Desktop Computers

Time for a new monitor, and I'm considering the qnix 1440p everyone seems to be talking about. What kind of system specs will i need to take advantage of it? Games I'll be playing in the forseeable future are Archeage, Evolve, EQNext, and Star Citizen. Is the 8ms response time gonna piss me off if I've never played on anything over 2ms?

Current specs:

I7-2600k
EVGA GTX 780 SC edition
8GB DDR3 1600mhz RAM

You've got plenty of horsepower to game at 1440p. I've had the QNIX for about 6 months now, and it's amazing. The big thing to watch for is the screen finish, glossy or matte. Glossy makes colors look a little more vivid and bold, but it also reflects like a mofo, kinda like a plasma TV, since it's a piece of glass fronting the monitor. Matte is going to have a plastic screen, so colors are slightly more washed out but no glare issues in high ambient light rooms

I have a 1440p and the same specs (2600k & GTX 780) and 1440 is no fucking joke to run. To clarify, you have the power to run current games at high but not max settings at 35-45 fps. Example, lastest batman will run at 35-40ish fps at max settings, AC4 will spend most of the time running at 30 fps rather than 60. You can't run BF4 at max but you have to drop a few settings to get consistent 60 fps. Witcher 2 you get about 25-35 fps at max settings with ubersampling off. Most of these games at a couple years old at this point too, expect it to get worse as next gen games hit. I'm dreading the Watch_Dogs release because I will probably buy a different monitor (1080p) or a 2nd 780 to run it at max. I'm not sure about the others in your list but I know Start Citizen is going to be a hoss to run as well.

While I love the 1440 picture in windows and it looks amazing, for gaming I don't really recommend it. It just takes too much GPU power if you are someone who wants to turn everything up. I'd get a nice PLS 1080p 27'' monitor if gaming is going to be your main focus.

Gaming is the only thing I use my PC for these days. Almost everything else is done on a tablet.

There is just no way I'm gonna spend any more money on this rig, so maybe I'll take your advice and stick with 1080p for this GPU cycle. There's no real point in having 1440p pixel density if I have to turn down all the textures etc. for games to be decently playable. Maybe I'll go with something 120hz... Evolve looks like it'll be twitchy.

If you don't mind TN panels (and the viewing angle disadvantages) theVG278HEis pretty beast for FPS games. Can do thelightboost hacktoo. Got a buddy with that monitor and if I didn't slouch all the time (viewing angle problem) I would buy it tomorrow.

Zodiac_sl said:

I'm dreading the Watch_Dogs release because I will probably buy a different monitor (1080p) or a 2nd 780 to run it at max.

Click to expand...

These assholesknow it, too.
I wish I wasn't, but I'm sold on 1440p. So I'll probably be picking up the second 780.

Honestly, it doesn't cost a ton of money to have the horsepower to game at 1440p right now. SLI'd 780s will be a beast, but you could also get 60+FPS in pretty much anything on max settings with SLI's 770s, and probably even 760s.

My SLI'd 3GB 660Tis run great at 1440p. Benchmarks at about 65 FPS on max settings on Tomb Raider, benches at close to 90 FPS on Bioshock Infinite. Yeah, they're going to be more likely to drag in the next couple years than dual 780s will, those will definitely last longer, but for games that are out right now, 1440p can be done pretty well on the cheap (dual $200-$250 cards)

SLI 770s might do it but not 760s. Buddy at work just got a second 760 and it only gets like a %10 performance gain over a single 780.

Maybe it's that my cards are 3GB that helps(I'm not sure if you start to be limited with 2GB at 1440p, you might in some games), but 760s should perform pretty much the same as 660Tis, and like I listed above, they run great(on current games, I can't predict what future releases will bring)

Do you play at max settings though Joe?

Yep, sure do, and those benchmarks I referenced were at max settings too (even that stupid hair physics crap on Tomb Raider that kills peformance, TressFX)

I'm not going to claim that every game always stays over 60FPS, I'm sure it probably doesn't, but the average FPS is usually at that or above, and that's good enough for me. I honestly can't tell if the frame rate dips down into the 50s or even 40s occasionally. As long as it never dips below 30, and averages around 60 or above, I'm good. That's perfectly playable.

If you look at benchmarks on most sites, it's rare to find 660ti SLI benchmarks, but from my experience most games give me about a 80-90% gain over a single card, so it's pretty easy to extrapolate that out based on the single card benchmark.

Looking atAnandTech | Bench - GPU13for instance

Crysis 3 at 1440p, Ultra settings, a 660Ti SLI is going to get you around 70FPS on average. That tops a Titan by about 15%, and a 780 by about 30%

SLI 660Ti/760 are pretty amazing performance right now for the price. Getting performance that tops a Titan for ~$400 is damn nice.

Ya makes sense.

SLI 760sare not much faster than asingle 780which like I said struggles to run some current games at max. Maybe your 660Ti(s) are just that much faster butit doesn't seem that way. Maybe the SLi and twice the GPU ram is letting you run max settings where my single 780 cannot.

Odd, only thing I can think of is that maybe 3DMark doesn't accurately measure typical gaming performance, or has an issue with SLI?

If you look at this:
GeForce GTX 760 SLI review - DX11: Tomb Raider

760 SLI = 95FPS on Tomb Raider at 1600p(without TressFX on)
780 = 74FPS

Thats nearly a 30% increase in performance. But oddly enough, 2 760s perform over 100% better than a solo 760, which seems abnormal. I've never MORE than doubled my FPS going from 1 card to 2.

Bioshock Infinite shows somewhat similar results at 1440p
GeForce GTX 760 SLI review - DX11: BioShock Infinite

Only a 21% gain with SLI 760 over a 780, but that's still pretty significant.

Looking at that though, the gain at 1600p is a larger % than the gain at 1440p. That would then almost make me think that the difference at 1080p might really be minimal. If those 3DMark scores were ran at 1080p, that would make sense why they are so close.

Obviously the main downside to SLI with 2 midrange cards vs a single high-end card, is that your upgrade path is pretty much done with the SLI. Most midrange motherboards don't have room for a 3rd card, and you start to see fairly significant diminishing returns with a 3rd and especially 4th card anyways. Still having the option of adding a 2nd card down the road with the lone 780 now is a nice luxury to have. You wouldn't have to pull everything and start over with a new video card in a couple years if you didn't want to, like you would if you're SLI'd now with 760/660Tis

Yeah I run 2 4gb 680 GTX in SLI and it's pretty beast.

Nice Deal here, especially if you were planning on buying the game Watch Dogs anyways

PNY GeForce GTX 770 VCGGTX7702XPB-OC 2GB GDDR5 PCI-Express 3.0 (x16) NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0 at TigerDirect.com

$289 after rebate for a 770 + coupon for free Watch Dogs download

If nothing else, you can usually sell game codes for new release games pretty easily, could probably turn around and sell that for $40 or so online.

I'm still on SLI 460's and can't find a compelling reason to move.

Pulled the trigger onDell P2414h

I don't play any games that require twitch motion blur reduction, so decided to stay away from 120hz TNs, and 1440p just didn't feel worth it. I'll upgrade again in 2-3 years in a couple GPU cycles when 4k really takes hold.

Will report back with results when it gets here.

Das S mechanical keyboard on sale on woot today.

Sellout.Woot