Upgrade itch, thinking about adding a 2nd 1080 Ti... should I?

David-Duc

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2010
Messages
1,280
I have some spare cash to spend. My current PC is X99 + i7 6900k (no OC) + single 1080 Ti FE (purchased at launch). This has been the best video card I've ever bought (still powerful enough for most games after 2 years, hold value very well - thanks, RTX)

If I'm to sell it, I'd have to dump another $700 to get the 2080 Ti... and only get about 30% performance increase. However, if I get another 1080 Ti for $500-550, in some games (Shadow of the TR...), I'll get ~ 90 to 100% performance boost. Any recommendations? And it looks like we're not going to see any "performance breakthrough" from either nVIDIA/AMD anytime soon.

/TL,DR:
- Have some cash & upgrade itch, play games at 4k.
- PC: X99 + i7 6900k (not OC) + 32GB DDR4 2400 + 850W PSU (should be enough for 2 x 1080 Ti).
- Adding a 1080 Ti for ~ 550 bucks (~ 90 to 100% perf. increase in Shadow of the TR...) or selling 1080 Ti and add $700 for a 2080 Ti (30% perf increase)?
 
I have two 1080 Ti in my system.
I'm not disappointed.
I use Surround, 5760 x 1200 and I haven't had any issues running any games yet.
Of course, no RTX effects for me.

The only thing I think you have to hope for is continued or renewed SLi support from game developers.
No SLi then we are pretty much sunk.

I really have no design to upgrade until the next generation RTX comes out.
I don't think I can afford two cards though, so I hope they are stout.
 
I've been gaming on multi-GPU for a while, and I think I'm done. I don't recommend it.

There are a couple games that scale like you want, TR and GTA5 do get close to 100% boost.

But many games don't work at all, or it can even be a loss of performance and smoothness.

Just got a Radeon VII to replace Vega 64 Crossfire and I'd say the experience is significantly better with 1 card, even in games that appeared to be Crossfire supported.

Seeing this, I might even sell one of my 2080 Tis in my main rig. Will do some tests, but I'm thinking single card is the way to go.

If you want my advice, sell the 1080 Ti while it's still worth something and get a 2080 Ti. That is the only thing I can see worth doing.
 
SotTR is one of the few new games that makes good use of SLI at the moment. I think it's not worth it. I would just stick with your 1080 Ti for the time being and not upgrade anything.
 
SLI adds input lag (only with AFR in which case it adds about one frame render time at best) and can cause frame time issues and increase CPU utilization - not to mention have higher CPU requirements to run optimally.
Having two cards also increase power consumption and temperatures in your computer.

Also you are dependent on game profiles to even be able to use SLI at all.

My personal opinion is that if Nvidia SLI worked like 3dfx SLI so:
- SFR - cards work on single frame at a time to finish it sooner
- independent of game profiles - work with all applications
Then I would recommend it even if scaling was lower eg. only 50% performance boost for high resolutions like 4K. Every 3dfx card rendered every other line and did so everywhere thus it worked almost perfectly everywhere. Not sure if thus approach would be feasible in modern shader based GPUs (except pure ray/path tracing where each GPU could just calculate different pixel samples) but any SFR approach is still be better than AFR. Of course AFR is easier to get it to good performance scaling and benchmarks and not actual gameplay sells it so I do not recommend it
 
How many of the games you want to play support SLI? I know in GTA V at 4K with everything turned on, 1 1080ti was a bit jittery. The 2nd card made it smooth as hell. But it supports it.
Also if you went with a 2080ti, is it going to always work? Maybe wait for the next version?
 
SLI and Crossfire haven't had the best support over the past few years. DX12 does have mGPU support and if that takes off I think it'll be a few years before we see more games taking advantage of it. In the mean time I'd stick with just a single card.
 
Always go for 1 card. When I ran sli or cf something always felt off. It just never felt smooth no matter how high the frame rate was.
 
SLI and Crossfire haven't had the best support over the past few years. DX12 does have mGPU support and if that takes off I think it'll be a few years before we see more games taking advantage of it. In the mean time I'd stick with just a single card.
This is my concern, I had 2 x GTX 980 before and called it quit after 1 year. I’m hoping this time, it will be better with Dx12 but the whole support thing still seems dodgy. Another thing is, spending $6-700 bucks (selling 1080 Ti + cash) for a 30% gain is just absurd.
 
I have some spare cash to spend. My current PC is X99 + i7 6900k (no OC) + single 1080 Ti FE (purchased at launch). This has been the best video card I've ever bought (still powerful enough for most games after 2 years, hold value very well - thanks, RTX)

If I'm to sell it, I'd have to dump another $700 to get the 2080 Ti... and only get about 30% performance increase. However, if I get another 1080 Ti for $500-550, in some games (Shadow of the TR...), I'll get ~ 90 to 100% performance boost. Any recommendations? And it looks like we're not going to see any "performance breakthrough" from either nVIDIA/AMD anytime soon.

/TL,DR:
- Have some cash & upgrade itch, play games at 4k.
- PC: X99 + i7 6900k (not OC) + 32GB DDR4 2400 + 850W PSU (should be enough for 2 x 1080 Ti).
- Adding a 1080 Ti for ~ 550 bucks (~ 90 to 100% perf. increase in Shadow of the TR...) or selling 1080 Ti and add $700 for a 2080 Ti (30% perf increase)?

Thing is that in most games you'll see 0 to 30 or 40%. I've seen a few users here dump GTX1080Ti SLi to 2080ti and say its worth it, so there's that.
 
After overclocking and testing more games, my switch from Vega 64 Crossfire to Radeon VII was a huge success.

Everything feels so much smoother, and I'm able to play almost everything I tried at 4K max settings.

I understand why SLI/CF is appealing, but it's not worth it. You will get more FPS, sure, but you end up with a worse experience.
 
Always go for 1 card. When I ran sli or cf something always felt off. It just never felt smooth no matter how high the frame rate was.
it is called input lag. Because ARR you basically had in most titles below single gpu performance in terms of responsiveness + frame pacing issues.

I tested SLI and CF on Crysis back in the days of it being the killer game and adding second gpu didn't improve latency. Mouse responsiveness was the same if not worse making for a very laggy experience. Putting faster single GPU gave much better gameplay even if frame rate was lower than two slower GPU's and this is exactly the same what most testimonials of multi GPU says.

With SFR games experience was pretty decent though. But these GPU manufacturers are not stupid. They know AFR gives better performance scaling and until people realize it sucks they will look at frame rate charts.
 
SFR is possible with DX12, but must be coded by the developer. Seeing how things have been going, I wouldn't expect support in many games.
 
I would sell it and look for a used 2080ti or evga 2080 ti that is going for 1000 base. I grabbed a zotac 2080ti here in forums AMP edition for less than 1k shipped. Retail its 1400 after taxes. Works like a champ and runs 1950-2050 core and +1000 on memory. Gets 40%+ over 1080ti.

I would honestly go that route vs adding another 1080ti. You guarantee yourself performance without having to play the SLI game.

Used to be all about dual cards when they came along. I haven't had dual card setup for a decade it feels like. Probably lesser but feels like that lol.
 
Last edited:
No, if you want to upgrade, sell the 1080 Ti and get a 2080 Ti.

The ~30% gain you get will honestly be more impactful than going SLI in most cases. Can't look at just the raw frame rates with SLI, as the frame times are generally a lot worse, not to mention tons of games don't even support it these days. I would not hold my breath on DX12 mGPU support either.
 
Running 2x 1080 TIs currently. I ALMOST pulled the trigger on a 2080 Ti yesterday, but Nvidia pissed me off. In BFV, they disabled SLI, which has been known, but can be worked around with Nvidia Inspector. However, the latest patch they did something shady, and the settings won't save with Inspector, thus making SLI completely useless. There's a work around that involves going to the Nvidia driver file and making things read only, but I shouldn't have to do this. I mean, this makes it more of a plus for one card, but I just couldn't give someone 1.5k after taxes when they pissed me off...

Go to a single 2080 TI because it looks like Nvidia is trying to kill the performance boosts from cheaper used video card upgrades.
 
Best answer: having a 1080Ti means that upgrading is probably the worst thing you can do unless you can demonstrate to yourself that you can actually use the extra ~30% performance jump and/or ray tracing.

Usually the case between successive generations regardless, but the price/performance metrics really don't favor upgrading a flagship GPU this generation.

[I'm in the same boat]

Re: SLI

Generally not a bad idea if you need more performance a single card can bring- frametime issues included- but that's generally not the case today both because of the price/performance metrics and because mGPU support has had to be patched back into game engines after DX12 and Vulkan support has been added.

In theory, it could work even better with the low-level APIs and might be a boon for VR, but we need engine and game developers to get back on the ball first.
 
Before you buy I would look at the games you play the most. Do any of them support SLI? Do any of them break with a second GPU installed even with SLI disabled? Is the performance for a second card 50% or more? Are you paying for a good increase or $500 for 10 FPS? Does micro stutter bother you?

I honestly did not think SLI was worth it, more often than not games were not built with SLI support.
 
SLI/CrossfireX/mGPU is def on the slow-roll of death. For Battlefield V to not have at-least DX11 SLI/Crossfire is pretty unheard of. BF2/3/BC/BC2/BF4/BF1 all had an SLI/Crossfire profile at the launch of the game. Now that DX12 is in full swing, BF doesn't have ANY multi-card profile/support is pretty friggen telling. Also look at the new Metro game, no multi-gpu support on launch day. Every other Metro game had SLI/Crossfire support at launch.
 
Do you have a Gsync monitor? If not you might consider targeting that and waiting for the next gen 3080ti.

I’d rather have G-sync or FreeSync than the best graphics card.

It makes lower FPS feel perfectly smooth. I have a few games that drop to 60fps range on my 1080ti at 3440x1440, Which is seemingly a big difference from those that cap out my monitor at 120hz. I don’t care a lick. The frame rates feel perfectly buttery smooth to me down to the mid 40s with Gsync in my testing. My opinion is that G-sync allows your video card to have a longer shelf-life. I no longer am chasing max FPS, as long as it’s in range I can’t even tell the difference while gaming.
 
Not sure what the micro stutter is with sli? Is it different between games? GTA V ran smooth as silk with sli.
 
Not sure what the micro stutter is with sli? Is it different between games? GTA V ran smooth as silk with sli.
Microstutter is basically an unevenness of frame times. Even with a higher average FPS, there can be some frames in between with longer render times which reduce the fluidity of motion.

As we see with console gaming at 30fps, having lower performance but more consistent frame times is beneficial. SLI/Crossfire in most cases can improve FPS but the additional latency and variation results in a poorer experience in the general case.

That said, some games do have good support. GTA V is one of them, this games scales great with SLI (almost 100% scaling, meaning double the performance). The Tomb Raider engine supports mGPU, and this scales well too.

Also, AMD and Nvidia have introduced frame pacing in recent years, which did help with microstutter but did not seem to remove it completely.

As always, multi-GPU can be beneficial *if* you are buying the best card on the market and still need more performance (for example, in Surround/Eyefinity setups). Otherwise, just sell what you have and get the best card.
 
Microstutter is basically an unevenness of frame times. Even with a higher average FPS, there can be some frames in between with longer render times which reduce the fluidity of motion.

As we see with console gaming at 30fps, having lower but consistent frame times is beneficial. SLI/Crossfire in most cases can improve FPS but the additional latency and variation results in a poorer experience in the general case.

That said, some games do have good support. GTA V is one of them, this games scales great with SLI (almost 100% scaling, meaning double the performance). The Tomb Raider engine supports mGPU, and this scales well too.

Also, AMD and Nvidia have introduced frame pacing in recent years, which did help with microstutter but did not seem to remove it completely.

As always, multi-GPU can be beneficial *if* you are buying the best card on the market and still need more performance (for example, in Surround/Eyefinity setups). Otherwise, just sell what you have and get the best card.

Does microstutter exist with the variable frame rate tech? G-sync or FreeSync? I don’t think I’ve read anything on that testing.
 
Does microstutter exist with the variable frame rate tech? G-sync or FreeSync? I don’t think I’ve read anything on that testing.
That is a good question and should be tested.

My guess is that it does help, but only when all frames are being rendered within the variable refresh range. Or your fps is relatively high on a high refresh monitor.

In my case, I have not really seen the issue on my Nvidia rig, because I've been running at 144Hz+ G-Sync for many years. But it seemed to be an issue on my AMD rig at 4K60 even w/ FreeSync.
 
I've had tons of multi-gpu setups (although mostly ATI/AMD), and I've seen the dread microstutter on many different setups (prior system was 4x R9 290X Crossfire - that thing had a bit of stutter once and awhile). However, since using my 1080TI SLI setup with Gysnc 1440P @ 144hz, I have not experience any noticeable microstutter or input delay.
 
wait for the next 7nm GPU from nvidia, sell the 1080ti and buy a single 3080 Ti or Titan, I don't recommend SLI.

1080ti is still a powerful gpu today, not worth buying the 2080ti for that price, the low clock speed and high amount of shaders on 2080ti makes it poorly balanced due to lock of 7nm shrink.

2080ti needs to run 2.5-3ghz to get itself rolling, next nvidia gpu will be a refresh of current nvidia gpu but on 7 nm process, it will make a big difference cuz it will run insanely fast and with even more shaders and tensor cores.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top