Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi all,

I have one Catleap 2560x1440 monitor, and I am seriously considering getting and gaming on two more, along with a graphics card upgrade to run them.

Does anyone have any experience with this resolution? I'm hoping I could run it sufficiently with 2x 680 4GBs or 7970 3GBs. I don't expect to want more than 2x or 4x AA at most in this setup, though I do prefer better textures, and better shaders when it can be helped. I do only have an i5-2500k in my rig right now, so my plan would be to get the cards and monitors, and if I am unsatisfied with the performance, to upgrade to an Ivy Bridge CPU so I can run PCI-E 3.0. I do know that unlocking PCI-E 3.0 would have a significant effect, but I would probably want to see what my frame rates were without it first is all.

Does anyone know if this potential setup would be sufficient? And can anyone speak to whether I should use 680 4GBs or 7970s? AND, on top of that, which model of either I should get? I'm looking at Twin Frozrs right now as my most likely choice, though I am still very open about it.

Thank you very much for your attention!

I would go for the 680 4GBs because its more VRAM and nvidia has better drivers and lesser problems then ATI in my opinion. I have two GTX 560 ti twinn frozer editions and they dont cool better then normal cards in SLI. When they run single they dont go higher then 60C on full load in a good case. But when they run in SLI in the same case i get 80C MAX in full load. Its not dangerous but not verry cool.

And about your CPU i think if you overclock it a bit then you will be fine for most games. Or you run The Witcher 2 with everything on enable and ultra with a res of 7680x1440 :p

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Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 ----- Intel Core i7 2700K ----- GTX 680 Twinn Frozer III ----- NVIDIA Geforce GT 520 1x Edition

I second what Sh4dowking says, Nvidia. Though the 7970 does make up much of Nvidia's performance lead at such high resolution, SLI just works much better than Crossfire. Crossfire does show higher scaling numbers in reviews but microstuttering tends to be much more prevalent than with SLI and Nvidia's drivers just work better, so at this time AMD isnt worth the headaches atm.

I'm personally not a fan of Twin Frozr though, my previous videocard was a 7970 Lightning with such a cooler. Whenever the cooler needed to ramp up speeds to cool heavy loads it produced sounds that would put a F18 Hornet on afterburners to shame (an exaggeration of course, but you get what i mean :P). The same with a Twin Frozr 560Ti of a friend of mine, though he has a crappy Dell with BTX so that might not be a fair comparison.

But all in all i've yet to see a Twin Frozr perform well on sound and cooling so they do leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

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LG 34UM95-P (3440x1440) + 2x Dell U2412M; MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G in 2-SLI; i5 4690k w/ Mugen 4 PCGH; 16GB Crucial; MSI Z97-G45 GAMING; Crucial M500 480GB; Corsair Enthusiast TX750M; CM Storm Scout 2

Maybe on a single screen running two high end cards the 2500k might be the bottleneck, but at such a high resolution your gpus will be the bottleneck 95% of the time. No need to upgrade to ivy bridge for either more cpu power or pcie 3.0. Will post the link later where they have tested if current cards perform better with pcie 3.0 and the conclusion was they don’t.

EDIT: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/07/18/pci_express_20_vs_30_gpu_gaming_performance_review/14
Seems to be a small increase but imo not worth upgrading for.

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Philips BDM4065UC(3840x2160) Acer Z35(2560x1080@200hz); 980 Ti Hybrid @stock ; 6700K 4.6ghz (1.35v)/D15; 16GB 3200mhz; Asus Maximus Ranger VIII; AX860; 1TB 960 EVO; 750GB 840 EVO; Teufel Concept D 500; Sennheiser HD6XX; Windows 10 (latest build)

mhmm isn't that AMD GPU's scale better with Higher Resolution? While on 1920*1080 2x 680 is faster, on 5760*1080 2x AMD is faster ? depends on the game....

BTW; if you want to check out Resolutions higher than your Monitor suppors, aka testing 7680*1440 on a single Monitor, try out the "Multi Monitor Performance Simulator"


BTW; i'd go with 3 7970. Cheaper... 3way CF also eliminates Microstutterting (at least its say to do so...) But then again you'd have to wait until driver supports 3way crossfire! sometimes takes quite a while!
On the other hand two 4gb 680 Watercooled OC'ed might also work. I'd get a OC version or OC myself if i'd go with just two GPU's.


i do run 2x HD7970 3gb atm, in 5760*1080 resolution and its not to much power!

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We gonna send it to outa space!

Whilst in the process of moving one of my 200wfp's broke and i haven't got round to replacing it yet (noaming PC till we get in the new house in Oct).

During this time I've been reading about these Korean IPS screens and I'm suddenly developing a desparate urge to go large. Right now I have maybe a £350 GPU budget and would look at getting one of these 27" beasts and then add two more over the next 4 months or so.

I have a few questions/concerns that I haven't found definite answers to though regarding connections.

I'm aware that most of these monitors are Dual DVI only but there are pricier options that offer HDMI 1.3 and VGA. Are these viable options for connecting up a Surround/eyefinity set up?

Are there any graphics cards that have 2 x Dual DVI's and one other that could run three of these? If not would a mix of Dual DVI only monitor and two of the more expensive multi input monitors be the better option?

I'm inclined towards to AMD due to existing experience with eyefinity and it seems that they generally do better at these monster resolutions.

So yeah 7680 x 1440 on one GPU - although given the DPI I don't think I'd need much image processing to make things look nice and I've never been at the max end of game settings anyway (well apart from the old games).