Advice for those considering triple monitors or a GTX 980

[FireFox500]

I recently purchased a GTX 980 from MSI and aside from looking stunning it is an absolute beast of a card. If you have the money and want to fly DCS on 3 screens (or just 1) this has got you covered. I play triple 1920x1080 monitors with setting on high-ultra (tree and clutter is turned to about half tho) at around 30-40 fps depending on where I am. I have not tested this card on any games in triple surround other than DCS and X-Plane 10.

 

TIPS:

 

I have an XPS 8700 from Dell with an i7 4790, 1TB HDD, (now) GTX 980, and 32Gb of RAM (upgraded), this computer was not meant to take huge cards like the 980. MAKE SURE TO MEASURE YOUR CARD, I measured mine and I still had to cut part of my case innards to make it fit, make a mock up of the card of out of cardboard it if you have to, but MAKE SURE it fits otherwise you will be in for a world of extra setup time and less time to try out your shiny new GPU.

 

Make sure (if you care about aesthetics) that you have ample room for cable management, I have my 2 8pin power connectors smashed against my side panel because my case is rather small and it has no side glass so you cannot see the absolute **** fest of cables inside:music_whistling:

 

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:

 

My computers BIOS was out of date by several years (1 BIOS update), the card was very finicky and would not display a picture unless taken out, booted, shut down, put GPU back in and booted. The BIOS update fixed this.

 

I removed the NVIDIA drivers and reinstalled them as I thought maybe that was the issue with it not giving a picture. That may have helped and it might not have, so if you are having issues it may be a driver thing (however I highly doubt it)

 

 

So, if you are asking yourself should i buy a 980, the answer is; if you have the money, YES! It is a great card and will preform very well even at massive 5760x1080 like I run, I realize that Pascal is soon to arrive so I would honestly go for one of those as it can only be better. Also, if you are considering 3 monitors, I love my 2 Samsung S24D390s and single Samsung S23B550, they aren't new but they are awesome and look great while gaming. They are AMAZING for productivity, I can have a movie on one screen, Photoshop on the next and google on the next. I personally wish to upgrade to dual 34 inch Lg 34UC88-Bs only because of the higher resolution, thin bezel, and awesome screensplit software, plus it gets rid of a lot of wires. I don'd do much besides game so I could live with just on monitor but just being able to free up a monitor and do something else is super helpful.

 

 

Hope this helps,

FireFox500