D-Leander

Hello,

I have been running 3x 27 inch monitors for a week now with a res of 5960x1080.
The only big problem im having is in BF3 multiplayer. When things start to explode around me, my fps drops to 30's and my 680's usage start to drop to 50% / 55% on each card. This makes things quite frustrating sometimes because it has huge impact on my gameplay. This problem usually occurs on big maps with lots of vehicles. 
It feels like running out of VRAM. which isn't the problem. Is it because of the 256 bit bus width maybe? 5960x1080 is alot of data to push.

its even that bad that i decided to switch back to 1080p for BF3, which is running 200% fine.
i am using overclocked settings but the same thing occurs on stock clocks.
i am using drive 306.23.

anyone know whats going on ?

Settings im using are:
5960x180, Vsync = OFF, all ultra, FXAA = high, deferred AA = OFF

Thanks

Hi D-Leander],
 
Did you try running a single monitor to see how your fps are compared to surround? Your performance hit might be just that... you're running into a surround performance neglect; you may need to go with tri-sli. This is just an opinion, but for each monitor you're running, you should have that many gpus
 
Also, you know what's funny is soooo many people say that 2gb isn't enough to run surround as you need 4gb, but I've not noticed any difference with a 3x1080p monitor setup; Sure some people will say, "Skyrim with tons of mods will need it" or "Max Payne 3 goes past 2gb", but if you don't play those games or anything that demands more vram you have nothing to worry about; games like Skyrim or MP3 may also be running into memory leaks and poor optimization by the developers of that specific game.

It will always be all about the performance and the clock speed of the card. I've had experience with both and surround is cool, but it really isn't all that it is cracked up to be. It's not until we are able to get near identical performance in surround as we do in a single monitor setup, the performance hit to surround isn't worth the $. Maybe with the next gen 700 or 800 series cards is when we'll notice close to 70+ fps (maybe one day 120 fps) with surround, but it may be at least a few more years till then. The current market for pc monitors looks to be leaning towards the 2560x1440+, so that's going to be a bigger hit and more demand of a gpu setup that will handle three of them.
 
If you're competitive, surround may not be for you; you should stick with a single high rez or high hz (120/144) monitor; you'll get the fluid and high fps you demand.
 
Again, performance is what you need and for surround you should go tri-sli whether it be a 2gb or 4gb version.
 

I have just played another game of bf3 to check the drops more closely.
 
When it drops, it always drops to 35/36fps or 45fps, if that happens, the usage drops to 55% on each cards or around 70% on each cards.
 
Im definitely planning for 3-way SLI but for now something isn't right. this shouldn't happen, even with 2-way SLI.
 
Just now i was just walking around in the open in the bandar desert map. nothing intense was going on onscreen but i still got the fps drop. Also, when the fps drops occurs its not dynamic to what happens onscreen but it takes about 20 seconds when the fps goes back to normal.
 
As for the Nvidia settings, i have everything set as patchesanook suggested.
 
Could it be a driver issue?

Drivers for the 600 series have been crappy. Nvidia has turned into ATI with their release since Kepler has been released.
 
Make sure you have manually chosen a gpu for PhysX. Do not keep it on Auto Select as there have been performance issues leading to bsod with that option.

Reddawne

Drivers for the 600 series have been crappy. Nvidia has turned into ATI with their release since Kepler has been released.

Make sure you have manually chosen a gpu for PhysX. Do not keep it on Auto Select as there have been performance issues leading to bsod with that option.

 
BF3 does not use PhysX
 
Having the PhysX setting on Autoselect does NOT cause -any- known issues with single and dual card setups and certainly NOT BSOD in BF3
I recommend you leave it on Auto
 
@Reddawne
Your Quad SLI GTX 690 should not be considered a "normal" setup and is known for very poor SLI support in games along with poor scaling when it is working. Any issues you might encounter do not really apply to a single card user like the OP. I know of zero reported issues with single card or single GPU SLI setups with PhysX auto select ON and BF3 and certainly NOT BSOD's.
 
The 600 series single GPU cards and drivers are working quite well.
Just the normal issues with buggy games and proper SLI support for console ports.
 
 

Baltothewolf

Hey Maniacc, I don't mean to thread hijack, but because your talking about BF3 anyway, what FOV would you recommend for 1080p?

 
That would be the default value of 70

maniacvvv
Do NOT use the Precision OSD (on screen display), this is known to cause issues both a RTSS bug and with DX11 overlays and FPS drops.
You may use Precision, just dont enable the OSD (more on this later)

For Precison the only way to be -certain- you are not having the OSD bug following you, is to shut it down and then completely uninstall it -and- answer NO when asked to save profile data.
Reboot once and then reinstall it, then just setup your fan profile and start with Windows settings.
Do NOT enable the OSD function
After the reinstall, I would leave the cards at stock for the first round of testing. Do not adjust the clocks or enable voltage control.

That should fix you right up

 
I'm going to give this a try to see if I notice anything.... My cards will act funny sometimes.
 
OP:  Also give the 304.48 Betas a try. They seem to work a lot better for me than the 306.23 when running at 5760x1080.