5760 x 1080 for Project CARS - will a 4GB 960GTX be enough?

[wolfestone]

I'm looking to drive 3 1920x1080 monitors to play Project CARS (and possibly other racing sims).

Right now the rest of my system has an i5 2500k @3.3ghz, 8gb ram, and a samsung 850 series SSD.

Current video card is an evga Geforce 550ti; it ran project CARS on one screen pretty well but choked when I added a second monitor.

I'm looking at EVGA's 4gb 960 GTX FTW card for around $260, but would really appreciate any advice. I would value framerate over maxed out visual quality settings, though I'd like to to look pretty good.

A TITAN is out of my budget, but when I start to get into looking at one newer card vs. SLI'd older cards - I'm lost.

I want to stick with an nVidia GPU. What would you guys recommend I look at, assuming this is even going to be possible?

 

[Shmee]

Most likely not is my guess. For 3 monitors, I think you would need a 980 at least, possibly two.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Yeah I would say get a single 980. You could try a 970 instead - it might be more cost effective. But, even with a 970 or 980, I'd imagine you would need to turn some details down to get an acceptable framerate.

 

[wolfestone]

Thanks guys, that's a big help.

For this kind of setup, is the video card going to be the limiting factor? If I get an acceptable framerate without having to build a whole new system that would be ideal.

I will check out some 980s then. Will 4gb be enough video memory if I'm not running 4k resolution monitors?

Is it even worth looking at something like a dual 780 setup or is that going to be worse off than a single 980?

thanks again for the advice!

 

[LTC8K6]

Thanks guys, that's a big help.

For this kind of setup, is the video card going to be the limiting factor? If I get an acceptable framerate without having to build a whole new system that would be ideal.

I will check out some 980s then. is 4gb vs 8gb on the 980 going to make a significant difference if I'm not looking at 4k resolution?

thanks again for the advice!

970 and 980 are 4gb only as far as I know.

980ti is 6Gb

 

[exar333]

Yeah I would say get a single 980. You could try a 970 instead - it might be more cost effective. But, even with a 970 or 980, I'd imagine you would need to turn some details down to get an acceptable framerate.

This.

It will work, but will need to tweak the settings to get a good framerate. And you probably do want a good fps in a racing game...

 

[XiandreX]

Another thing to think about would be to overclock your Cpu.
You have a tremendous amount of free performance just via very
modest overclocking on your 2500k.

 

[Stuka87]

I second overclocking your CPU. You bought a K series chip, put a good cooler on it and clock it up. Most are able to do 4.2-4.5 pretty easily.

 

[Shmee]

Your resolution has 6220800 pixels. A typical 4k monitor (3840 X 2160) = 8294400 pixels.

So it is still up there as far as resolutions go, higher even than 2560x1600, which is 4096000 pixels. You may want to go for 2x980Ti's or 2x 980s, if your budget permits. Again, the OC recommendation is a good one as well.

 

[wolfestone]

Thanks all. Unfortunately I think a single 980 is as high as I can go budget-wise. The ti cards are a bit out of reach.

Or, would two 970s give me better performance than a single 980? I may be able to find some used or refurb for only a little more than a single 980.

I appreciate the overclock advice too. I know my motherboard has a lot of features for that, which I haven't yet explored. I had no idea the unlocked chips could get THAT much of a clock speed increase.

 

[TeknoBug]

Nope, 960 is a nice card but it'll choke, it only has a 128bit memory pipe too.

Out of the mentioned cards, hunt down an R9 290X 8GB too as an option. 🙂

 

[Ancalagon44]

What sort of PSU and case do you have? Does your motherboard support SLI?

You could look at it, if you can get two 970s for the price of one 980, that would be your best bet in terms of frame rate. But, remember heat, noise and power will be more of a problem with SLI. Up to you.