My "upgrade" 670 SLI to 980 Ti. Plus some questions, what are you getting in ARK ?

[Mithan]

Ok, so my upgrade ended up being a real blast (Rolls eyes). I found out after I got the damn Gigabyte 980 Ti G1 and went to install it in the case that it is 12" long. I just assumed it was 10.5" like most other 980 Ti cards. Ooopppssss! My case (Antec P160W) only fits 11" cards.

Here is my fun time installing this all, plus my "boot up" disaster.

So, what was I upgrading?
-Removing 2 eVGA 670 FTW SLI cards.
-Removing a Corsair 750TX PSU
-Installing a eVGA 750W G1 PSU
-Installing a Gigabyte 980 Ti


What was my system?
-Asus P8P67 Pro
-Sandy Bridge Core i5 2500K (OC'ed to 4.3Ghz)
-8Gb 1600mhz Gskill
-Samsung 840 Pro 240GB
-Mushkin 480GB Game Drive
-WD Raptor 600GB
-2 eVGA 670 FTW SLI Cards
-Corsair 750TX PSU
-Creative Labs Extreme Music (about 13 years old)
-Samsung Blu-Ray Burner
-Antec P160W Case

Common settings:
Core i5 2500k at 4.3Ghz
Memory at 1600mhz
I was OCing the 670 SLI to about 16% over their factory over clock, I forget exactly what they were hitting.


Here is my system pre-modifications and upgrade. I keep the cables fairly clean, but I had gotten sloppy the last few times I was in the system. Yes, I double side tape my SSD's to the chasis.

The cards all layed out on the table after I removed the 670's and empty system:

My ooops moment, where I realized the G1 is bigger than my damn case allows. I actually called the local PC store to see if they were going to wait for me, but it was 6:40 and would take me 15 minutes to get to the store. They said they wouldn't wait, so I decided I was going to dremel the damn thing instead. Screw it.

I went out and got my dremel tool. I also got a little lazy. I didn't want to remove all this shit from the case, so I decided to wrap everything in plastic then use my 8gallon air compressor to blow it all clean later on. I knew the risks were high of causing future issues from aluminium grindings getting into the system, but.,.. whatever.

The case with some of the hard drive cage cut out:

The G1 installed, along with the eVGA PSU. All finished.

So, I went to boot this sucker up.... and.,... blank screen.

WTF!
Check the power cables... check. Do a restart... same thing.

I immediately removed the 980 Ti G1 and put in my old 670 and the system booted up fine.

Now WTF?!?

I put the 980 Ti G1 in a couple more times, same thing. I moved the cards power cables to VGA 3 and 4 incase the eVGA 750 G1 power supply has a faulty rail, no change.

So I assumed the 980 Ti G1 is bad. I mean, what else could it be right?

I put the 670 Ti back into my system and reboot and did a quick google search because... why the hell not.

Well, first few threads I find on Google are about people with the same card but older motherboards needing to do a full factory default reset on the Motherboard.

So, I reboot again into the Asus UEFI bios and do a factor reset, then I stick the stupid 980 Ti card back into the system and reboot...

The Bios finally comes up on the screen. YAY!!! Its working!

In retrospect, I had that same issue happen to me about 10 years ago when installing an nVidia 8800GT.



But wait, there is MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The system boots up, and I am eager to go turn on ARK: Survival Evolved but... its not there. The image link on my Desktop is all gone. Im like WTF? Did I forget to plug the hard drive in? Check Windows Explorer, and my Mushkin 480 drive (my Steam Drive) is gone.

Sigh. Reseat the cables and reboot. Nothing.
Move the Blu-Ray cable down to the hard drive and reboot. Its working.
Reseat the old cable again. Not working.
Replace the damn cable. Not working.
Reseat the new cable again. Working.

Its possible I nicked the sata cable with the dremel, hard to say. Or its just wearing out on the connector.



Anyways, install complete!




Now, benchmarks:

As I said above, my old cards were eVGA 670 FTW SLI. I play 1200p, with the Core i5 2500k OC'ed to 4.3Ghz and no OCing on the video card.
-In Assassin's Creed Unity on "high" settings, I was getting about 15-25 FPS and it was choppy as all hell.
-ARK gave me about 15-25 FPS on "Medium" settings.

The 980 Ti upgrade kicked the crap out of my eVGA 670 FTW's in SLI:
-ACU on the same settings and roof top, gave me a solid 60FPS. No drops, nothing. Easily a 3 X performance increase over the 670 SLI.
-ARK at the "medium" settings was 60FPS, so I cranked this bitch up to EPIC settings, and I get a 35-40 FPS.


So, I am very happy. I was VERY hesitant before I bought the 980 Ti, thinking the SLI would be almost the same performance. Man was I wrong. The difference is huge. I am very happy with the upgrade.





So questions:
For anybody with ARK and a 980 Ti, on Epic Settings, what do you get for FPS? Should I be getting more than 35-40?


Thanks!

 

[neatfeatguy]

Glad you're enjoying the new toy. I also didn't check the length of the Zotac GTX 980Ti AMP! Omega card I got. I thought about after the fact. Much to my surprise, it's just shy of 13" long (I think it's 12.92").

Thankfully I have a full tower and my hard drive bays aren't in so I had plenty of room, but I was thinking if I didn't get my new tower, she wouldn't have fit without doing what you did - cutting out the hard drive bay.

 

[Silverforce11]

Ark doesn't have multi-GPU support, its engine doesn't do it. Also Kepler & AMD run it like donkey. Very similar to Project Cars in heavy rain and 20 AI cars doing burnouts next to you, just because.

Also, thanks for the fun write up! That old Sandy Bridge still got some kick in it!

 

[moonbogg]

Congrats on the card. I have had so many situations like yours where things stop working for no reason and then start working again for no apparent reason. Very confusing but I just forget about it and move on so long as its working.
I expected maybe a 1.5 to 2x increase in performance when going from 670s to 980tis, but I also notice the increase is often around 3x faster. Hell of an upgrade and if you OC that card you will be a good bit faster as well.

 

[psolord]

Congrats on the new build and have fun with it.

Also guys never forget that that when comparing dual gpus vs single next gen gpus, that you have freed valuable cpu resources since the cpu is now controlling one card.

Especially in games like AC:U that eat cpus for breakfast.

And of course lets not forget the greatly expanded framebuffer of the 980Ti.

I've seen AC:U hitting 3.5GB+ vram usage easily on my 970 and without maxed out settings.

 

[Stuka87]

Ark is such a horribly optimized game, I would not expect outstanding performance from it.

 

[thesmokingman]

Ark is such a horribly optimized game, I would not expect outstanding performance from it.

This. It was the first time and so far only I ever used Steam Refund.

 

[DownTheSky]

I don't think your SLI was working in those 2 games.

 

[Mithan]

I don't think your SLI was working in those 2 games.

All the more reason to get rid of it.