What's the point of SLI now that barely any new games support it properly?

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May 10, 2016
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All the games that really could benefit from it (I.E. poorly optimized ports) don't even support it. Dead Rising 3, Quantum Break... I'm looking at you. These two games won't be able to run at 4K/60 FPS until we get some super futuristic card like GTX 1280 Ti's...

And then you just have a slew of new AAA games that aren't necessarily poorly optimized, but the developers can't be arsed to implement SLI anymore.

Batman: Arkham Knight, idTech 5 games (DOOM, Rage, Wolfenstein: The New Order & The Old Blood) are examples. No SLI support *at all* in these recent titles and they're not even DirectX 12 games!

And then there's the new games that do implement it have shoddy implementations that instead of increasing performance 80-95% like it used to only increase performance by less than 40%. Fallout 4, Far Cry Primal and Assassin's Creed Syndicate are great examples of garbage SLI performance increases. I only got a 10 FPS increase in Syndicate by turning on SLI...

It seems like the number of new games supporting the technology and supporting it properly (delivering a 80%+ framerate boost) are extremely rare now. Rise of the Tomb Raider, the Battlefields, Battlefront are the only recent ones that come to mind. EA seems pretty good at supporting it so maybe Mirror's Edge Catalyst will be good for SLI too but they are like the *last one left* so I'm sure EA's good support for SLI will go out the window when they start making DX12 games.

The GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti at the very least should be powerful enough by themselves to drive slightly older games without requiring SLI anymore (I.E. pre-2016 releases like GTA V, Dying Light, Metro). SLI used to be needed to do 4K/60 FPS. Not much older stuff is going to be left that is taxing enough that it will need a 1080 or 1080 Ti in SLI to do 4K at 60 FPS all maxed out... Witcher 3 maybe?

I think the Maxwell generation is going to be the last where SLI had some usefulness. With lazy developers and DX12 killing SLI support in 90% of new games I don't see the point anymore.

I'm selling my 980 Ti's and getting a single 1080 Ti next year because I suspect that by next year you will be able to count on one hand the number of PC games which a) actually support SLI and b) which need SLI to do 4K + 60 FPS and can't achieve that on a 1080 Ti by itself.

I used to do a SLI setup always, because it was a well supported technology that yielded a considerable performance improvement in 90% of AAA's, and games that lacked SLI support were a small minority. Now it is the other way around. It is going to be weird running a machine with only one GPU in it, probably for good.
 
It's not "lazy developers", but about priorities (SLI users are a niche), deadlines and in some cases the rendering techniques used in an engine are difficult to make work with SLI. It's a shame that SLI support is no longer as strong as it was.
 
Don't forget Dells OLED running 4k120 8 bit and 4k90 at 10bit due to Dp limitations. When we have Dp1.4 cards (next generation from memory) pushing OLEDs then we'll be having something to push the new cards even more...
 
Not to contradict OP but I have a slightly different opinion and have been an SLI user for several years now (had 2 x 980's then went to 2 x Titan X's).

SLI support is very good just NOT ON LAUNCH DAY. You generally have to wait no more than a month for nvidia to issue a working SLI profile for a new title.

Have some patience and SLI has been fine to me.
 
I got news for you but ROTT has crap SLI support. I get maybe 40-50% on a 2nd 970. DCS no support. Just Cause 3 no support. VR no support. Devs are abandoning this tech in droves. I sold my 970's a few months back for a 980ti and haven't looked back. I recently inherited a machine with 970's and just sold them as well for the same reason. 2 970's have crazy GPU power but if devs aren't using them then they are worthless. I am using the funds from the 970's I just sold to buy a 1080 when I can get one to drive my VR setup if oculus ever gets their shit together and ships it to me but that's another story of FAIL altogether...
 
Some do, some dont.

As you mentioned, Just Cause 3 doesn't. I dont even know what ROTT is?

Games I play that work just fine with SLI:
Fallout 4, Far Cry 4, Star Citizen (hah!), Arma 3, Elite Dangerous, Far Cry Primal, GTA V, WarThunder, Witcher 3, The new HITMAN, The Division, the list is pretty long. In fact more new title support SLI (again, you might have to wait a month for profile) than ones that don't.

So I wouldn't say devs are abandoning this tech in droves. Whats the new big title to come out? Total War: Warhammer? I cant say off the top of my head but my guess is it will have an SLI profile within a month of launch. Whats the next big one after that? No Mans Sky? One of the most anticipated games of 2016. Im guessing that will have SLI support as well.

However, I'd say once DX12 is in all titles, traditional SLI will be dead. Seems to me DX 12 uses both cards with SLI DIS-ABLED (I have done some experiments with DX 12 and ashes of the singularity. Crap game but great for DX 12 and multi card experiments).

So once we get DX 12 in all titles, having 2 or more card will be even more useful than it is now since there wont be any need for SLI profiles anymore, both cards will simply work natively.

EDIT:

Everything I've read about the Rift says SLI works fine with it.
 
Don't forget Dells OLED running 4k120 8 bit and 4k90 at 10bit due to Dp limitations. When we have Dp1.4 cards (next generation from memory) pushing OLEDs then we'll be having something to push the new cards even more...
The 1080 is DP1.4 ready :)
 
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The 1080 is DP1.4 ready :)
Completely missed that! That's great news, forcing adoption.. hell yes. I just home AMD wont' royally screw its market strategy over with HDMI1.x and DP>1.4
 
Raja Koduri from AMD came out and admitted that AFR was dying in a recent interview. AMD is heavily betting on small, cheap to build, mid-range GPUs in multiple GPU configurations with explicit multi-adapter in DX12 and Vulkan in the next generation. Raja seemed convinced that this was manifest destiny and NV would follow suit, although obviously NV aimed at the high-end bracket with Pascal.

Briefly, explicit multi-adapter must be supported by each game engine, and allows for much better scaling and heterogeneous environments (ie, a 1080 and a fury X in the same box). This actually works in Ashes. But it does need to be supported by each game engine, so it remains to be seen if it will actually be meaningful for gamers.
 
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