2560x1600). My GPU utilization is high (90%+) at almost all times in games though. Regardless, looking like a day-1 buy for Ivy Bridge for me to enable PCI-E 3.0 on my Z68 Gen3 board!

Is there any chance I could trouble you for a 2-way SLI run at 3600x1920 (PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0)? Pretty please? That's most comparable to my resolution... though still far greater (4mp vs 7mp).

I will second this request please, some don't want more than two GPU's and probably can't afford more than two card.

[GoldenTiger]

Now that I'm watching more closely I am seeing GPU usage hit as low as 80% each GPU sometimes even 75% in SLI in BF3... x8 2.0 for each card. Usually 80-85%, still a lot of lost usage it seems like.

[SKYMTL]

Funny. How does the registry key modification work for you but so many people have been reporting major issues? Did you do something different?

[Roadhog]

I kid you not, that is how much PCI-E 2.0 running at 16x/8x/8x/8x versus PCI-E 3.0 bottlenecks BF3 and Heaven 2.5 at these resolutions. I attribute this to the massive bandwidth being transferred over the PCI-E bus. We are talking 4-way SLI at up to 10-megapixels in alternate frame rendering. Entire frames at high FPS are being swapped and PCI-E 2.0 falls on it's face.

The interesting part was that while running PCI-E 2.0, the GPU utilization dropped way down as would be typically seen if you are "CPU" limited. In this instance I am not CPU limited, nor GPU limited. We are really at a point now that you can be PCI-E limited unless you go PCI-E 3.0 8x (16x PCI-E 2.0) or faster on all GPU's in the system. GPU utilization dropped down into the ~50% range due to PCI-E 2.0 choking them to death. As soon as I enabled PCI-E 3.0, the GPU utilization skyrocketed to 95+% on all cores. I was going to run more benchmarks and games but the results are such blow-outs it seems pretty pointless to do any more. It may interest some of those out there running these new PCI-E 3.0 GPU's in which they think they are CPU limited (below 95% GPU utilization) yet might have PCI-E bandwidth issues.

Down to the nitty gritty; if you run a single GPU, yes; a single 16x speed PCI-E 2.0 slot will be fine. When you start to run multiple GPU's and/or run these new cards at 8x speed, especially in Surround/Eyefinity, make sure to get PCI-E 3.0.

Thanks for this. Explains my low GPU utilization, yet still high fps in some games/scenarios. All my pcie slots are running 16x too. O_O

[Callsign_Vega]

i have no word!

WOW!

i buy an ivy bridge @ the day one for my 680 sli!


PS: do you want to flash your card to evga sc+ bios? (here: http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/1...48.120329.html)

Do you know if that will allow any tweaking of the settings above what I can already tweak them to with precision?

Wow indeed! I'm starting to wonder if my 2-way SLI is bottlenecked by having x8 2.0 for each card then... it looks possible (2560x1600). My GPU utilization is high (90%+) at almost all times in games though. Regardless, looking like a day-1 buy for Ivy Bridge for me to enable PCI-E 3.0 on my Z68 Gen3 board!

Is there any chance I could trouble you for a 2-way SLI run at 3600x1920 (PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0)? Pretty please? That's most comparable to my resolution... though still far greater (4mp vs 7mp).

Sorry, you need three GTX 680's minimum to run my three CRT's due to RAMDAC connection limitations.

Callsign_Vega: Can you post the pci-e 3.0 reg fix here in this thread. Can somone make a .reg file for this

Great findings about the bandwidth !

Registry key will be hard because everyone's VID ID is different and it changes based on if you are in SLI or not. The manual way only takes a few seconds.

http://api.viglink.com/api/click?for...13338147983421

Now that I'm watching more closely I am seeing GPU usage hit as low as 80% each GPU sometimes even 75% in SLI in BF3... x8 2.0 for each card. Usually 80-85%, still a lot of lost usage it seems like.

Whenever your GPU is less than the high 90's%-wise, you either have an artificial cap applied like VSync or frame-rate limiter or your CPU and/or PCI-E bus is a bottleneck. You could test by turning up and down your CPU frequency and if the numbers don't change, it's the PCI-E bus.

Funny. How does the registry key modification work for you but so many people have been reporting major issues? Did you do something different?

I have major issues with it. Every time I power down my machine it won't boot up into windows again. I have to remove one of the monitors, then reboot and reconfigure my Surround setup every single time. Such a PITA that's why it took me like 5 hours to get these benchmarks lol.

[Phatboy69]

Interesting. I get AVG 96FPS at 6048x1080 in Heaven with default graphics settings and GPUs between 78-99% utilisation. Thats about 380K less pixels than your 3600x1920 setting. So it ends up about the same performance with GTX580s at PCIe 2.0 16x8x8x8.

[Phatboy69]

I have major issues with it. Every time I power down my machine it won't boot up into windows again. I have to remove one of the monitors, then reboot and reconfigure my Surround setup every single time. Such a PITA that's why it took me like 5 hours to get these benchmarks lol.

I had exact issue with an early Nvidia driver. It wasnt fixed until late Feb with a driver fix.

[Callsign_Vega]

I had exact issue with an early Nvidia driver. It wasnt fixed until late Feb with a driver fix.

Ya hopefully nVidia fixes this mess.

[UrbanSmooth]

What are the GTX 680 temps under load with the stock cooling option?

[Callsign_Vega]

What are the GTX 680 temps under load with the stock cooling option?

Hitting VRAM limit (with on-screen display temperatures) and PCI-E 3.0 vs 2.0 video inbound.

[Callsign_Vega]

Hitting VRAM limit and PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0 battle video tests. Make sure to watch in 480P instead of lower (I forgot to set the camera back to 720P and I don't feel like recording everything all over again lol). Sorry about the video quality but it is still view-able.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0-xc...cWAKgkFdz3LBo=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkZzs...Txt4tbGt5H9Yk=

[Systemlord]

Hitting VRAM limit and PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0 battle video tests. Make sure to watch in 480P instead of lower (I forgot to set the camera back to 720P and I don't feel like recording everything all over again lol). Sorry about the video quality but it is still view-able.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0-xc...cWAKgkFdz3LBo=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkZzs...Txt4tbGt5H9Yk=

Wow, that's crazy! I know you are really pushing the resolution to extremely high settings, but how do you see a person running no more than 1920x1080 with only two cards (big Kepler) in 2-way SLI running PCIe 3.0 @ 8x/8x? Do you foresee any PCIe bandwidth limitations in 4-5 years in 2-way SLI, crystal ball required.

[Mmatus89]

The interesting part was that while running PCI-E 2.0, the GPU utilization dropped way down as would be typically seen if you are "CPU" limited. In this instance I am not CPU limited, nor GPU limited. We are really at a point now that you can be PCI-E limited unless you go PCI-E 3.0 8x (16x PCI-E 2.0) or faster on all GPU's in the system. GPU utilization dropped down into the ~50% range due to PCI-E 2.0 choking them to death. As soon as I enabled PCI-E 3.0, the GPU utilization skyrocketed to 95+% on all cores. I was going to run more benchmarks and games but the results are such blow-outs it seems pretty pointless to do any more. It may interest some of those out there running these new PCI-E 3.0 GPU's in which they think they are CPU limited (below 95% GPU utilization) yet might have PCI-E bandwidth issues.

Down to the nitty gritty; if you run a single GPU, yes; a single 16x speed PCI-E 2.0 slot will be fine. When you start to run multiple GPU's and/or run these new cards at 8x speed, especially in Surround/Eyefinity, make sure to get PCI-E 3.0.

Question. These are my benchmarks that I have taken in the past 24 hours. I just got my 680 Friday afternoon.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...kJZaElRdTM3cFE

Is my PCI 2.0 being a bottleneck for the games where the GPU usage is under 80%? I started benchmarking some of my games and noticed the GPU wouldn't try so hard on certain games. Espcially in WoW, when I'm standing around in Stormwind I get like 150+ FPS with 100% GPU usage. Then I go into raid fights and it drops down to 70% and the FPS drops down to 70+ AVG. I don't know if this is due to GPU Boost self-clocking down or something else. If it's something else, how can I force my GPU to run 100% so I can benchmark the titles.
CPU: i7 2700k OC to 4.8 GHZ, MOBO: ASUS P8Z68-V Pro, RAM: 8 GB of G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8-8-8-24, SSD: 256GB M4 Crucial Solid State Drive

[Systemlord]

Question. These are my benchmarks that I have taken in the past 24 hours. I just got my 680 Friday afternoon.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...kJZaElRdTM3cFE

Is my PCI 2.0 being a bottleneck for the games where the GPU usage is under 80%? I started benchmarking some of my games and noticed the GPU wouldn't try so hard on certain games. Espcially in WoW, when I'm standing around in Stormwind I get like 150+ FPS with 100% GPU usage. Then I go into raid fights and it drops down to 70% and the FPS drops down to 70+ AVG. I don't know if this is due to GPU Boost self-clocking down or something else. If it's something else, how can I force my GPU to run 100% so I can benchmark the titles.
CPU: i7 2700k OC to 4.8 GHZ, MOBO: ASUS P8Z68-V Pro, RAM: 8 GB of G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8-8-8-24, SSD: 256GB M4 Crucial Solid State Drive

WOW is not using the muscle of these lastest GPU's, I would expect newer more demanding games to show more utilization of the GPU like BF3. I would expect Sky Rim and WoW would be medium utilization. Try using Crysis 1 and then 2.

[Rollo]

People said I was mad (mad, I tell you) when I bought the 990X/Asus Rampage Formula with three x16 slots early last year when there were no mulitple X16 slot SB boards out yet.

Who's laughing now?! Who's laughing now?!
(in Ash/Evil Dead 2 voice)

More seriously, kudos and good work Callsign_Vega, it looks like with 680s and very high resolutions one can indeed hit the limits of the PCIE2 x8. Very nicely done.