Has SLI support gotten better?

Hornet

Hornet

Supreme [H]ardness
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I've been thinking of getting 2 GTX 1070 in SLi instead of one GTX 1080, but I'm unsure about how good the support for SLI is these days. In short, is SLI worth it?

My last experience with multi GPU was with the GTX 295 which was a long time ago. How are the support these days, are they getting better?

Thanks
 
Same advice holds true. Buy the single fastest single card you can afford. You will have more issues and be disappointed with SLI/X fire. Neither have linear scaling. Both still suffer from poor driver support for games. Many instances you will get driver support for a game months after the game is released. In the mean time you will be playing on a single card.

Actually the scaling is so bad, nvidia pulled the plug on any more than 2 cards. You have to contact them now for special software unlocks if you want to use more than 2 cards in SLI. That should tell you something.
 
jmilcher said:
Same advice holds true. Buy the single fastest single card you can afford. You will have more issues and be disappointed with SLI/X fire. Neither have linear scaling. Both still suffer from poor driver support for games. Many instances you will get driver support for a game months after the game is released. In the mean time you will be playing on a single card.

Actually the scaling is so bad, nvidia pulled the plug on any more than 2 cards. You have to contact them now for special software unlocks if you want to use more than 2 cards in SLI. That should tell you something.
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This times 1000. Buy a single 1080 then grab the next "king" when it comes out. Just read a bullshit rumor that said August for the next Titan, but it has so many illogical "facts".
 
If you decide to jump into SLI/Crossfire, buy as much of a card as you can afford to fall back to. In the event that SLI/Crossfire doesn't work, that will be your baseline performance that you can count on. :)
 
Nope, its gotten worse. I have literally had to wait upwards of a month or more after release for SLI support, hell some games promise SLI never even deliver support or half ass it giving you either a performance decrease or some miniscule amount. Stopped going SLI with my latest upgrade.
 
jmilcher said:
Actually the scaling is so bad, nvidia pulled the plug on any more than 2 cards. You have to contact them now for special software unlocks if you want to use more than 2 cards in SLI. That should tell you something.
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3-way and 4-way SLI have ALWAYS been bad. People buy those setups for 1) e-peen or 2) benchmarking or 3) both. No one buying that many cards ever expects much support. One must consider that developers these day (by and large) have issues supporting ONE card let alone TWO or more. AAA releases like the Battlefield series will always support multi-card very well (up to 2, although 3 and 4 were OK) but otherwise 2-way SLI has not gotten worse in my opinion. It's just as good as it always has been which is to say one must have patience and plan to use things like NVIDIA Inspector to "hack" around and get SLI to work (yours truly does it for ARK).

I did 4-way for the 6xx series, downgraded to 3-way for the TITAN (original), and from there went 2-way the rest of the way.
 
As said above, SLI support has steadily gotten worse. I am running a now long in the tooth SLI 670 setup, and many new titles simply don't have SLI profiles any longer and it seems is not a priority to Nvidia despite user requests. I would go single card now if possible.
 
loafer87gt said:
As said above, SLI support has steadily gotten worse. I am running a now long in the tooth SLI 670 setup, and many new titles simply don't have SLI profiles any longer and it seems is not a priority to Nvidia despite user requests. I would go single card now if possible.
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It's seems to be just as bad for current cards also.

Synthetic benchmarks are one thing, but actual scaling performance just really isn't there.

Thankfully many single high end cards perform well enough to be used solo.
 
As others have stated, overall support has actually weakened over the years. So much so that Nvidia themselves have dropped support for 3 and 4 way SLI with new cards, and it is very likely they will never support it with new generations either. That is very telling.
 
My GTX 1070's are working great in the very limited selection of games I'm playing at the moment: The Division and BF4. My last SLI setup was GTX 460's (with many single-card setups in between) and SLI worked great with those as well. For the most part I really only play AAA games so YMMV.
 
I've had decent luck with my 690 and SLI support in the games I played over the last 4 years, but it was not perfect. For the latest example, the new DOOM required a manual tweak to get it working. It usually flickers some textures on first load into the game, but quickly goes away and works fine. That said, I have a 1080FE on its way to me due to the 2 FPS I get sometimes (graphics settings are too high, apparently, so the 690 chokes - sometimes it recovers, sometimes it doesn't and I have to quit the game). 2GB video memory just doesn't cut it any more, especially at 1600p. I'm hoping a single 1080 will be decent at 2560x1600.
 
I have SLI on 980Ti's, but this card has mature drivers. Newer stuff like the 10x0s will have more SLI driver issues day 1.
I don't buy games or new tech on until drivers mature and patches are released, so I miss out on most of the early adopter SLI headaches.
 
arestavo said:
As others have stated, overall support has actually weakened over the years. So much so that Nvidia themselves have dropped support for 3 and 4 way SLI with new cards, and it is very likely they will never support it with new generations either. That is very telling.
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It only tells me that they want to sell more Titans to the people the want a single powerful card. Because of this, they're able to charge $1K+. We routinely bought whatever x70 card Nvidia released to beat the x80 card at lower price/perf. Now we are paying higher price/perf in the top end of cards. You better believe Nvidia listens to what we say and will make us pay handsomely for it.

980Ti's are going for $350-400 one year later, down from $650-750. When it comes to Nvidia, the patient customer is rewarded.
 
WorldExclusive said:
It only tells me that they want to sell more Titans to the people the want a single powerful card. Because of this, they're able to charge $1K+. We routinely bought whatever x70 card Nvidia released to beat the x80 card at lower price/perf. Now we are paying higher price/perf in the top end of cards. You better believe Nvidia listens to what we say and will make us pay handsomely for it.
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Those that can afford it are. Those that can't will hold on to what they have longer - not much of a win for Nvidia, and it probably ends up as a wash overall.
 
Ever since my 2 580's in 2010/11 I had single GPU setups and now I'm back to SLI with 2 GTX1080 FE's for about 4 weeks and everything works great. GTAV, BF4, Crysis 3, Dark Souls 3, Witcher 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge Catalyst, all running well without any problems. The only game that doesn't work for me is Anno 2205. With that new dual link HB bridge on Pascal cards SLI is probably as good as it can be.
 
WorldExclusive said:
It only tells me that they want to sell more Titans to the people the want a single powerful card. Because of this, they're able to charge $1K+. We routinely bought whatever x70 card Nvidia released to beat the x80 card at lower price/perf. Now we are paying higher price/perf in the top end of cards. You better believe Nvidia listens to what we say and will make us pay handsomely for it.

980Ti's are going for $350-400 one year later, down from $650-750. When it comes to Nvidia, the patient customer is rewarded.
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I am not sure whether that's even a reward, since 980ti is beaten by 1070 while not costing that much more, as well as having longer driver support on pascal than what's left of Maxwell, unless you are buying a second card for SLI (in which case a second 980ti would be a TON better than changing to 1070).

If 980ti had been better than 1070, maybe 980ti wouldn't gotten so cheap either. Maybe the fact that 980ti got driven down to near 970 prices is because how 1070 performs.
 
arestavo said:
Those that can afford it are. Those that can't will hold on to what they have longer - not much of a win for Nvidia, and it probably ends up as a wash overall.
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Or they go to AMD - with cards like the RX 480 at a great price point.
 
SLI 1070 will stomp all over that 1080. Go for it. 1 in 50 games DON'T support SLI. The rest do. And for the ones that don't, USUALLY a single card will run the game fine anyways ;).
 
DrLobotomy said:
SLI | GeForce
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There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of PC games. EDIT: This list seems more all inclusive. Hell, the letter "A" has 12 pages alone - almost 1200 games! - PC Games from A-Z by Title at Metacritic Edit2: Did a really rough count, and there are ~19,100 PC games on that list, and I'm fairly sure even they missed some.

There are 364 SLI "supported" games in your Nvidia link.

You should do the math again, because it isn't even 1 in 50 games that support SLI. Edit3: By my math, that's ~1.9% of all games, or just under 1 in 50 games supported!
 
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I remember waiting for Fallout 4 to come out, getting home tired yet excited at midnight after working a late shift, installing it and finding out, that my 660ti sli doesn't work in sli and the game runs like crap or I have to turn the settings way down. Then taking time to find the answers online on how to fix the damn thing, downloading software and changing a few bits that nvidia (or whoever) couldn't be bothered with. My first few hours spent eith FO4 were troubleshooting, ot actually playing it. "Traumatizing", I know. I bought a 980ti and said "never again" to sli.
I ran 9600gt sli, 460sli and 660ti sli - every time it was the same. Games worked, but you had to fiddle with them a lot and even then there were some that just refused to work.
In the end, sli seems to not work out of the box quite often and if you want/have the time to try to make 'em run - go for it. But with single gpu solutions getting capable of running new games at max settings at high resolutions it seems sli is needed only by people with 4k or high refresh rate monitors. If you are running 1440p or 1080p/1200p you should be very happy with a gtx1080 or it may even be overkill.
A single powerful gpu feels "premium" - performance is good and everything just works. With sli even though performance may be better, you are often reminded of the fact that it's a constant work in progress.
 
I'm going to echo the many others here since it bears repeating: always go with the single fastest card you can get as opposed to going multi-GPU. After 12+ years of experience with many, many SLI and Crossfire setups, I've come to the conclusion it's just not worth it. The only time Crossfire or SLI is worthwhile is if there is absolutely no single-card solution that's good enough for the resolution you're using (and even then I'd almost rather downgrade my IQ): the only scenario I can think that fits currently is >4k.

And yes, SLI/Crossfire support has gotten progressively worse over the past couple years (there was a time when at least some level of SLI/Crossfire support was nearly a given in big titles -- no more). Further, those "supported games" list don't tell the whole story as you're likely to run into other issues (stuttering, flickering, bad scaling etc.) in many of those "supported" games.
 
I say grab the single fastest card you can, and if at that point, you have extra dollars and want more perf, buy two. Buying two cards is only ever an option if the performance of one top-end card is not enough for you.
 
The million dollar question then is: if 1080 is not enough, would one SLI 1070's? Considering those two (1 1080 vs 2 1070) are pretty close in terms of cost.
 
I came from Xfire 290's -- and my main and only requirement was a SINGLE card solution. Got so sick of driver and dev issues, it sucked a lot of the fun out of gaming.

My 1070 rocks at 1440p for GTA5 and BF4, and later in the year BF1. Even if I had money falling out of my ass I wouldn't want to mess with SLI/Xfire ever again. +1 for fastest single card you can afford.
 
KazeoHin said:
I say grab the single fastest card you can, and if at that point, you have extra dollars and want more perf, buy two. Buying two cards is only ever an option if the performance of one top-end card is not enough for you.
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Totally this.
 
collegeboy69us said:
...it sucked a lot of the fun out of gaming.
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That's pretty much the best description of the experiences I've had with SLI/Crossfire.

Also, apart from the driver/support issues, one thing not many reviews will tell you is just getting certain games to run (without disabling a card) is difficult, even some of those that are supposedly supported. Even after the games had been out for a year+, I would get random initialization issues/crashes in FC4, Watch Dogs, FO3, Skyrim and a number of others when running 295x2 and 970 SLI.
 
Works great with Overwatch. I couldn't believe the game actually shows "GTX 980 SLI" as my video card. Impressive.

But unfortunately, it's very hit and miss if SLI works correctly with a game... especially the cheap console ports. Those are notoriously bad.
 
From reviews ive seen in the games that support SLI the scaling is quite bad when you add the second 1070 ad can change based on what resolution you are running (with scaling being the worst at 4k) most games have 50% or less scaling when the second card is added but again the drivers will improve and those numbers should get better (eventually)
 
I'll chime in and say I have gone SLI or Crossfire now for the last 8 years now and have never had an issue. I've always had great performance scaling as well, so with all these people bashing it you have to consider that your usage may vary from theirs. I stick to mostly AAA games, and like somebody else mentioned, most non-AAA games don't need much power anyways, so the issues seem contained to very specific games.

I'll repeat, in 8 years of gaming I have not had a single issue with SLI, and will certainly be going SLI the next time. I would encourage you to consider what games you'll be playing and if they support SLI ahead of time. Plus if you're running high res/high Hz you'll need 2 of the top cards to get the best experience.
 
Also a fan of SLI, however, really into VR right now and unfortunately there is *zero* SLI support in current VR with the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive.

I just wish there was a single card that was fully 4K capable with all the eye candy turned on right now, but their simply isn't yet. Perhaps the 1080Ti or 1080 Titan may change that once they arrive on the scene.
 
I used to own a pair of original Titans before switching to GTX1080 and I game at 1600p. Get SLI only when you absolutely need it(e.g. 4k). Support is getting worse and I will give you some examples. Batman Arkham Knight dropped SLI despite all previous games in the series supports SLI. Fallout 4, Assassin's creed, using the same engine as previous games still did not support SLI for the first 2 months. DOOM, a new game still do not have a SLI profile after 4 months (you can turn on AFR but it is unstable and may crash your game). I have also never heard of any game running DX12 or UWP games supports SLI. I have no expectation for upcoming games like watch dog 2, titanfall 2 since the previous game did not have SLI.
 
So, I've ran SLI for years. Currently running GTX 1080 SLI. Because I am gaming at a huge 7680x1440 Surround resolution (and at 144Hz on top of that) I really need the power. So, for me, SLI makes sense. You do get games here and there that don't support it, but I find that many popular games do get a benefit.

In the games that work, you actually get really nice scaling on 1080/1070, particularly at 4K (or higher). Just look at the benchmarks.

index.php

GeForce GTX 1070 2-way SLI review

If you are gaming on 1080p, it's probably not worth messing with SLI. And you do run into odd driver bugs, flickering, stutter, etc. I won't lie. For me it's worth it, though.
 
SLI isn't nearly as 'bad' as it used to be in terms of support (both from games and Nvidia themselves), but after running two 970s in SLI over the last 5 or 6 months I'm glad to be moving back to a single card solution for now. SLI still has it's umm.... eccentricities and complications.
 
I'd recommend getting what you can afford and just be happy with it. I'll be sticking to SLI flagship cards for the foreseeable future since I want to have decent performance at 4k, and I don't mind at all having to edit profiles to find working SLI compatibility bits, etc, to get games working. If I run into a game that REALLY doesn't support SLI, then that's fine, I don't mind dropping the resolution, that's what I have my backup 120Hz 1080p monitor for, and by having bought top-end cards, I'll still have plenty of performance to drive it.

Gaming is a hobby after all. Have fun throwing money at it. Or don't.
 
I was really considering SLI but the support really isn't there because it will take months before the drivers are optimized. Single best card is best for sure. I ran a tri-fire r9 290x setup before and it always had some issues here and there.
 
Too much of a headache. First time in a long time I'm not running SLI/CF. Picked up a single 1080 to replace the 980 sli. Couldn't be happier. Playing on 4k resolution.
 
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