My guess is you're running your cpu + ram at stock speed? In cpu dependent games, that's going to bottleneck you no matter how many graphics cards you put in your rig. Try oc'ing your cpu up a little higher. You don't have to go crazy, it's pretty straightforward to get it to 4.3ghz and will give you a noticeable performance boost in games like Bioshock & FarCry.
Asus RIVBE • i7 4930K @ 4.7ghz • 8gb Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133 CL8
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Phanteks Enthoo Primo w/ custom watercooling:
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2xSLI EVGA GTX 770 SC • Creative X-Fi Titanium • 2x 840 SSD + 1TB Seagate Hybrid
EVGA Supernova 1300W• Asus VG278H & nVidia 3d Vision
Phanteks Enthoo Primo w/ custom watercooling:
XSPC Raystorm (cpu & gpu), XSPC Photon 170, Swiftech D5 vario
Alphacool Monsta 360mm +6x NB e-loop, XT45 360mm +6x Corsair SP120
Masterbobo wrote:
Coming from someone who believed in single card solutions, I now strongly believe in SLI. Especially 2-way SLI, every gamer should ideally have 2 grphx cards in a perfect world. In other words once you feel the power of 2 of the same cards, you'll always want 2 even in your next upgrade
That's very true. I tried to have just one gtx 770, figuring I didn't really need more power than that. But my 770 got lonely and complained, and since he's a very good gpu, I had to reward him with a friend. 😉 Now they play together all the time and they're both very happy.
Still, the OP's cpu at stock speed would be a bottleneck no matter how many graphics cards he puts in his system. SLI is only as good as the cpu/memory used to run it. OP would be well advised to clock that cpu up to at least 4.0ghz before spending any money on additional hardware.
2xSLI EVGA GTX 770 SC • Creative X-Fi Titanium • 2x 840 SSD + 1TB Seagate Hybrid
EVGA Supernova 1300W• Asus VG278H & nVidia 3d Vision
Phanteks Enthoo Primo w/ custom watercooling:
XSPC Raystorm (cpu & gpu), XSPC Photon 170, Swiftech D5 vario
Alphacool Monsta 360mm +6x NB e-loop, XT45 360mm +6x Corsair SP120
metallurch wrote:
Cheers for the advice guys, I had no idea that your CPU frequency could bottleneck your graphics performance. I'll have a read into overclocking then. I think Chino might be right about my system not running at an optimal state, My RAM is rated at 1600MHz and strangely enough it sometimes turns itself down to 1333MHz. Still I gather I would need to upgrade my RAM to something which would support much higher frequencies if I were to overclock?
All RAM natively installs itself at 1333 mhz, it's an industry standard to facilitate guaranteed compatibility with any mobo/cpu configuration. RAM that is sold as "1600" or "2133" is tested and rated by the manufacturer to be ABLE to be run at those speeds, but you have to set that speed in the bios yourself. If you just install your ram and don't manually set it to the higher "rated" speed, it will run at 1333 because that's what it's designed to do until you tell it to do otherwise.
No, you do not need to upgrade your ram to facilitate cpu overclocking. 1600 is a perfectly reasonable ram speed.
Overclocking your cpu won't be hard, you don't have to aim for the stars (although it's certainly fun to do so!), just aim for a nice simple 4.3 ghz, most (all?) 3820's can do that pretty easy. Just read the "easy oc" sticky at the top of this forum, it's a good guide to start with. 🙂
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Phanteks Enthoo Primo w/ custom watercooling:
XSPC Raystorm (cpu & gpu), XSPC Photon 170, Swiftech D5 vario
Alphacool Monsta 360mm +6x NB e-loop, XT45 360mm +6x Corsair SP120
HiVizMan wrote:
With the 3820 you might have to use the 125 strap to get a solid 4.4GHz as the multi of the CPU does not go that high.
Try 105 x 42 (BCLK x ratio) first, changing the strap to 125 can be tricky. If your chip won't do 105 (most will), then you could try changing the strap (or just go with 100 x 43, which should yield you plenty of power to break the bottleneck). Good luck! 🙂
2xSLI EVGA GTX 770 SC • Creative X-Fi Titanium • 2x 840 SSD + 1TB Seagate Hybrid
EVGA Supernova 1300W• Asus VG278H & nVidia 3d Vision
Phanteks Enthoo Primo w/ custom watercooling:
XSPC Raystorm (cpu & gpu), XSPC Photon 170, Swiftech D5 vario
Alphacool Monsta 360mm +6x NB e-loop, XT45 360mm +6x Corsair SP120
