Hello all, As the title says, I am planning to build a 1440p Gsync rig for gaming, preferably 144Hz. Aside for that, I also want it to be ITX form factor for portability reasons and because I have no need for anything extra but the GPU & M.2 SSD. Although I have some ideas for hardware, this will be my first completely new PC build in almost 8 years. The x58 platform has served me very well, but it is time for retirement. Here are the components I have chosen so far: CPU - I7 8700k CPU Cooler - Corsair H115i (Already own, reusing) Mobo - Gigabyte Z370N ITX RAM - 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 4000 SSD (OS) - Samsung 960 EVO 250GB M.2 SSD (Storage) - Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SATA3 (Already own, reusing) Case - NZXT Manta PSU - Corsair HX850i (Already own, reusing) I am still deciding on which GPU to buy. Would a standard GTX 1080 suffice, or should I go for the Ti version with the high refresh rate in mind?
That's a pretty hefty 980 Ti then, playing everything at 144FPS... Mine doesn't. If you want consistently high FPS on 1440p, I'd go with the 1080 Ti.
This is what I figured. Even though I am currently CPU limited, I can tell that I would need to make sacrifices to push consistently high framerates with a 1440p 144/165Hz Gsync monitor using my 980 Ti. The 980 Ti is in the same performance range as the GTX 1070, but I don't see anyone recommending that for 1440p 144Hz at max details. Looks like I'll be saving up for a 1080 Ti.
Not sure about the perf of your Xeon, but on my i5 2500K @ 4.2GHz, I'm GPU-limited with my 980 Ti at 1440p in most games. (There's always some exception where one game or the other will be CPU-limited or RAM-speed limited.) Use DSR to test. I forgot which DSR ratio gives you 1440p on a 1080p monitor. Should be close to 1.78x (1440p is a 78% higher resolution than 1080p, so the perfect DSR ratio is probably 1.78.) You will probably need to reboot since changing DSR sometimes doesn't have an effect until reboot. Then, you should be able to choose a resolution in-game that is very close to 2560x1440. Using this method, you will get an extremely good idea of how your 980 Ti will perform with a 1440p monitor. The downscaling overhead of DSR is minimal (1-2FPS at worst). In theory, you should be GPU-limited in most games. But again, I'm not familiar with the perf of your Xeon.
Even with a 1080Ti hitting 144 FPS is probably going to require turning down a few settings for the newer games, still a really powerful GPU though doing incredibly well in most games and turning down something like shadows one notch isn't going to kill image quality. Not sure what to use as a example but Frostbite tends to get praise for it's optimization at least for games from Dice themselves so Battlefront 2 and it's performance comparison from this website perhaps. http://www.guru3d.com/articles_page..._pc_graphics_analysis_benchmark_review,5.html G-Sync is definitively going to help too, not sure what else to suggest as you're basically putting together one of the fastest systems currently possible with the newest or fastest hardware available. Only thing that might need some more in-depth look into would be the actual monitor to choose then and my knowledge in this area is very limited so not much I can suggest though I know there's a pretty good selection available by now including TFT, IPS and VA for panel types that can do 144hz though then there's features such as HDMI or DP specs, G-Sync range and the new feature of HDR. Good luck, system definitively sounds like it will last quite a while too, pretty impressive upgrade actually.
There is no card on the planet that can run all games at 1440p/144Hz at max settings. Just get a 1080Ti now and then a 1180Ti when it comes out next year (that's what I'll do). Don't go SLI though - sure in a select few games you'll benefit but in most you wont so it will just be a waste of money of you look at the big picture.
Which game you aim for? Unless its something very specific, as guys said - there isn't a single card which currently exists that can deliver Constant 142fps across the board. But 1080Ti should allow you to get that much close to it. You can as well dwell into murky SLI world, but it gets worse by the day.
Yeah, I went SLI back in the 8800 GTX days and vowed never to do it again. Like you said, very few games truly benefit and those that do generally don't scale well.