Multi-monitor gaming

[Bang]

Greetings and salutations 0/

There are a lot of cards on the market these days which I dont know much about. I'm reading all the reviews I can get my hands on to find which cards will suit my needs without killing my wallet.

I play Eve Online and often run 4 accounts on 4 monitors, all at 1080p.

With this sucky old GTX550 Ti I can run one account with max details, or I can run 2 accounts with not-so-great detail. I also have a GTX260 Ti that I run two other monitors from. If I run 4 accounts on 4 monitors its minimum detail (ugly).

So I find myself researching new GPU's. So far I've cut the list of contenders down to: GTX760, GTX770, 280X, 290, or possibly a GTX780.

Ive been told that if I want to run 4 accounts on 4 screens I should get a card that has 4GB of vram. I don't think Eve really takes all that much to run a single account. The GTX550 Ti does fine on one account with 1GB vram.

Budget can be stretched for the right card. I*m currently favouring the Gigabyte R929WF3-4GD 4GB R9-290 for $449aud.

I've read that PhysX is becoming a thing of the past. ATi cards dump those calculations on the cpu. I still prefer to think that a PhysX card can be useful to put less burden on the cpu. I know there is a way to run an Nvidia PhysX card with ATi cards, so I would be doing that if I chose an R290, for example.

If someone were to tell me "GTX 780's are worth the extra money over the R290." I would probably go that route if its not too over priced, ie. MSI GeForce GTX 780 OC TwinFrozr 3GB - $599aud

Or... would I be better off with a pair of 760's? That Striker review was quite compelling but I would go for cheaper cards as $840 for a pair of Strikers is rediculous when a 780Ti can be had for less, and less bs to set up, psu connectors required etc.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

 

[barnsley]

A dedicated PhysX card is pointless. PhysX is mostly dead nowadays anyway. Its not a burden for the cpu at all.

 

[Excalabur50]

I will be getting a couple of MSI R9 290 Gamings so have a look at those or maybe one from these http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php...3_1575&zenid=71ea44aae41626ccd2d557f54cd79630

 

[Bang]

Thanks. I really dont keep up with this stuff like I used to.

Any thoughts on cards and amounts of vram? Reading other threads I see people saying vram is pointless (to a point) and that 3 or 4 GB of vram makes no difference. Sleeping Dogs is one game where (as per Toms reviews) having the extra GB of vram helps as thats one bit of software that will take advantage of 4GB.

Thoughts?

 

[Excalabur50]

Mate with poor optimization from games these days the more ram you have the better particularly the higher the res on the monitor so choose a card with good vram

 

[polar]

was always under the impression that after GPU speed, VRAM becomes very important when using multi monitors. i remember i had a 6950 with 1gb ages ago that i tried using in 3 way eyefinity, it sort of worked, but swapping it out for a 2gb version of the same card the difference was night and day.

the r9 290 has no probs running multiple monitor on my setup and i'm sure the 4gb doesn't hurt at all.

PhysX can't really comment about, because i've been on the red team for so long, but even having seen it on other peoples rigs and trying to force it with a driver mod (hybrid PhysX i believe it was called) with no success and having to do a complete system reinstall afterwards, personally it's something i've never missed.

 

[Bang]

I suppose with something like the R9 290 being so bloody fast PhysX would be a waste of time. I guess the next question would be: Is a 3570K enough to push the 290? I found some 3770K's still available....... Oh well, first the one then the other... lol

I like the 512bit memory interface on the 290. Not the fastest ram in the world but one fat pipe to send data down.

 

[iBeInspire]

I don't know much about EVE, but most MMOs nowadays use around 1gb of vRAM, so I would assume this this where you recommendation for 4gb vRAM (4 games running same time) comes from, and logically it makes sense... however in practice I'm sure you would be fine with just a 3GB card all the same.

Also if a 550ti can run one client at max while running the rest at low, I'd assume a 780 or even a 290 would be able to run all four of em maxxed