GTX 780, Skyrim, and You :)

[Gravatrax]

Hello all, was wondering if anyone has got a 780 and been playing skyrim modded out to the core of course, I currently run a 670 and it does thing very well, I have my game decked out with mods, (lighting, suble, enb, i removed the grass mod I had it was just too much, textures, etc. etc.) All in all I get pretty high fps (always above 60, usually higher) in interiors, but on exteriors it ultimately varies, I'd say I hang around between 40-60 fps, I have a 144hz monitor so I would like to take advantage of the high fps smoothness. Anyways any testimonials? Obviously I'm not getting it just for skyrim but i figurecd when used in this applciation it benefits highly from the 3gb as well as significantly upgradedd memory bandwidth, (in comparison to my 670)

[FMod]

Skyrim is CPU bound in 90%+ of the cases, not GPU bound.

 

Replacing 670 with 780 - leaving aside what a waste of money it is versus buying a second 670 (2x670 will leave Titan and 780 eating dust) - could help you bring 70 fps up to 100, but not 50 up to 70.

 

As for testimonials, 2x680 Lightning (about 180% the power of a stock 780), Skyrim is still a sub-60 fps game.

[Gravatrax]

Meh not happening, I'd rather do single GPU and avoid the issues surrounding dual card setups.

[FMod]

The few aging games that still have problems with SLI are perfectly satisfied by a 560Ti, let alone a 670.

[Gravatrax]

Does skyrim not suffer form issues such as Micro-stuttering? I thought initially it did (but what new release doesn't)

[ZeroKing]

Probable reason for microstutter: bad engine implementation.

 

If you are bent on getting a 700 series card, save your money and get a GTX 770 instead (since you don't want multi-GPU configuration). A GTX 780 is a waste of money for a game like Skyrim..... maybe some more GPU-bound games will gain benefit with a GTX 780, but the performance/price benefit is low with CPU-bound games like Skyrim.

 

I'd still go with 2x GTX 670 config in SLI.

Edited July 21, 2013 by ZeroKing

[FMod]

Microstutter is inherent in multi-GPU rendering. It happens when one frame arrives in 1/60 of a second for display refresh and the other doesn't, skipping a refresh. Some games do worse in this regard than others, of course.

 

It doesn't happen at high fps, i.e. if the frametime for both cards is under 1/30 of a second.

It's significantly reduced by using fps limiters (Bandicam) to allow for more consistent frametimes.

It's also reduced with 120+ fps displays, since the mismatch delay is shortened.

Finally, since your GPU only renders 40-60 fps and your display refreshes at 144, you are already getting the same small amount of micro-stutter on your display, just don't realize it.

 

Skyrim isn't likely to be bottlenecked by your 670 anyway; it's CPU-heavy. And if it's CPU limited, it won't run any faster/smoother on a 780 or Titan or whatever.

 

P.S. And there's no law that makes you run AFR SLI just because you have two cards. You can, for instance, use SLI AA instead, getting a bit better performance and better image quality than a single card, with no concerns about microstutter, since only one card renders.

Edited July 21, 2013 by FMod

[kalikka]

Doesn't skyrim have game-engine limitations on fps? Meaning that everything (ingame clock/etc) goes wrong if fps is set higher than 60.

[Vecna6667]

Doesn't skyrim have game-engine limitations on fps? Meaning that everything (ingame clock/etc) goes wrong if fps is set higher than 60.

 

The limitation is that Vsync is enabled by default and you are only able to toggle it in the Skyrimprefs.ini file by adding iPresentInterval=0 to the bottom of the [Display] section, or you can try to get the graphics card to ignore the ingame setting in the game's profile of the NVidia Control Panel or the Catalyst Control Center. Vsync tries the match the frames displayed per second to the monitor's refresh rate so getting greater than 60 frames per second is a matter of having a monitor with a refresh rate greater than 60 MHz.