System Performance

Budget:
$2,500 - $3,000

Expectations:
I am looking for performance when running multiple games at once while streaming and browsing the web.

Usage:
This will be a gaming machine. I am currently playing Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft but play a wide variety of games.

Special Needs:
I have a 3 (Dell Ultrasharp 24" ISP 1920x1200) monitor setup but not in surround gaming (have only done it for a few games). With the 3 minitors I have the game in the middle in windowed (Fullscreen) and will usually have a web browser on the left (sometimes a spreadsheet or onenote) and streaming a video on the right. Now, to most this many seem over-excessive in having reference material up at all times and a video but it is how I like to play.

Sometimes I will be playing WoW, waiting for a raid and I can log into Diablo 3 (On another monitor, mostly left) to play while I wait.

I have had a lot of trouble trying to find performance with the way I do stuff. Sometimes the sound from video will be off or the browser will crash or second game will crash.

Since I do not have the knowledge or expertise to find how to get the performance I am looking for I went to the internet to find some information. Though, I was not able to find much of anything on the specific questions I have regarding the performance but I did find Digital Storm. The Digital Storm forums have been great. I have been reading up and doing searches but I still have not found any answers. So here I am, finally making a post.

The system I build a year ago did not get the performance I was looking for so I am coming to Digital Storm to get some more information and see if a purchase was right for me.

I hope all of this makes sense. Any help would be much appreciated.

Saved Ticket #: Do not have a saved ticket because I am not sure where to start.

The ODE's are the best bang for the buck Yusuki, or as an option try this SLI 2x 670 FTW build on the Sabertooth X79 motherboard # 757249

What ever you decide to buy from Digital Storm, you can depend on them to stress test the heck out of the system before gets to you. Their customer service is excellent.

I checked out the ODE V2 and it looks solid. One follow up question I have is on the SLI because I read on the Nvidia website that you can only have a maximum of 2 monitors in SLI. For me I would simply have all displays activated to have all three going without surround gaming.

With Crossfire you can have more then two monitors active. Do you think there would be any performance increase to run monitors in a Crossfire environment? Or will two cards running the 3 monitors be enough?

Now a far out questions, would it be best to have 3 video cards and a monitor on each one? Would there be any performance gain there?

Thank you bprat22, that does help.

I suspect 2x SLI 670's in the Ode would do what you described if gaming on just one 1920 x 1200 24" monitor and doing something less demanding with the other two monitors.

LOL...In yet another shameless plug, I use the same Dell U2412m monitors in a 3 screen 5760 x 1200 setup...see the review: http://www.digitalstormonline.com/forums/buck-039-s-tma-1-ds-black-ops-hailstorm-tidf19246

Trying to run two demanding 1920 x 1200 games on 2 of 3 monitors at once would certainly water down performance in both games and be almost as demanding on your graphics cards as going 3 screens at 5760 x 1200 in one game at a time. I think the Z77 mobo in the Ode V2 Lvl 4 is Nvidia certified 2X SLI (x16 + x8) ...not sure about using the 3rd PCI-E 2 slot at x4 on that Z77 mobo in the Ode mid size Corsair 600T case....even if possible, you would need to upgrade your PSU and it might be a tight fit.    

Perhaps you should consider selecting a configuration that is capable of tri-SLI, but start with 2x SLI and upgrade to a 3rd card if you find it's really needed.   

Just remember that tri-SLI isn't a fix all solution. With 2x you generally get almost double performance. You won't see as much bang for the buck when you add a third card in SLI. 3x SLI may sometimes cause some negatives to contend with such as image scaling problems, definitely more heat to contend with in your case that can negatively impact performance, more fan noise, requires bigger PSU, and often doesn't increase overall performance very much over 2x SLI.

Here's a guru3d review testing 2x SLI vs 3x SLI using the GTX 670:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_670_2_and_3way_sli_review,1.html
Hope this is helpful for you...

HockeyBuck, that is a sweet rig and an awesome setup!
I looked over the article you liked and I am stunned to see how close the 2-way SLI GTX 670's was to the 3-way SLI GTX 670's.

bprat22, that is probably why most 2-way SLI are so close the the 3-way SLI because of that fact. I would guess at least.

This is the only reference to SLI monitor restirctions, seem old though:
http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/technology/sli/faq#s1
How many monitors are supported when running in SLI mode?

With GeForce R180 drivers (or later), standard SLI configurations for 2-way, 3-Way, and quad SLI support a maximum of two monitors. Additional monitors (up to 6 monitors total enabled) may be enabled by using either a motherboard GPU and/or a PhysX capable graphics card (GeForce 8 series or higher with at least 256MB of memory) that does not have the same GPU as those that are SLI enabled. More information regarding multi-monitor in SLI can be found here.

I have also tried this on my current setup and the only way to get 3 monitors going with SLI enabled is with surround gaming.

So what that means I am forced into surround gaming, but I have been hearing about software that can help me. In surround gaming I can still maximize windows on each monitor to 1920x1200 instead of spanning it across all displays. It is called Maxtor PowerDesk
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/multi_display_software/powerdesk/

Then you can use UltraMon to have the taskbar on the middle monitor but it kinda does the same think as PowerDesk
http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

This is what I found out after doing some more research. What does everyone think?

Edited by Yusuki - 02 Dec 2012 at 4:57pm

I'm also not sure but what if you had sli gtx670s.   Disable sli and use one for gaming and the other for apps on the other 2.   If you want sli 670 for performance then install a third, different card like gtx 660 for 1 or 2 monitor apps.    

My head hurts.      You've done lots more research than I so let us know what you think.   

I will keep doing some digging.

I found a post on mmo-champions about it and here is a picture of another persons setup. It is in a surround gaming using one of the third party software to have them expand to the monitor instead of the full display area of the surround gaming.

http://i.imgur.com/gkXPS.jpg

Link to thread: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/945204-Help-Advice-on-SLI-with-multiple-monitors
(This is an older thread from 2010 but I think it is still relevant)

You guys are awesome. I haven't had a place to bring up these topics to discuss them before. Once I find more information I will let you guys know.

Edited by Yusuki - 02 Dec 2012 at 4:56pm