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A Rig To Run 1.492 Billion Pixels Per Second (3*4K displays) ?

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qwiddity

New Member
Joined
Oct 8, 2014
I'd like some input as to whether an idle dream of running 3*4K displays at 60hz is actually possible.

I'm pretty new at this, so I apologise in advance for any misconceptions I may have picked up.

Let's say I have three 4K monitors, all capable of 60Hz using DisplayPort. Also three, say, Radeon R9 295X's or better.
Would this be a suitable setup for driving this?

There are two questions which immediately came to mind, which I couldn't easily search for answers to:

Obviously this would not involve Crossfire, because all the primary card's outputs would be in use, and inputs on 4K monitors other than DisplayPort are locked to 30Hz in 4K resolutions (HDMI, DVI-D). Is this correct?

Given that, can the cards actually be used this way un-Crossfire'd (one DP cable plugged into each card, going to each monitor), giving multiple monitor outputs?

Is this actually possible? The only evidence of this kind of setup is from the Extreme Windows blog
 
I don't have an answer to your question but just curious, what is the intended use of this system?
 
I think the new Nvidia cards have HDMI 2.0, correct? Doesn't that support 4k @ 60Hz?

Even if you could get all the outputs out of a single card (which is what you would want need to do and run in SLI/CF), I think 4k is just too young at this point to try something like this.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/562...li--4-way-sli-review-benchmarks-battlefield-4

You'd want at least 3-way SLI GTX 980s and even then, you'd have to deal with scaling issues in most games (and you'd be at low settings).
 
Honestly, even if you got this up and running, it would game like crap. 3x4K is 12X1080P. That's too many pixels. Nvidia recommends a minimum of 2x 970's for just single 4K display gaming. 4K is too young and GPUs are not yet potent enough for this. Also, the price of putting it all together would be outrageous.

3X4K for productivity? Possible today. 3X4K for gaming? Not yet.
 
Honestly, even if you got this up and running, it would game like crap. 3x4K is 12X1080P. That's too many pixels. Nvidia recommends a minimum of 2x 970's for just single 4K display gaming. 4K is too young and GPUs are not yet potent enough for this. Also, the price of putting it all together would be outrageous.

3X4K for productivity? Possible today. 3X4K for gaming? Not yet.

Too many pixles? Never heard of such a thing. :)

Yes, this would be for running an Eyefinity display.

Mostly for productivity, but also for a very specific, undemanding gaming use: some flight simulators and older games which support higher resolutions.

What I was trying to get away from was running everything off one card (and in sub-4K resolutions, for instance on a Radeon R9 290X with four mini-DP outputs), with the new, cheap Samsung U590D 4K monitors.

I've now completed reading the online technical manuals for various R9 290 cards and yes, this is potentially possible. It would require a massively specced-out ssytem and would be a speciifc build, probably costing something in the region of $5,000.

Hrm... still thinking!
 
If one 980 (or even 970) can run one 4K display well, 3 980s should be able to run 3 4K displays and 4 980s would have an even easier time.
 
BTW, 3X4K is 24 Million pixels. Where are you getting 1+ billion?

NiHaoMike- a 970 can run a 4K just fine for productivity. But gaming? Not so much. Go look up single 970 benchmarks @ 4K. Disgusting performance.
 
It all depends on the detail levels.

Exactly. Do you want to play at high resolution, "ok" framerate, low detail? Or lower resolution, great framerate, great detail?

4K makes absolutely no sense for gaming (yet). In the future, it will 100% be the way to go. Especially when we can drive 4K @ 144Hz. That'll be great. Until then, though, gaming is best left to 1080 and 1440P displays, in my opinion. Who needs anything sharper than that for games anyways? Especially when your performance and detail have to suffer to provide that higher resolution?

3X1440P with 3XGTX970 is a great idea. Beyond that, it's not ready for gaming yet IMO.
 

Thanks for the backup, homeslice.

BTW- dude who started this thread, I just noticed that you wrote this:

"Let's say I have three 4K monitors, all capable of 60Hz using DisplayPort. Also three, say, Radeon R9 295X's or better."

That's impossible. R9295X2 is already 2 GPUs. 2 of them is 4 GPUs. That's the maximum on any desktop system. You can have 4 GPUs total. Those GPUs can be across 2 cards or 4 cards.

Honestly, OP, this is a bad idea. In 2017 it'll be a good idea. Not now though. As Scottie from Star Trek would say:
"She cann'ee doo it Captain. She dun'ee have the pawerr"

Get a couple of high end GPUs, get 1 or 2 1440P monitors, and enjoy decent framerates and high detail. That's my suggestion.
 
There are a lot of little issues you have to live with right now doing 4K. If you want perfect no issue gaming stay far far away from 4K. If your good at diagnosing issues and living with some bugs and crashes in exchange for incredible visual quality its unsurpassed in how stunning gaming looks. 3x4k screens right now is maybe possible but would it run demanding games at high quality with the absolute most hardware you can throw into one box with say a $5K budget at minimum not including screens, doubtful.
 
3x 4K at decent detail levels and FPS is two years away for the mainstream IMO

I am hoping we see some OLED panels in the coming year
 
BTW, 3X4K is 24 Million pixels. Where are you getting 1+ billion?


The OP says pixels per second at 60Hz, so that's 3 x (3840 x 2160) x 60 = 1,492,992,000 pixels per second. So, he's asking about 60 FPS @ 3*4K...Thought I'd clear that up thumbsup.gif
 
The OP says pixels per second at 60Hz, so that's 3 x (3840 x 2160) x 60 = 1,492,992,000 pixels per second. So, he's asking about 60 FPS @ 3*4K...Thought I'd clear that up thumbsup.gif

Oh ok, well then that's 100% impossible.
Even at low detail levels I doubt you could push 60FPS @ 3x4K. MAYBE with 2X Titan Z or 295X2. Even still I doubt you'd be pleased with the results.
 
At CES last year, they were running some driving game (it wasn't released yet) on 3x 4K monitors using 4 titans. I have to imagine that 3-4x 980's would be ok at it without AA. It was buttery smooth too. I am not sure of the settings but it looked pretty darn good.
 
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