1 GPU per monitor surround

[SirFlamenco]

Hi, 

 

I plan on having 3 1080ti with a 1080p surround setup but I would like to know if I could play a game with each gpu connected to a different monitor.

 

Thanks, 

 

SirFlamenco

[ARikozuM]

You cannot. SLI (scan-line interlacing) Surround depends on the data being fed to one "master" GPU. 

[RadiatingLight]

You can't run two games concurrently using two GPUs on a single operating system. you can either do a kinda linus-esque thing with 3-gamers one tower, where each GPU is in it's own VM running a single game on a single monitor, or use that quirky Linux thing with a GPU passthrough to a VM inside Linux (not even sure if that works yet).

 

either way, you don't need a 1080Ti. a GTX 1070 will be more than enough for a 1080p game. not trying to bash you, just trying to help you save money.

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, RadiatingLight said:

GTX 1070 will be more than enough for a 1080p game. not trying to bash you, just trying to help you save money.

1070 would struggle in 5760x1080 Ultra. BF1 gets about 72-82Hz [Very High] on my 1080. 

[Marinatall_Ironside]

4 minutes ago, SirFlamenco said:

I plan on having 3 1080ti with a 1080p surround setup but I would like to know if I could play games with each gpu connected to a different monitor.

 

The GTX 1080 Ti should have enough horsepower and enough display outputs (3 DisplayPort outputs on the Founders Edition, all EVGA cards, Gigabyte cards, and Zotac models). Once you have all 3 displays hooked up to the master card (the top one), you then need to go into the Nvidia Control Panel to set up Surround on all displays. You can mix-and-match display outputs too (I've done this before on an SLI GTX 960 setup).

 

To enable 3-way and 4-way SLI on Pascal GPUs (GTX 1070 and up), you will need to use Nvidia Inspector and finagle with a lot of stuff in the SLI profiles to get it to work. It's not worth the time and money to get it to properly scale beyond two GPUs IMO.

 

Just now, RadiatingLight said:

either way, you don't need a 1080Ti. a GTX 1070 will be more than enough for a 1080p game. not trying to bash you, just trying to help you save money.

Unless he has three 144 Hz or 240 Hz displays set up in Surround, then yeah, a GTX 1070 would be enough.

[RadiatingLight]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

1070 would struggle in 5760x1080 Ultra. BF1 gets about 72-82Hz [Very High] on my 1080. 

yeah, but he wants a single GPU per 1080p monitor... so one GPU for every 1920x1080.

[SirFlamenco]

4 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

You can't run two games concurrently using two GPUs on a single operating system. you can either do a kinda linus-esque thing with 3-gamers one tower, where each GPU is in it's own VM running a single game on a single monitor, or use that quirky Linux thing with a GPU passthrough to a VM inside Linux (not even sure if that works yet).

 

either way, you don't need a 1080Ti. a GTX 1070 will be more than enough for a 1080p game. not trying to bash you, just trying to help you save money.

I only plan on playing 1 game at a time and it's not just a 1080p monitor, it's three of them which should be exactly 75% of 4k in pixels count. 

5 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

You cannot. SLI (scan-line interlacing) Surround depends on the data being fed to one "master" GPU. 

Well I plan on avoiding SLI 

[RadiatingLight]

10 minutes ago, SirFlamenco said:

I only plan on playing 1 game at a time and it's not just a 1080p monitor, it's three of them which should be exactly 75% of 4k in pixels count. 

If 3 GPUs could be used in the way you are envisioning, everyone would use it that was instead of SLI. unfortunately that's not possible.

 

get only one card.

a 1080 is a great card for now, but if you want some aspect of futureproofing, then a 1080Ti is good too. just remember to only get one.

 

[Glenwing]

29 minutes ago, SirFlamenco said:

I only plan on playing 1 game at a time and it's not just a 1080p monitor, it's three of them which should be exactly 75% of 4k in pixels count. 

Well I plan on avoiding SLI 

You can choose to enable SLI, in which case you can only use the top card for monitors, or you can choose to allow all cards to be used for monitors, but SLI and surround will not be possible, or you can enable SLI and surround at the same time and be able to plug monitors into different cards. But you cannot plug monitors into different cards and enable surround without enabling SLI at the same time. If you want to plug different monitors into different cards, it's either SLI and surround both enabled, or both disabled.

 

I also don't know if SLI surround would work with triple card setups with the 1080 Ti, since NVIDIA dropped official support for 3 and 4-way SLI.

 

Also with SLI surround you can only use specific combinations of ports between the cards, you can't plug into any port you want on each card.