Not enjoying my new 980 ti SLI

Recipe7

Recipe7

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 25, 2011
Messages
506
I recently did my first loop build, and was successful.

After resting my poor fingers with trying to get the damn fittings on, I decided to bench and play some games with my 980 tis in SLI.

I was bummed to find out that Superpostion is not supported for SLI, and nearly all the games I've played (bf1, witcher 3, gta 5) are not seeing any gains, and I am getting stuttering. What's worse is that each 980 ti that I have is stable at 1500mhz, but I can't overclock both in SLI past 1400mhz.

I have not gone SLI since my 670s some odd years ago. I knew SLI wasn't perfect, but damn it has been a horrible experience thus far with my 980 tis.

I reinstalled the latest drivers and did some research on SLI profiles. I was able to get SLI to work for the most part, but at the cost of stuttering in all games, and flickering in Witcher 3.

Am I missing something? I am on the verge of reformatting my PC and starting from scratch as I have been using my SSD for quite a while now. Will a fresh install of Windows 10 help me out?

I see that a 1080ti is pretty much 980 ti SLI... should I just go the single card route to avoid the hassle I'm experiencing now?
 
I have a similar setup (two Maxwell Titians) and it really depends on the game and resolution. The thing to note is that SLI does not reduce control latency, as each frame takes the same amount of time to render as a single card, it's just that two cards are rendering those frames. IN DOOM 2016, I get a rock solid, stutter free 60FPS at 4k, but the input latency is similar to something running at 45FPS. In some games, I have to basically tune the system like it's a single card, as multi GPU and SLI are dying technologies. Essentially, if you want the power of two 980Tis ALL THE TIME, you need to buy a single card that is twice as fast as a 980ti. :(
 
I am still running my 2 - GTX 980's in SLI and 3 monitors with no problems. I'll give my 3 monitors when they come out with a 65" to 72" Monitor. And not a tv.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm now leaning towards a 1080 ti. Anyone want to buy my 980 ti? I posted it on the for sale section =)
 
Good luck with your sale, I'm up to my neck in extra video cards, so I can't help.
 
Recipe7 said:
I was bummed to find out that Superpostion is not supported for SLI, and nearly all the games I've played (bf1, witcher 3, gta 5) are not seeing any gains, and I am getting stuttering.
Click to expand...

I have a pair of Maxwell Titan X cards - essentially high VRAM 980 Tis - and see no stuttering. Enabling Hairworks in TW3 still brings them to their knees, of course. Try not overclocking.

I see that a 1080ti is pretty much 980 ti SLI... should I just go the single card route to avoid the hassle I'm experiencing now?
Click to expand...

Yes.
 
Quartz-1 said:
I have a pair of Maxwell Titan X cards - essentially high VRAM 980 Tis - and see no stuttering. Enabling Hairworks in TW3 still brings them to their knees, of course. Try not overclocking.
Click to expand...

Did you start off your SLI with a fresh install of windows 10? You think it will help me out?
 
Recipe7 said:
Did you start off your SLI with a fresh install of windows 10? You think it will help me out?
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but I've no idea if it will help you. My cards aren't overclocked and have the stock coolers.
 
Ive not seen stuttering nor flickering with 980sli nor 1080sli..

Are you running with msi afterburner open on the screen at the same time?? I've seen that cause stuttering in the past back when.

I use evga's precision x to over clock them. Though there evga brand cards.

A fresh start can't burnt if ya used different cards in the past on the same OS instsll.

Bf1 should be butter smooth in sli.. what's the rest of your system specs?
 
Overclocking is always limited to your weakest card. Though really if both card were getting 1500 you should still be hitting 1500 unless one card needs more voltage to get there.

Water cooling both cards? If not the 2nd card could be cooking the first card and the reason why you can't overclock as high from the heat.
 
eclypse said:
Ive not seen stuttering nor flickering with 980sli nor 1080sli..

Are you running with msi afterburner open on the screen at the same time?? I've seen that cause stuttering in the past back when.

I use evga's precision x to over clock them. Though there evga brand cards.

A fresh start can't burnt if ya used different cards in the past on the same OS instsll.

Bf1 should be butter smooth in sli.. what's the rest of your system specs?
Click to expand...

I have never had any stuttering with my 670s, that is why I am so surprised with my experience thus far with my 980tis

I actually WAS running msi afterburner but decided to uninstall it as I am running precision X at this time. I also have two evga 980 tis.

This OS has seen a 780ti as well. Either way, yes, I do feel like a fresh os would be a good idea right now. Mainly because all my games run smooth with SLI disabled. with SLI enabled, I have a number of issues which include:
1. running out of memory. Doesn't make any sense on 16gb of ram. I would just cancel the popup and continue playing until the game eventually crashed.
2. no overclocking allowed by my system without a hard crash or black screen (no blue screens though). Again, I can clock each card beyond 1500mhz when used as a single card.
3. among the ones I mentioned earlier, there are just a bunch of black screen crashes and things that are just off, like the system acting wonky after getting out of a game (slow response, typing being delayed by a couple seconds)

eclypse said:
Overclocking is always limited to your weakest card. Though really if both card were getting 1500 you should still be hitting 1500 unless one card needs more voltage to get there.

Water cooling both cards? If not the 2nd card could be cooking the first card and the reason why you can't overclock as high from the heat.
Click to expand...

Both cards and my cpu are under a loop. It is a 5820k overclocked to 4.5ghz. I am running 3 radiators, a 360, 240, and 120. Temps on CPU have not gone beyond 56C when gaming, and the first gpu is around 42-44C, and second gpu around 38-40C when gaming.
 
I would would urge caution in the move.

I had a pair of 980 ti's in SLI ... I benched every game and emailed myself the results ( yes I know a horrible way to keep data like this )

I had a chance to sell the cards for $500 for the pair and did so. So I took that money, added in the rest and bought a 1080 ti day one. In fact, meet a guy there that ended up becoming a good friend as we waited early in the morning til noon to get this card.

The whole SLI backlash is mostly bullshit. I've had nothing but SLI setups since the start even back when SLI actually meant Scan Line Interleave.

I have the benchmarks. My 1080 ti did not beat those benchmarks by leaps and bounds. In fact, the 980 ti SLI was always slightly ahead or even / trading the same FPS back and forth. It was never beaten badly. If anything the 980 ti was and has always been the clear winner, even today.

I can almost promise you that your not going to see greater performance with the 1080 ti. I'm on my 3rd 1080 ti. My personal boxes are always for sale and if I can make a profit, it's gone and I build another.

I love my 1080 ti, don't get me wrong but a pair of 980 ti's in SLI is absolutely the best band for the dollar hands down.

Now, if anyone want's to dispute this then go to youtube and watch the videos. There are 1,000's covering the 980 ti in SLI Benchmarks.

Here's a few videos showing you what i've just said.

So you have a choice here. Keep the 980 TI SLI as it will absolutely be the same experience as a single 1080 ti and save your $350 dollars.

Or, if you want to take that $350 dollars, go out and buy you a 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD.

Or, another recommendation, go buy you a 32" Curved 144hz Monitor off Amazon.

Or, buy you that shiny 1080 ti. It doesn't matter to me what you do. But I do enjoy playing Devils Advocate / Truth Slayer to Mob Mentality and make sure people get the real deal before they make any purchase.

The end result will be this however, a side grade / lateral move. it will not be an upgrade in terms of performance. The one major unseen benefit you get is you will cut about $60 dollars off your electric bill YEARLY or about $5 dollars a month.

I admit, even I will occasionally get caught up in all the 'good news' people bring me in a group setting. Just .. beware.




 
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Recipe7 said:
I have never had any stuttering with my 670s, that is why I am so surprised with my experience thus far with my 980tis

I actually WAS running msi afterburner but decided to uninstall it as I am running precision X at this time. I also have two evga 980 tis.

This OS has seen a 780ti as well. Either way, yes, I do feel like a fresh os would be a good idea right now. Mainly because all my games run smooth with SLI disabled. with SLI enabled, I have a number of issues which include:
1. running out of memory. Doesn't make any sense on 16gb of ram. I would just cancel the popup and continue playing until the game eventually crashed.
2. no overclocking allowed by my system without a hard crash or black screen (no blue screens though). Again, I can clock each card beyond 1500mhz when used as a single card.
3. among the ones I mentioned earlier, there are just a bunch of black screen crashes and things that are just off, like the system acting wonky after getting out of a game (slow response, typing being delayed by a couple seconds)



Both cards and my cpu are under a loop. It is a 5820k overclocked to 4.5ghz. I am running 3 radiators, a 360, 240, and 120. Temps on CPU have not gone beyond 56C when gaming, and the first gpu is around 42-44C, and second gpu around 38-40C when gaming.
Click to expand...

Well then it's easy.. if you have used older cards on that same OS then no doubt fresh install prob will solve it.

I'll also say don't over clock at all till you verify that the games that are known to work with sli are working butter smooth.

Also no idea what resolution your playing at but make sure it's something the 980ti can handle if your maxing out all the candy.

I know the reg 980 can't handle 2k res in titanfall with most crap maxed. Not enough memory on that 4gb card.

The 980ti is a 6GB card?
 
I would do a fresh reinstall. Also, avoid installing anything you do need.

Windows gets slower and slower.

Also, try installing Windows 10 Lite V4. Search for it on Google. Just make sure you have a legit copy of Windows 10 before doing so.


Also, since I am speaking about the 980 ti .... you know that shiny new 1070 or 1070 ti you might be considering? Yeah ... just go pick up a 980 ti for $200 to $250. Same performance. The 1070 ti should be 12 - 15fps over the 980 ti on average but at a $250 to $300 premium, it's just not worth it.
 
SixFootDuo said:
*SNIP*
Click to expand...

I was SLI user for years too, up to kepler.. my last SLI cards were GTX 780... since then everything related to multiGPU it's pretty much Shit.. you are giving terrible advice there, most modern games just doesn't like multigpu solutions, doesn't have support from devs, doesn't have profiles, or they start working first weeks and after some patch it get broken, and when it decently work then the experience it's far from Smooth even when the numbers are high the experience feel like subpar, specially when there's added terrible input lag.. you Can't never receive the same kind of smoothness and solid experience from a single card with SLI doesn't matter what you do.

I used to love my 660tis SLI I was a heavy defender on SLI those days, and still with the 780s the experience were good, after that everything it's just fail.. you can have 80FPS in SLI that feel like 45FPS with a single GPU.
 
Araxie said:
I was SLI user for years too, up to kepler.. my last SLI cards were GTX 780... since then everything related to multiGPU it's pretty much Shit.. you are giving terrible advice there, most modern games just doesn't like multigpu solutions, doesn't have support from devs, doesn't have profiles, or they start working first weeks and after some patch it get broken, and when it decently work then the experience it's far from Smooth even when the numbers are high the experience feel like subpar, specially when there's added terrible input lag.. you Can't never receive the same kind of smoothness and solid experience from a single card with SLI doesn't matter what you do.

I used to love my 660tis SLI I was a heavy defender on SLI those days, and still with the 780s the experience were good, after that everything it's just fail.. you can have 80FPS in SLI that feel like 45FPS with a single GPU.
Click to expand...

I do not consider myself a defender of SLI. I've had both and used both. Math doesn't lie. The numbers never lie. Youtube videos are real.

$350 is a good chunk of money. If this was your Brother or Uncle, a friend, what would you do? Suggest they spend $350 additional dollars ( assuming this guy gets $500 for his pair of 980 TI's ) or tell him to do a fresh reinstall and try and maintain realistic expectations?

I personally do not have a lot of room to talk here. I did the same thing he is wanting to do. But I'm honest enough with myself to say that the only good it did me was making my PC 3.5lbs lighter and saving myself $5 a month in electricity. Oh, and I had to spend $350+ additional dollars for those 2 things. it will take me 6 years to realize those cost savings in electricity @ $5 a month.

Goodluck with whatever you decide.
 
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Araxie said:
I was SLI user for years too, up to kepler.. my last SLI cards were GTX 780... since then everything related to multiGPU it's pretty much Shit.. you are giving terrible advice there, most modern games just doesn't like multigpu solutions, doesn't have support from devs, doesn't have profiles, or they start working first weeks and after some patch it get broken, and when it decently work then the experience it's far from Smooth even when the numbers are high the experience feel like subpar, specially when there's added terrible input lag.. you Can't never receive the same kind of smoothness and solid experience from a single card with SLI doesn't matter what you do.

I used to love my 660tis SLI I was a heavy defender on SLI those days, and still with the 780s the experience were good, after that everything it's just fail.. you can have 80FPS in SLI that feel like 45FPS with a single GPU.
Click to expand...

Agree with pretty much all you said. SixFoot is right in an actual number sense they are very close, but if you like playing a game that doesn't support SLI then it's going to be a big drop-off.
 
I just swapped from 980ti sli to 1080ti.

It is an improvement most of the time. The few games that had great SLI profiles took a small hit, but overall I am significantly happier that games just fucking work now.
 
Nice to see one can get about the same performance from a single 1080ti as the 980ti sli.

Guess it's gona boil down to the games he plays most. If they support sli or not. And if he can get it smoothed out after a fresh install.

If say make a restore point before installing the nvidia drivers first.

That way if you need to move to a 1080ti there won't be any chance of conflicts in the future.


Honestly wish I could go with a single 1080ti but it's not a good jump from 1080sli. Be a down grade from 1080sli in 4k from the games that support it. Would be way cheaper to water cool a single card.. but st the same time I prob wouldn't water cool the card as it's easier to air cool a single card then to slap 2 hot air cooled cards in a case.

Only move I could make now would be 1080ti sli.

Trying to hold off on the next nvidia release.

Which would be a good move for this guy as well..
 
SixFootDuo said:
I would would urge caution in the move.

I had a pair of 980 ti's in SLI ... I benched every game and emailed myself the results ( yes I know a horrible way to keep data like this )

I had a chance to sell the cards for $500 for the pair and did so. So I took that money, added in the rest and bought a 1080 ti day one. In fact, meet a guy there that ended up becoming a good friend as we waited early in the morning til noon to get this card.

The whole SLI backlash is mostly bullshit. I've had nothing but SLI setups since the start even back when SLI actually meant Scan Line Interleave.

I have the benchmarks. My 1080 ti did not beat those benchmarks by leaps and bounds. In fact, the 980 ti SLI was always slightly ahead or even / trading the same FPS back and forth. It was never beaten badly. If anything the 980 ti was and has always been the clear winner, even today.

I can almost promise you that your not going to see greater performance with the 1080 ti. I'm on my 3rd 1080 ti. My personal boxes are always for sale and if I can make a profit, it's gone and I build another.

I love my 1080 ti, don't get me wrong but a pair of 980 ti's in SLI is absolutely the best band for the dollar hands down.

Now, if anyone want's to dispute this then go to youtube and watch the videos. There are 1,000's covering the 980 ti in SLI Benchmarks.

Here's a few videos showing you what i've just said.

So you have a choice here. Keep the 980 TI SLI as it will absolutely be the same experience as a single 1080 ti and save your $350 dollars.

Or, if you want to take that $350 dollars, go out and buy you a 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD.

Or, another recommendation, go buy you a 32" Curved 144hz Monitor off Amazon.

Or, buy you that shiny 1080 ti. It doesn't matter to me what you do. But I do enjoy playing Devils Advocate / Truth Slayer to Mob Mentality and make sure people get the real deal before they make any purchase.

The end result will be this however, a side grade / lateral move. it will not be an upgrade in terms of performance. The one major unseen benefit you get is you will cut about $60 dollars off your electric bill YEARLY or about $5 dollars a month.

I admit, even I will occasionally get caught up in all the 'good news' people bring me in a group setting. Just .. beware.
Click to expand...

I am familiar with everything you are talking about, I subscribe to duderandom as well for gpu comparisons. I really want this 980ti sli setup to work. I am on the verge of saving all my files and doing a fresh install. I do have a legit key so I will not have anything to worry about. I want to go the single gpu route because of my experience so far. If the fresh install of windows doesn't work, I am going to call it quits and work towards that 1080ti


eclypse said:
Well then it's easy.. if you have used older cards on that same OS then no doubt fresh install prob will solve it.

I'll also say don't over clock at all till you verify that the games that are known to work with sli are working butter smooth.

Also no idea what resolution your playing at but make sure it's something the 980ti can handle if your maxing out all the candy.

I know the reg 980 can't handle 2k res in titanfall with most crap maxed. Not enough memory on that 4gb card.

The 980ti is a 6GB card?
Click to expand...

I really hope the fresh windows install works. I don't want to spend anymore money. I just want a smooth 120+fps in battlefield and 90+ fps in witcher 3. Everything else will fall into place for sure.

I just got the asus pg279q so I'm running at 1440p right now. Yes, 980ti is 6gb
 
"The whole SLI backlash is mostly bullshit"

You have deluded yourself. People like you will defend that crap no matter what. In the last SLI review from Techpowerup they found that 1/3 of AAA games they tested had ZERO support at all for multi gpu. And of the ones that do that does not even get into the games that have no support at launch, broken support down the road, poor scaling, stuttering, and other issues like artifacting and flickering.

You could not pay me to fool with multi gpu.
 
misterbobby said:
"The whole SLI backlash is mostly bullshit"

You have deluded yourself. People like you will defend that crap no matter what. In the last SLI review from Techpowerup they found that 1/3 of AAA games they tested had ZERO support at all for multi gpu. And of the ones that do that does not even get into the games that have no support at launch, broken support down the road, poor scaling, stuttering, and other issues like artifacting and flickering.

You could not pay me to fool with multi gpu.
Click to expand...

Well, when I was using my Fury Crossfire setup, it worked pretty good, if the game supported it. However, just like in SLI, most of the new games did not support it at all. (ROTTR was the lone exception for newer games.) Hope the OP is able to get it working though, I can just imagine how I would feel in his shoes as well.
 
Ran 7800GTX SLI long ago to help with the monster game of the time known as Crysis. SLI at that time sounds just like what many of you are echoing today. Anyone with SLI experience from that long ago is it still spotty results at best and time consuming profile and driver setup?
 
Doing a fresh install is always the best thing to do if you want to ABSOLUTELY make sure it's not a software issue. I fresh install after any major upgrade, aside from maybe RAM.
 
Last time I installed Windows on my 2 main rigs was back in 2009. Both machines have gone through major hardware changes over the past 8 years.
Maybe I am just lucky with both machines.

I am also running SLI 980's with no issues at 3440x1440.


Win-10-app-install-date.jpg
Win-10-app-install-date2.jpg
 
Try again after using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) and reinstall the drivers. I have never seen a plug in play of SLI work without using DDU first and reinstalling the NVidia drivers.
 
Zepher said:
I am also running SLI 980's with no issues at 3440x1440.
Click to expand...
What does that even mean? You manage to avoid all games that dont support SLI at all and all games that have any issues? You must not be playing very many games.

I bet you will also claim that every game runs perfect in 21:9 too.
 
I installed windows again and simply installed the nvidia drivers, along with bf1 and witcher 3. I am able to play finally, but usage is between 75-83% on both cards overclocked to 1392mhz. If I disable SLI and just use a single card, I get the SAME FPS overclocking to 1500mhz.

I give up. I'm just going to use my single 980ti and try to sell the other one. Never going to SLI again :(
 
misterbobby said:
What does that even mean? You manage to avoid all games that dont support SLI at all and all games that have any issues? You must not be playing very many games.

I bet you will also claim that every game runs perfect in 21:9 too.
Click to expand...

Well, to be honest, I have only played a handful of different games since I put the second card in, Fallout 4, BF1, BF4, Diablo 3, Overwatch. the last 2 I believe don't use SLI.
21:9 works fine on most games I play, Fallout required a modification and has 2 UI issues, one with scopes and the other is the HUD in the Mech suit. Overwatch has a fixed horizontal FOV so 21:9 players lose vertical FOV. :(
 
Recipe7 said:
I installed windows again and simply installed the nvidia drivers, along with bf1 and witcher 3. I am able to play finally, but usage is between 75-83% on both cards overclocked to 1392mhz. If I disable SLI and just use a single card, I get the SAME FPS overclocking to 1500mhz.

I give up. I'm just going to use my single 980ti and try to sell the other one. Never going to SLI again :(
Click to expand...

Might dig into the BIOS too, and search for issues with your specific board and revision.

An X99 board should be getting full utilization out of two cards!
 
What resolution are you running? Are you using a high refresh rate display? A single 980 Ti runs all the games you mentioned just fine already so you might not really see any improvement if they already run at about 60 fps.
 
Recipe7 said:
I installed windows again and simply installed the nvidia drivers, along with bf1 and witcher 3. I am able to play finally, but usage is between 75-83% on both cards overclocked to 1392mhz. If I disable SLI and just use a single card, I get the SAME FPS overclocking to 1500mhz.

I give up. I'm just going to use my single 980ti and try to sell the other one. Never going to SLI again :(
Click to expand...

You will ultimately be happier that way, in my opinion. When I was running 2 x furies, when it worked, it worked great. However, new games, especially DX12, Vulkan and Microsoft Store games did not support Crossfire at all. Now I am on one Vega 56 and it works much better overall.
 
FlawleZ said:
Ran 7800GTX SLI long ago to help with the monster game of the time known as Crysis. SLI at that time sounds just like what many of you are echoing today. Anyone with SLI experience from that long ago is it still spotty results at best and time consuming profile and driver setup?
Click to expand...
My first SLI setup was a pair of 8800GTX. I think the games that supported it back then had better scaling in general and it just got worse over time. Around 5-7 years ago major engines like Unreal introduced deferred rendering techniques which require information from the last frame to render the next, which is impossible with AFR. My last SLI setup was a pair of GTX 970 and most of the games I played were using single GPU mode. I never messed around with setting bits because of the visual glitches it often produced. NVIDIA brushing aside the voltage issue was pretty much the last straw for me. I've been buying the single most powerful video card since.
 
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