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Where is my bottleneck? AKA 980 2-way SLI sucks?

VioDuskar
By VioDuskar
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So, i'd like than thank everyone who replied to this topic, sorry to necro this thread.

I DID pull out the GTX560-TI, i'm short a monitor for now until i can find converters, but no big deal

 

eventually i ended up getting an fx-9590 CPU. i'm hoping to hold on to this rig (mobo/CPU) for at least 3 maybe 4 more years untill DDR4 gets cheaper.

i've put my final system specs on my profile. might upgrade my PSU before then, because my estimated power draw is 741 on PCPartpicker.

 

with the new CPU i've been able to get a heaven bench of nearly 2800 score.

i need to retest my valley scores. i'll post them in my profile as well.

 

again, thanks everyone for helping me come up to a solution that works with what i have now and will hold firm for a while until DDR4 becomes cheaper. (can't wait to get my first e-ATX board to go with the DDR4 standard, and i will be swapping to intel when that happens.)

Posted

thank you both, if you both believe that dual x16 isnt going to be obtainable then i'll have to hold off and get a z97 and swap to intel based CPUs.

i dont have any biases, but i really dont want to go out and revamp the entire system again if all i needed was a core instead of a core and MB and maybe RAM

 

With Z97 you would "just" need a new CPU and mobo. Yes, it's still a pretty large investment, but you also spent 1000+ bucks on graphics cards alone. Just to put this into perspective, your current CPU is equivalent or worse than an FX 6300, a 100$ CPU..... You can try and patch up your system with a newer FX CPU, but I really don't think that it's a great idea. The most sensible thing you could have done would be to buy 2 970s and then upgrade to Z97 tbh. As I said, there is no real world difference between dual 8x or dual 16x pcie for graphics cards, so that really doesn't matter. Oh yeah, and throw the 560ti out of the system and just get adapter cables. It's just another thing that might mess with your system or even break, a dedicated physx card also doesn't make any sense.

 

An 8350 might work out if you overclock it, but you can judge it yourself: http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/55/amd-fx-8350-powering-gtx-780-sli-vs-gtx-980-sli-at-2560x1440/index.html

Especially minimum framerate really suffers, and that's the highest you can get on your current mobo. It's still gimping your 980s.

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An 8350 might work out if you overclock it, but you can judge it yourself: http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/55/amd-fx-8350-powering-gtx-780-sli-vs-gtx-980-sli-at-2560x1440/index.html

Especially minimum framerate really suffers, and that's the highest you can get on your current mobo. It's still gimping your 980s.

 

hmm so i've got all these ponies and no saddle to gallop.

 

thanks a ton dude. looks like water will have to hold a back seat to a z97 and intel chip. thanks

We can't Benchmark like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to shove more GPUs in your computer. Like the time I needed to NV-Link, because I needed a higher HeavenBench score, so I did an SLI, which is what they called NV-Link back in the day. So, I decided to put two GPUs in my computer, which was the style at the time. Now, to add another GPU to your computer, costs a new PSU. Now in those days PSUs said OCZ on them, "Gimme 750W OCZs for an SLI" you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was that I had two GPUs in my rig, which was the style at the time! They didn't have RGB PSUs at the time, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big green ones. 

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I DONT HAVE AN INTEL SETUP!

my mobo runs dualx16 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131876

so back to my original question, suggest a AM3+ socket that can keep up with the 980s? even though my thuban @ 3.8 doesnt work at 100% under graphical load?

All AMD processors bottleneck relatively quickly, for example, my FX-8350 would bottleneck my GTX 780 before I upgraded to an i7. Some reviewers say that anything after the GTX 760 or R9 285 will bottleneck with an AMD chip, where as an i3 can push an R9 280X to full load in some cases.

Honestly I would recommend an i5-4690k/i7-4790k and a well rated Z97 board with SLI support. The board may cost $100-130 and the CPU $220-320 depending on your choice of i5 or i7. It's not going to cost too terribly much in comparison to the GPUs.

if you have to insist you think for yourself, i'm not going to believe you.

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I think your main problem here is your SLI is not working correctly, I do agree with most of the previous posts that a 1090t will bottleneck dual 980's in games, but the Valley benchmark is almost completely GPU bound, I have an FX8350  and r9 290x, and use to have CF 7950's, and get similar scores to people with i7's and 290x's or 7950's. I still think the 560ti is messing with your set up. When you removed the 560Ti did you do a driver re-install? and I mean driver clean, remove card, reboot, install, reboot then test. I don't have personal experience with SLI but with crossfire hardware and drivers have to installed in a specific order to run correctly. I would keep trying to get SLI to scale rigth on this set-up before upgrading or you are just going to have the same issues. 

 

Depending on what games you want to play upgrading might not be worth it. For example today tom's published a Shadow of Mordor review and a FX 4170 was only 10% slower than an overclocked i5-4690k or stock i7-5930k using a single 980, BF4 is also not very affected by CPU. Other games, the civilization series is a big one, the FX-4xxx processors can be only half as fast as the Intel offerings. 

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So, i'd like than thank everyone who replied to this topic, sorry to necro this thread.

I DID pull out the GTX560-TI, i'm short a monitor for now until i can find converters, but no big deal

 

eventually i ended up getting an fx-9590 CPU. i'm hoping to hold on to this rig (mobo/CPU) for at least 3 maybe 4 more years untill DDR4 gets cheaper.

i've put my final system specs on my profile. might upgrade my PSU before then, because my estimated power draw is 741 on PCPartpicker.

 

with the new CPU i've been able to get a heaven bench of nearly 2800 score.

i need to retest my valley scores. i'll post them in my profile as well.

 

again, thanks everyone for helping me come up to a solution that works with what i have now and will hold firm for a while until DDR4 becomes cheaper. (can't wait to get my first e-ATX board to go with the DDR4 standard, and i will be swapping to intel when that happens.)

We can't Benchmark like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to shove more GPUs in your computer. Like the time I needed to NV-Link, because I needed a higher HeavenBench score, so I did an SLI, which is what they called NV-Link back in the day. So, I decided to put two GPUs in my computer, which was the style at the time. Now, to add another GPU to your computer, costs a new PSU. Now in those days PSUs said OCZ on them, "Gimme 750W OCZs for an SLI" you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was that I had two GPUs in my rig, which was the style at the time! They didn't have RGB PSUs at the time, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big green ones. 

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