Anyone running SLI these days with 10xx cards?

L

lightsout

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 15, 2014
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I keep hearing SLI is on its way out. Some games aren't supporting it, and didn't Nvidia take it away from the xx60 cards and below?

Anyways I have a 1070 that I see is SLI capable. Was thinking down the road of an easy upgrade path. I am currently happy with performance at 1440p.

Was just curious if people were getting decent results or is no longer worth it, I understand it's often game dependent. These days I mostly play BF or COD if I play anything.
 
I still run SLI and Crossfire. It can be a hit or miss, but when it hits it's pretty nice. That said, not every game will work, so it's kind of a gamble for each new game, and you may need to edit settings files and stuff like that so it is more hassle.

In general, if you have a fairly standard setup (i.e. single monitor, 1440p or below) it's probably better to just get a faster card rather than SLI. If you factor in selling your old card, it might not even be a big cost difference.
 
cybereality said:
I still run SLI and Crossfire. It can be a hit or miss, but when it hits it's pretty nice. That said, not every game will work, so it's kind of a gamble for each new game, and you may need to edit settings files and stuff like that so it is more hassle.

In general, if you have a fairly standard setup (i.e. single monitor, 1440p or below) it's probably better to just get a faster card rather than SLI. If you factor in selling your old card, it might not even be a big cost difference.
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Yeah I agree, every time I have done it over the years I have always going back to single card. It's frustrating seeing the second card sit at 50% usage or whatever on some games.
 
lightsout said:
It's frustrating seeing the second card sit at 50% usage or whatever on some games.
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This is always be a highly debatable subject. The old rule of thumb is to buy the best single card you can afford. From there, it you have a higher end card and game at 4k, two GPUs might have some value if you play enough games. One the biggest releases this year in Far Cry 5 has pretty solid SLI/CF performance and does make a difference at 4k. What's that's worth in terms of cost is obviously up to the user. Multiple cards can also come in handy if you have enough displays.
 
SLI is an absolutely terrible upgrade path. With new cards coming out later this year you'd be foolish to go 1070 SLI instead of a single 1170. A single 1170 will be an improvement in every single game not just the games that happen to support multi GPU and don't have issues even when they do support it.
 
Why even sli at this point when both companies aren't even focused on it and are not supporting it for newer games. Its totally up to game developers now for upcoming games. I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. If Nvidia themselves doesn't think much of it anymore I don't know if its worth counting on it much.

Sell the 1070 and put another few hundred and upgrade to newer card. That will be much better and guaranteed performance increase vs adding another 1070.
 
I don't. I get the most powerful single GPU and use that, since it works in everything. I don't want the issues of SLI. There are only two situations I could see using it in, neither of which apply to me:

1) You only play one or two games, which are known to work excellent with SLI. Maybe it is cheaper for more performance then.

2) You have enough money you are willing to buy two of the top of the line cards, and deal with the fact that sometimes you can't use the second one.

Neither of those apply to me, so a single 1080Ti it is.
 
Sycraft said:
I don't. I get the most powerful single GPU and use that, since it works in everything. I don't want the issues of SLI. There are only two situations I could see using it in, neither of which apply to me:

1) You only play one or two games, which are known to work excellent with SLI. Maybe it is cheaper for more performance then.

2) You have enough money you are willing to buy two of the top of the line cards, and deal with the fact that sometimes you can't use the second one.

Neither of those apply to me, so a single 1080Ti it is.
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Or you want want 3d mark bragging rights lol!
 
cybereality said:
One case where it makes sense is if you have an old card (lets say 1 generation behind) and you can get the second card used for really cheap. In this case, you could be upgrading for like $200 give or take, and potentially double your performance in supported games.
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That makes zero sense to me. That would be like going 970 SLI instead of buying a 1070 after the 1070 came out which is idiotic to me. Sale the old card and put that towards the new card and in the end you have spent about the same and have NO SLI issues to worry about and have a huge upgrade for EVERY single game you own not just the ones that work fine with SLI. Really I thought I made that clear but for some reason you only took part of my comment to reply to.
 
no, and I'll never go multi-GPU again unless all the issues are somehow sorted. I never found much benefit to it, anyway. Once you start pushing things well beyond what a single GPU can handle, you start running into stutter issues, erratic FPS, etc.

The only situation I found where it helps is if you're running at a decent frame rate - like 50 FPS on a single GPU and want a locked 60 to avoid VSync dropping frames even further. But G-Sync/FreeSync has made this largely irrelevant for me, that I see no reason to get mGPU anymore.

If you're hoping for SLI to leapfrog your performance from like 40 to 60 FPS, that's when you start getting the stutter issues, even in games that scale well. Basically to avoid microstutter issues I found you always had to leave around 30% performance overhead, and considering many games only scale like 60-70% that doesn't leave much of a benefit.
 
I don't think the situation has changed much if at all compared to a few years ago. It has more to do with owning two hi-end cards is hardly justifiable in the current ecosystem. So the market shrunk, that's why developers tend to focus on it less. But AAA games still can't afford to ignore SLI support, while indie and smaller devs never supported it anyway. I remember getting 70-> 35 fps when enabling multigpu in games 5 years ago already. Sure it's not the same as in the golden age of SLI when you could just get two mid-range cards and beat the shit out of the top dogs in almost every game, but the situation is not as bad as it is made out to be.
 
misterbobby said:
That makes zero sense to me. That would be like going 970 SLI instead of buying a 1070 after the 1070 came out which is idiotic to me..
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A 970 SLI system can be 10 - 20% faster than a 1070 in certain games. If you could find a 970 for cheap (I see some on ebay for like $150) this would be cheaper than buying a 1070 and potentially better.

gtav_1920_1080.png


https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1070/15.html
 
970 is a bit of a bad example due to VRAM limitations (like everything around 4GB), but it worked well in nearly everything I played.

I'd run SLI again if I needed to, but with a 1080Ti, that likely won't be necessary for a while ;).

[I'm definitely in the 'faster single card' camp despite having run three generations of multi-GPU prior to this 1080Ti- it's just that the GP102 is a new direction for Nvidia, giving the top card very real gains]
 
NKD said:
Why even sli at this point when both companies aren't even focused on it and are not supporting it for newer games. Its totally up to game developers now for upcoming games. I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. If Nvidia themselves doesn't think much of it anymore I don't know if its worth counting on it much.

Sell the 1070 and put another few hundred and upgrade to newer card. That will be much better and guaranteed performance increase vs adding another 1070.
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But dual cards looks so sweet!
 
cybereality said:
A 970 SLI system can be 10 - 20% faster than a 1070 in certain games. If you could find a 970 for cheap (I see some on ebay for like $150) this would be cheaper than buying a 1070 and potentially better.

View attachment 70822

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1070/15.html
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Who cares about 10-20% in "certain games" though? There will be even more games where its slower plus tons of games with ZERO support for SLI at all. That does not even get into the fairly common issues of SLI even in games where it works such as broken support from some drivers or game updates, stuttering, and occasional flickering issues. Bottom line is that the 1070 is faster overall even in your link and has less issues to deal with. Plus even less newer games support SLI now since that review was done. IMO someone would be very foolish to have gone 970 SLI instead of selling the 970 and getting a 1070.
 
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Last time I ran SLI was 8800GTS 640MB SLI. Back in those days if you had money to spend or got a great deal on the cards second hand, it actually made sense.
 
FlawleZ said:
Last time I ran SLI was 8800GTS 640MB SLI. Back in those days if you had money to spend or got a great deal on the cards second hand, it actually made sense.
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This.
The last time I had SLI was with dual 9800GTX's, before that, 7950GT's.
I use to pick up a second card 5 or 6 months later down the road when they were super cheap. Now days cards seem to retain their value a lot more than they use to, well into the time the next gen drops.
 
Nah. I bought a 1080 Ti precisely so I didn't have to do SLI.

But I do have fond memories of my dual Voodoo 2 SLI rig, in the ancient days.
 
misterbobby said:
Plus even less newer games support SLI now since that review was done.
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This trend has already started to reverse. Multi-GPU is being patched in at the DX12 and Vulcan level for every major engine, and it's going to remain necessary for top-end configs to run upcoming games. 4k120, VR, next-gen games?

Yeah, I'm glad that AMD, Nvidia, and game engine developers haven't shelved development :).
 
I was thinking about getting another 1070. 4k60 is getting pretty brutal for newer games like Kingdom Come and far Cry 5. But getting another 1070 will get me from 40fps to the capped 60hz... yay...

On my 1080p180hz, it is entirely CPU bound.

If I didn't have that stupid 60hz that DP 1.2 has, I would upgrade. 4k144hz is all I want and it ain't coming soon enough to warrant buying a 2 year old 1070...
 
You'll need a lot more than 1070 SLI for 4K 144Hz. Even the best systems today are just barely hitting 4K 60Hz.
 
I ran dual 1080s for a few days just for lulz, and it was definitely overkill for my use case.
 
Master_shake_ said:
GTA V

/thread

only the largest grossing game on earth

well non subscription based.
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Yes lets close the thread and claim that games that dont support SLI are typically shit ports because of a popular game that you dislike.

No point in arguing with you if you are that fucking dense.
 
misterbobby said:
Yes lets close the thread and claim that games that dont support SLI are typically shit ports because of a popular game that you dislike.

No point in arguing with you if you are that fucking dense.
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no that was me showing a game that suppots sli and that it is the most successful game that ever existed on any platform.

games that don't support sli are usually actually almost always handicapped ports that are stuck at a constant frame rate.

when consoles were the target and the PC port was phoned in.
 
Master_shake_ said:
no that was me showing a game that suppots sli and that it is the most successful game that ever existed on any platform.

games that don't support sli are usually actually almost always handicapped ports that are stuck at a constant frame rate.

when consoles were the target and the PC port was phoned in.
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My bad then as I thought you were basically saying the opposite.
 
cybereality said:
You'll need a lot more than 1070 SLI for 4K 144Hz. Even the best systems today are just barely hitting 4K 60Hz.
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I started gaming at 4k on my R9 290 in late 2014. While it is slow for newer games, 60hz makes 4k far easier to run.My favorite games (Elite Dangerous and Rainbow 6) can nearly do 4k144hz on a single 1070 so I am not worried. I love my older games.

But I will not SLI for 60hz. Even GTA V is CPU limited at 4k ultra.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
This trend has already started to reverse. Multi-GPU is being patched in at the DX12 and Vulcan level for every major engine, and it's going to remain necessary for top-end configs to run upcoming games. 4k120, VR, next-gen games?

Yeah, I'm glad that AMD, Nvidia, and game engine developers haven't shelved development :).
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I really hope so. Been considering SLI for next gen myself. However, the fact FFXV, a game NVIDIA spent a lot of time with, doesn't have SLI makes me think otherwise.
 
obs said:
I really hope so. Been considering SLI for next gen myself. However, the fact FFXV, a game NVIDIA spent a lot of time with, doesn't have SLI makes me think otherwise.
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I wouldn't use a Squeenix game as a benchmark for anything other than Squeenix games...

But I do remember reading that they were working on patching in support? Have you checked recently?
 
Ran triple 780's for awhile. After leak in water cooling for my CPU, freaked and replaced with a single 1080. The circuit breaker no longer trips when I make a cup of coffee and the three hair dryers aren't turning my room into a sauna any more (y) I'll never go back. I'll hold here until 1180Ti drops. My only issue is I do not feel like replacing my three monitors I use for nSurround. I am successfully using active display port adapters at the moment, it just doesn't hit full 120 FPS like native DVI-D did with the trip 780's, high 90's on the side monitors. I don't notice it much when playing WoW.
 
I’ve had two 1080ti in my machine for about 8 months now. They aren’t even connected by an SLI bridge except for the first couple weeks. I use one for mining and one for gaming - while I’m gaming and when I’m not gaming they both are mining


I haven’t needed SLI for anything I’ve played. Probably the most taxing game I have is Vermintide 2 and it gets low 70 FPS at the worst. Gsync at 3440x1440 keeps that 70FPS feeling perfectly smooth from the mid 90s FPS range the game normally runs at. There just isn’t any call for SLI to me with my setup. Gsync changed the game. Gsync feels buttery smooth to me down to the low 40FPS range which means some casual games I can play while I’m still mining.
 
i still like SLI/Crossfire for the reliability standpoint, especially now on a Ryzen setup. when a GPU dies, you got a second backup still in place. this allows you time to hunt a better deal, or more recently, wait for prices to return to sanity. less of an issue when buying new, but those of us always picking up used, it does make since.
 
Nimisys said:
when a GPU dies...
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WTF are you doing that you're killing GPUs enough for this to be a thing?

The only time I've ever had a GPU die was back in the GTX 280 days when those would shit the bed on a regular basis.
 
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